12-01-2018, 01:00 AM
Hi Crow,
I'm broadly in agreement with billy and duke: it's intrinsically interesting but
(I think due to style more than anything) it just lacks a bit of punch. In the first
stanza, the rather academic tone, and lack of any striking images makes for a
very slow start - though things pick up in S2.
(Apologies if this crit is too much for Basic, I'm never sure what's required.)
Apocalypse
- I'd prefer something that relates a bit more
to the specifics of the piece (Conflagration, perhaps).
It was routine practice for native Americans to burn the New England forests.
- I'd like a stronger opening with a bit more specifics. For instance,
Before the coming of the Europeans the [tribe/tribal name] would burn the forests
of [indigenous name]. Fire cleared the underbrush.
And personally, I'd like to know why they fired the forests? I'd think an interesting comparison might be made between their burning the forests to destroy 'pests', including ticks etc., and how, as you suggest, it facilitated the spread of foreign diseases.
English settlers expanding west, in the early days, could ride horses at full gallop through the woods.
- 'Early days' might be better replaced with a date.
And an explanation for why they might 'ride horses at full gallop' wouldn't go amiss.
But the first English to travel west from the colonies weren't men.
- I'd question the use of 'English' (especially if, as google reports, smallpox originates in either India or NE Africa)
I think you might make something of
but it wasn't man that raced through the forests, but disease.
They were disease. Smallpox annihilated many tribes, leaving desolated, pristine acres behind.
- Could you not compare smallpox with the 'burning' of the forest?
A young family traveling out into the wilderness, therefore, would have been greeted with
- I don't think the 'therefore' helps, and the 'young family' don't really have enough flesh on their bones.
open fields, populated by troves of animals, their numbers unchecked by hunters who now, in strange poses, had wasted into skeletons, which could be found grouped in lifeless
- Like the use of 'troves', but I'd prefer a more dramatic telling/picturing
encampments, prone in empty fields, contorted and hunched alone against a tall tree in a New England cathedral forest, where a child might accidentally find them, and perhaps leave
- do you need 'forest'? It is implied in the context, and 'cathedral' would gain a bit from being unmodified.
breathless and horrified, holding strange jewelry, or a knife, or a bone, wondering how to
- Not sure how you can get to 'breathless and horrified' in this form. It might help to start S2 by referring to yourself/the narrator (who is imagining all this).
keep it secret, or what sin they may have done in the eyes of their violent, reckless Christ.
- Not sure who 'their' refers to.
Regards, Knot.
.
I'm broadly in agreement with billy and duke: it's intrinsically interesting but
(I think due to style more than anything) it just lacks a bit of punch. In the first
stanza, the rather academic tone, and lack of any striking images makes for a
very slow start - though things pick up in S2.
(Apologies if this crit is too much for Basic, I'm never sure what's required.)
Apocalypse
- I'd prefer something that relates a bit more
to the specifics of the piece (Conflagration, perhaps).
It was routine practice for native Americans to burn the New England forests.
- I'd like a stronger opening with a bit more specifics. For instance,
Before the coming of the Europeans the [tribe/tribal name] would burn the forests
of [indigenous name]. Fire cleared the underbrush.
And personally, I'd like to know why they fired the forests? I'd think an interesting comparison might be made between their burning the forests to destroy 'pests', including ticks etc., and how, as you suggest, it facilitated the spread of foreign diseases.
English settlers expanding west, in the early days, could ride horses at full gallop through the woods.
- 'Early days' might be better replaced with a date.
And an explanation for why they might 'ride horses at full gallop' wouldn't go amiss.
But the first English to travel west from the colonies weren't men.
- I'd question the use of 'English' (especially if, as google reports, smallpox originates in either India or NE Africa)
I think you might make something of
but it wasn't man that raced through the forests, but disease.
They were disease. Smallpox annihilated many tribes, leaving desolated, pristine acres behind.
- Could you not compare smallpox with the 'burning' of the forest?
A young family traveling out into the wilderness, therefore, would have been greeted with
- I don't think the 'therefore' helps, and the 'young family' don't really have enough flesh on their bones.
open fields, populated by troves of animals, their numbers unchecked by hunters who now, in strange poses, had wasted into skeletons, which could be found grouped in lifeless
- Like the use of 'troves', but I'd prefer a more dramatic telling/picturing
encampments, prone in empty fields, contorted and hunched alone against a tall tree in a New England cathedral forest, where a child might accidentally find them, and perhaps leave
- do you need 'forest'? It is implied in the context, and 'cathedral' would gain a bit from being unmodified.
breathless and horrified, holding strange jewelry, or a knife, or a bone, wondering how to
- Not sure how you can get to 'breathless and horrified' in this form. It might help to start S2 by referring to yourself/the narrator (who is imagining all this).
keep it secret, or what sin they may have done in the eyes of their violent, reckless Christ.
- Not sure who 'their' refers to.
Regards, Knot.
.