Comment on holograms of brine by Meggie272
I picked one stanza out of this to critique. I generally like your imagery, the lack of syntax makes it hard for me to establish a true sense of rhythm.
no one can hear you scream - telling people something you assume everyone knows is generally a bad idea in writing.
Try this on your eyes:
"to plunge through those hidden
stars, choke on brine
let it strip my lungs raw let
bubbles stream in oil black slick and
sink, and sink
and sink and
sink
sink"
The image, the way you word this, is to suggest you are frightened. This is the meat of that stanza, this is where it's at, that human element.
Thank you for the feedback, dude! Very appreciated. I need to go back over this, but I'm shying away from it at the moment for some reason. I get what you mean about the sense of rhythm. That's something I always struggle with in my poetry - they feel like just meandering disconnected thoughts, with no real sense of importance or impact. But if I try to incorporate rhythm it can sometimes feel a bit forced and clunky...so that's something I've gotta work on.
Just read it outloud to yourself, and put in some commas where you pause. I'm not talking about a rhythm you get when you listen to a rapper, I'm talking about the rhythm you hear in conversation, the unspoken punctuation we say.
Syntax is the difference between me getting inside your head the way you actually think and me getting to guess at how you think based on the context of the words on the page.
Yeah, I'm familiar. I think I've done that for the most part, except for the third stanza, which does need renovating. I think I was trying to go for the tumbleofwordsohmygodsomuchemotionsomuchdramawow effect.
that's called "stream of consciousness" something a guy named Faulkner used to great effect.
I'm afraid my opinion is that it isn't effective in this particular poem yet. You'll either need a lot of revision or a moderate amount of revision if you go with adding syntax.
Well, I'll get on to it, cheers for your input 