Monday, August 8, 2011

Any criticism for my poem?

You've got a great sense of meter. The modified ballad stanza is an interesting choice and it works very well. "Plastic" as a metaphor is, in my opinion, kind of tired out. It goes back to the '60s, and while those of your generation might not recognize it as a cliche, for anyone over the age of 30 it's a worn out metaphor. Your sense of rhyme is spotty in places. Using "thee" to achieve a rhyme is cheesy. It's not a word in your vernacular, and I don't see anything else in that stanza that suggests an Elizabethan feel. Why put it into a poem? Other stanzas use slant rhyme or assonance: "greed/perceived" "below/beautiful" "hope/wrote" "indeed/deeds" "seas/deep" "charged/regard" in a way that is distracting, and almost comical in places. The development is also hard to follow. You move from men to ships to leaders, then to you yourself. That makes sense. But why broaden it out again to "the plastic queen" and then back to "men" again? The strategy could be clearer. Overall it's a great start.

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