12-29-2017, 01:18 AM
(12-28-2017, 10:03 PM)vagabond Wrote:(12-28-2017, 12:47 PM)AttnAttack Wrote: we met with ashen tongues
keeping hushed the sins we lay
thinking of. then the night comes.
— 'qu'est-ce que j'ai fait?'
'our visit'
'ce bordel sur mon lit'
i received you on my knees
Quote:References: Love Song of Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot
Paradise Lost, Book 10, John Milton
interesting image, those "ashen tongues".. exstinguishes thoughts of romance right from the start. you could write "our ashen tongues met" ("we met with tongues" sounds a little strange to my ears)
would prefer to read "we kept the sins we lay thinking of // hushed. then the night came." (consider past tense here to be consistent with the first line)
i don´t get the point of "our visit".. and, to be honest, the whole bordel situation. "i received you on my knees" makes me think the subject (not a customer then?) is a woman.. i´d like it if the content were easier to understand, but anyway, others are probably able to get your story (which seems interesting, but not quite so to make me do homework and read all those references you gave in that quote).
maybe you could leave out the apostrophe´s, they are a bit confusing, especially " 'ce bordel .. " because french has already that much of them among the words. it´s clear enough that those lines are a conversation.
consider an exclamation mark after "ce bordel sur mon lit" . the 'ashen tongues' needs 'keeping hushed' or something to that effect directly after it so that you get a reason why they can't speak of their sins, or at least in a mental sense they lay buried. I do like the way you wrote 'we kept the sins we lay thinking of // hushed. then the night came' unsure if I could make it past tense without disrupting my thought here: there is the chopping word, that like in a haiku, splits the poem in two. it is a metaphor, an alusion, and a pun all at once. i am not sure if i used it correctly, but if it is confusing i will consider revisting it.
(12-29-2017, 01:17 AM)tectak Wrote:Not really sure that there is anything available in this which is worth offering up an acceptable, to the writer that is, critique. I suppose a salutary reminder that as this is in the "intensive" forum it is beholden upon the writer to make sure that such proofreading (or pruf reading), which surely has been done, throws up any obvious problems, so saving the crits from mundanity. What I am really saying is, if the writer believes that this is his best shot then there is little a crit can do. Please read it through. If you are intent on developing something from this short nothingness then please make it work. I am critical of the piece only because I cannot believe that the penning of it made you satisfied...I hope then, that you will be pricked in to perfection. Go on...you know you want to. Best, tectak You're right that I'm not satisfied with the enjambment. It was hard for me to get the correct meter, and it certainly suffers from it, but I have an attachment to every word I've written in this poem because each of them is an allusion, a pun, a metaphor, a synecdoche, etc. The caesura on line 3, followed by a trochaic foot and a spondee to signify a full stop. . well it could have been done better. As for capitalization, its a style choice: Lowercase conveys a sense of sadness to me—personally—as if the speaker is saddened and cannot make the effort; filled with depression and anxiety. I feel like the more I explain the more I realize that I have failed to convey my meaning well enough. I am sorry. I will remove the poem.(12-28-2017, 12:47 PM)AttnAttack Wrote: we met with ashen tongues at least begin with a capital letter, even though you may think the "message" in the piece so extraordinarily compelling...which I do not...as to not require correct grammar. I do not feel the compulsion to figure out if you don't because you cannot, or you don't because you think it is cute...
keeping hushed the sins we lay If there is a reason for this guillotined enjambment I would like help in understanding just what you believe it achieves.
thinking of. then the night comes. ....and so on, and so on. If you think that I am picky, wait until you write a decent piece of poetry. This won't do and it is insulting on the part of the character to presume that I or any other crit is prepared to waste time on it...so I will not. Joyeux noel.
See endpiece.
— 'qu'est-ce que j'ai fait?'
'our visit'
'ce bordel sur mon lit'
i received you on my knees
Quote:References: Love Song of Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot
Paradise Lost, Book 10, John Milton

