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Critical Analysis #2
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I had to come down here
| Critical Analysis #2 |
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I had to come down here |
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B3jamboree Junior Member
since 2003-06-26
Posts 33Michigan |
I had to come down here I had to come down here On a cool summer night To listen to the waves and smell fish To see spiders on rocks In bright moonlight And find on star on which to wish I had to come down here To come to terms with myself To realize and forget about her To swat knats away Blow smoke this and that a-way And to find some meomries to stir I had to come down here I had to walk straight through town The sky is grumbling and I'm 3 miles from home To smell fresh wet air To just sit and stare And then walk on homeward alone I had to come down here To try not to cry As I throw your memories in the lake To think about you and him To come back from my limb And to wait for the medicine to take I can write you poetry that'll make a strong man lose his mind: |
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| © Copyright 2003 Christopher G Williams - All Rights Reserved | |||
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serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
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merc Junior Member
since 2003-10-15
Posts 35 |
Hi B3jamboree, I liked your poem on the whole, it sounds to me as if you feel strongly connected to the subject. There are a few technical things that I find take away from it. The first, and probably foremost for me, is rhyme. Stanza 1 L2 & L5 rhyme L3 & L6 rhyme Stanza 2 L3 & L6 rhyme L4 & L5 forced rhyme Stanza 3 L3 & L6 L4 & L5 Stanza 4 L3 & L6 L4 & L5 Rhyme can be a very powerful tool in a poem, rhyme can also completely ruin a poem singlehandedly. While I don't think your errors in rhyming are nearly enough to ruin the poem they are definately retracting from its overall effect. I suggest you analyze what you want this poem to do. If you want the poem to execute with a musical sound to it (as rhyme partially does) then I would suggest your structure your rhymes uniformly and consider metering your poem. Meter helps your reader flow through the poem at the speed that You want them to. I myself am struggling through understanding meter myself in addition to trying to use it. On the other hand this poem lends an excellent stage for more poetic imagry. Scrapping the rhyme and forgeting meter immediately puts the focus on the language and imagery you have chosen and used. I would suggest you redraft your poem trying each method (one restructured with rhyme and meter and the other scrapping both and exemplyfing imagery) and see which one works better for you and your specific vision for this poem. A note on specific lines within this poem: Stanza 1 "I had to come down here" This is the first line of your poem, now I'm not sure if you want it repeated immediately in the poem itself or if you posted the top line as the title and then started the poem. Either way, you have drawn attention to "here" and as a reader I immediately want to know about this place that you "had to come down" to. While there is description throughout your poem I can't pull enough of it to actually see it in my mind or feel that I am there. "To listen to the waves and smell fish" I like this line, it's unpolished but I think it has the basis to be a great point in your poem. "In bright moonlight" This is a meanigless line in that while I'm sure you can imagine just what the bright moonlight looked like, I can't. Describe it for your ready, did the moonlight dance on the waves as they crashed onto the shore. Did it highlight crusty crabs legs as they skittered under rocks. Don't tell me the moon was bright, show me how the moon was bright. "And find on star on which to wish" I assume you mean find one* star. This line is an example of how rhyme can hurt your poem. If your going to use rhyme you have to stand up to it, rhyme is a bully. If you find yourself bending your meaning to fit the rhyme then you have to stop immediately. Rhyme is a tool for YOU to use to help your poem, not a rule to hinder you. You need to learn how to bend the language and rhyme to fit your meaning. Stanza 2 "To swat knats away" I like this line, it sounds good. "Blow smoke this and that a-way" hmmm this line is forced, severely forced. I would consider rewriting the whole line and finding another word to rhyme with away. http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=away&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l L6 memories mispelled Stanza 3 "I had to walk straight through town" Very mechanical line, poetry, at least in the context of this poem, should not be mechanical. "The sky is grumbling..." Very nice. Stanza 4 "As I throw your memories in the lake" I think this line has great potential, it has a very melancholy feel to it. I would encourage you to flesh this out and maybe even write an entire closing stanza based around this one snapshot idea/feeling. "To think about you and him - To come back from my limb" Yucky, this is a forced rhyme and it strikes me almost wholly as filler. It doesn't further your poem, it doesn't further your stanza and it leads to a weak finish. "And to wait for the medicine to take" I have two feelings about this line. The first is that it has specific meaning that is just not getting across to the reader and the second is that you needed to rhyme lake. If this has a specific meaning you need to embellish it so that meaning is depicted for the reader. If you just needed to rhyme lake then this is another point for you to drop the rhyme entirely. The last point I'm going to make is the title, "I had to come down here". Titles are immensely hard to write, you are trying to capture your poem in a single line. In the same breath you are trying to encourage someone to be interested and read your poem simply by reading the title first. Ask yourself if you believe your title does this. I think this is an excellent start, with some decision on your part to solidify the structure you want and then some tweaking I believe this will be an excellent poem. I'm interested to see future revision of this piece and more of your work entirely. merc |
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Robtm1965 Member
since 2002-08-20
Posts 263 |
Merc has done a very fine job which I am sure you will appreciate. I just have one nit about knats - try gnats! R [This message has been edited by Robtm1965 (10-17-2003 04:57 PM).] |
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merc Junior Member
since 2003-10-15
Posts 35 |
LOL! I thought something looked weird but I couldn't place it. I thought it was just because you don't see gnats written very often that it looked odd to me. Right on. |
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