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Old 07-30-2005, 01:48 PM   #5 (permalink)
TheBig3
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
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While I won't be quite as cutting as Riseagainst was, his sentiment isn't wrong. Let me outline a few things here that you could improve on (imo of course):

This is as abstract as it gets, you don't have characters, you don't have names, you don't have a situation, you don't have a history. What we have is revenge, and revenge alone. its not enough to move people. Alot of young poets when first starting out follow the pop ethos "i think its really good because everyone can relate" but thats not what anyone wants. What major literary work, regardles of format, had such a minimalist point of reference. We need a story, we love stories.

Without the exact definition of exposition, thats what you have. Lines like "now the tables have reversed my friend", thats a landmine, and when readers cross over it, it kills them in their tracks.

Don't tell us the tables are reversed, show us, have the characters do something to let us know they are reversed. Or if you had to (and im not condoning this) have the character tell us, but this 3rd person omnicient dictating doesn't usually connect with readers.

Your final line did have good potential. "You almost look sane" was really nice, because we don't usually see people in pain look logical. Pain is traditionally an emotional area, so to use logic instead of emotion was a nice touch. Keep working at it. Read some more poetry, you'll get there, we all start somewhere and its usually crap.
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