Poetry / Syllabus of the Mind

The most fascinating and enrapturing qualities of this piece have to do with your great skill in manipulating the meter and internal rhyme.  You start the poem with what seems to have been intended as end-rhyme throughout, but abandon the notion a bit before halfway through.  However, it’s the internal rhyme, line line 5’s eternally/virtuosity, line 8’s depth/breadth, and a few others in the beginning of the poem which are far above and beyond the abilities of some of the most accomplished lyricists and wordsmiths in history.  The difference lies in the fact that not one of the internal rhymes in this poem fall on the same two syllables of the line.  That simple variation proves your talent, and if you can carry that throughout the whole thing, you will have an excellent poem; if you can carry that throughout a whole book, you’ll have a career; and if you can carry that throughout a dozen books, you’ll have a Nobel prize.

Towards the middle of the poem, you shift from your elite phonics to further emphasize your ideas.  The discussion becomes about love’s decline instead of it’s climax makes for an engaging story arc, but as the rhyme, both internal and end-rhyme break up, it becomes quickly noticeable that something is missing.  If i were under the impression that that move was intentional, then this would be another paragraph singing your praises.  Here, though, that was not the feeling.  You seem to be stretching to throw unnecessary big words into your poem, and it made me laugh when I got down to “prestidigitation,” which is so clumsily long as to never have a place in metered verse.

Finally, for your conclusion, your last four lines were probably the best quality of storytelling in the poem.  The fact that that block of text switches suddenly to an ABCA rhyme scheme instead of the ABCB of the rest of the poem can be overlooked.  Here you go with fairly simple, elemental language that clearly conveys the “It’s better to have loved and lost…” theme of the poem.  The end result is that I have on my screen an amazing start to one poem, a passable, but forgettable middle of a second poem, and very good end to yet a third poem.  If you could interweave the storytelling into the front side and the rhyme extravaganza into the tail end, hell, you might only need 8 or 10 of those to win a Nobel, though that may involve your learning a foreign language.

Very well done.  You’ve impressed one of the harshest critics on this site, and I look forward to reading more from you.

Butterat Zool.

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October 30, 2008

by crimsonarchon

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No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
105	76.5% (81 votes)	15.8%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
29	M	Clarksville, TN	July 01

Thanks a lot for the review. It’s quite a bit more thoughtful than most I have received here. I do agree with you that the internal rhythm breaks down as the piece progresses and that some of the lines are too clunky. I’ve already changed some of the wording around and reworked the format a bit, and will continue to do so.

I’m not sure how much poetry you’ve written yourself, but you can probably appreciate the difficulty of maintaining a shifting internal rhyme scheme without it seeming forced. I will in future versions attempt to clarify the piece by strengthening the theme of powerlessness and downplaying or omitting altogether the sub-themes that exist throughout. It might lose some of its abstract beauty but it will surely gain in its readability.

I will, in future versions, put most of my effort into reworking the middle area of the poem as it is obviously weaker than the beginning and the end.

Thanks for this quality review.

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I love the visuals you evoke with your words. There are some striking images and the word choice is excellent. I lost the meaning only once or twice and would just have to study again. Best poems make you look more than once. Well done

You have such a powerful vocabulary!  That’s cool.
The message of the poem is lost in the words.  Have you ever heard the expression “Can’t see the forest for the trees”?  That’s where I am.  It’s too many trees..ahem…words.

I think if you narrowed the subject, and looked at one element as if through a microscope, and wrote Big about something smaller, then your reader wouldn’t be overpowered and overwhelmed by the volume of your message.

Thank you for letting me read and review your poetry. Good luck to you.

Very poignant poem. What I took from the poem is that, with  each step we take it can either go perfectly well or horribly wrong, and we must constantly watch and check ourselves. Hindsight, though 20/20, helps no one and to assume is just as bad. But how much to divulge and how much to hold back is a constant battle we must fight in life,

The words flow so well with each other
But some of the lines seemed to drag on the rythem
It is job well done however!

Beautifuly written…

amazing. be careful though the wording may fly over some peoples heads. as you know by now most people just dont have the mental capacity to  understand you vocabulary. but in my mind thats what makes it great. its so smart and it made me want to see where it was going. it didnt use elaborate wording just for the sake of using them, it was clear. don’t change and dismiss criticisms that say that its too high brow. this so unique and certainly one of the better ones ive seen. its almost like classical music in its complexity and orchestration

A very powerful poem, emotions run high in this fantastic piece of work. I am so glad I was able to read this thank you and well done. jayne sterne

This is great.  I find it an art to be able to keep a reader through long poems such as this, but this is truly great.  I think your most breathtaking line is, “Every man from womb to grave possesses always the key, but the grand prestigidation is to somehow make appear the door.”  Again, really great job!

I very much like ‘you have delicious eyes.’ That phrase rings bells for me for it is said that ‘eyes are the windows of the soul.’ One of the Maori Hakas, a traditional war dance has a similar line, ‘I’m going to eat your eyeballs’ because in that tradition the ‘mana’ the spirit or essence of the person is in their eyes. By consuming that person’s eyes the victor becomes more powerful. The Roman Catholic Church Mass does the same sort of thing. The priest, the holy father drinks the blood & the people eat the spiritual flesh of their god, Jesus. Dracula a character invented by an Irishman isn’t interested in eyes or flesh he only wants to puncture the neck of his beloved & drink the blood.