Poetry / A penny for a thought, but I charge interest

I get a solid picture in the first three stanzas, but I am lost after that. I can sense certain ideas in an implied way, but I am not sure how it all works together.

I enjoy you the fun and freedom it seems you are having with your words. I think the ambiguity is my favorite part.

The teleprompter image is a strong one. But do they use cards? And is the speaker quoting Bobby Mcferrin?

Is you capitalization/ punctuation intentional? For instance, the period before amid in stanza one or the closing quotation marks without opening ones in line 40.

Do you use allusions in your work? Is “Ice cream minions” a Steven’s allusion?

I hope this is helpful. If not let me know.

It’s hard for me to get very specific about areas to improve because it feels deeply confused.  The first part I follow, you set the scene fairly well and I’m there.  But after “scenting the air” things really go south.  I see the scene doesn’t change, but meaning…  I’m just not getting it.  It seems that you know exactly what you mean, but it’s not clear at all from the unitiated reader’s point of view.

I do get some sense of tone, mechanization, hungry dogs/wolves, droning speaker… but just looking at that list alone shows that there is a lack of unity on a pretty fundamental level in the work.

So, I think you’ve got a couple’a diffrent pieces here, style-wise. The beginning is really very prosey, and the end is minimalistic poetry. That doesn’t work for me, I can’t see a reason for it – except, ok, looking back I can see end quotes where there aren’t start quotes and if that (half-way through 5th stanza to end-ish) should be speaking, I can see the style change.

I like the folks are wolves theme, but it seems a tad over-emphasized. Maybe I’m seeing it backwards – are we supposed to see them as wolves/dogs and not people, or people akin to wolves? Let me know if this is jibberish.

The beginning images are good, I  feel, but you close something toward the end, vague-ing it up. I dunno. I like this, it just jumps a lot, for me.

Keep … something encouraging.

Love, love.

Odd is what comes to mind. The podium is an object and never speaks. Murmers don’t flash with cameras and take out the period after flashes, not needed. Why is everything OK when the audience wants blood and gore and how does the speaker know this? It’s rather surreal in a way and I think you’re trying to make a political statement but that’s also vague, don’t understand S6 about icecream. What is important? Ripples in a pond seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the poem. Is this a first draft?

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May 16, 2007

by mpotavin

personal info reviewer stats

No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
56	84.2% (19 votes)	17.1%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
34	M	Phoenix, AZ	December 31

I wrote this shortly after the tragedy at the Virginia university. I was watching the news, and all the reporters seemed so jazzed up and excited that there was a tragedy for them to cover. It just made me wonder what would happen if they were told that everything was fine. Would we make up demons to fight? This is a first “i’m just playing around with stuff” draft. Thanks for the review, I take odd as a compliment.

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