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sweetwater
Member

since 2002-12-16

Posts 178
Perth

0 posted 2003-01-05 01:31 AM

To the Person in Charge

To the person in charge
Please offer me some help
As I work my way through
This existence you've dealt

To the person in charge
I passed with all aces
Now why do I have to
Endure teenage faces?

To the person in charge
I'm recalling a dream
To help me escape from
Your pessimist regime

To the person in charge
I have paid up my dues
Now let me explore life
With overseas shoes

When the sole has worn through
And I've had spring in March,
I'll return to listen
to the person in charge.

hush
Senior Member

since 2001-05-27

Posts 1653
Ohio, USA

1 posted 2003-01-06 11:34 PM

I think this has some potential but also needs some work.

First of all, I like how you started out directly speking to "the person in charge" and then slowly moved away, your second two stanzas leaving open the possibility that you're speaking about this person rather than to him/her, and the last stanza affirming that.

Now, in a lot of poems that seem to lack specific details (yours does, I'll explain what I mean in a sec), I would suggest that the writer drop the rhyme. However, I think the rhyming structure and tight stanzas help to show the procession and circularity in this more effectively.

As far as this being too general, let me go through this and see if I can show you what I mean.

'To the person in charge
Please offer me some help
As I work my way through
This existence you've dealt'

Okay... you're setting this up. Now I want to know what the existence is like, and how you are working your way through it.

'To the person in charge
I passed with all aces
Now why do I have to
Endure teenage faces?'

All aces? Does you mean to make an analogy to cards? If so, I'm illiterate to card games, and therefore ignorant to what game and hand you'd be referncing. That's not entirely something that's an author's fault- if I can't catch your allusions, okay.

However, the way I read it, in context with 'teenage faces,' is that by aces, you mean academic A's. Okay... what's left hanging is what's so bad about teenage faces? What about teenagers offends you? What, in particular, do their faces do that offends you?

'To the person in charge
I'm recalling a dream
To help me escape from
Your pessimist regime'

Hmm, reminiscent of the Sex Pistols here (I'm thinking of the Anarchy in the U.K. lyric 'Your future dream/is a shopping scheme' [?] It goes something like that...)

Now, my gripe with that set of lyrics, and with this stanza, is that it is derisive without validity. I mean, to my perception, your poem is pessimistic. So why should I, as a reader, accept your assertion about this regime, when you haven't gone into specifics about this dream, and about the society it is meant to escape?

'To the person in charge
I have paid up my dues
Now let me explore life
With overseas shoes'

I like this stanza a bit more. The paid dues/overseas shoes bit implies that the 'person in charge' is the government, narrowing it down from the possibility of... just about anybody else.

Now... what would be cool here is some specifics that might clue the reader in on what country you mean, if, indeed, you mean a country. For a (crude) example, if you wanted to insinuate the U.S. in a negative light, replace 'pessimistic regime' with something like 'oil-mongering' (Gawd, I know, that's terrible, and it's a cheap excuse to rip into G.W....)- Or, throw something in about racism, and bam! Your 'recalling a dream' has instant historical relevance to race relations!

'When the sole has worn through
And I've had spring in March,
I'll return to listen
to the person in charge.'

This reminds me very strongly of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Slightly less subtle, yeah, but this also didn't take me an hour and a half to read.

Anyway, the recycling of end into beginning isn't a new theme, and neither is the return of youth to meek submission to authority after going off on their own for a while (can we say Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?), but overall, I think you set this up failr well, and, adding some details, I could see this being a really good poem.

Hope I've helped.

sweetwater
Member

since 2002-12-16

Posts 178
Perth

2 posted 2003-01-07 09:37 AM

Hush,
Thankyou very much! I knew this poem needed more work, you have helped me immensely!

Local Rebel
Member Ascendant

since 1999-12-21

Posts 5767
Southern Abstentia

3 posted 2003-01-07 11:38 PM

I also like the theme and repetition of it -- I'm also not in favor of the rhyme...

I would, however, caution about getting too specific -- a good poet leaves room for the reader to inject themselves -- and if they read something into your poem you never intended -- so be it... that's what makes one's work timeless.

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