Posted 01 December 2010 - 07:18 PM
Poetry is so many things to so many people. It's hard to clearly criticize it in an objective manner. I can say that a certain style is more accepted by the literary community, or a certain style is more popular, but that doesn't make either of them something you should do with your own work. Of course, trying on things as an exercise is excellent practice, but your work is yours and it should please you.
What I mean to say is, take what I have to say with a grain of salt. Several, if you like. Season to taste. I'm coming from my own writing perspective, and my advice is subjective to the way that I write.
I like the idea of this poem. It's a neat conceit, and there's mystery enough in it. But I find it hard to get a charge off of, emotionally or stylistically. Here's some thoughts as to why that is, for me:
1. Language. The writing is fine, and the structure is fine. Your mechanics are there (a word about punctuation, though - either do it or don't. If you're going to use it, use it uniformly and correctly throughout the poem. If you're going to leave some out, leave it all out). The words themselves, though... the words just seem... generic. You are dealing in sweeping strokes: "A man rises above the crowd;" "Ruler of all right and good;" "Many problems strewn...;" "The man and his desk;" etc. These are very unspecific statements. There are no details, no colors, no textures, shapes or sizes; the man, the crowd, the problems, all are a blank slate.
Poetry is in the details. Not factual details or plot details, but stimulation details. Plot is for stories. Facts are for scientists. Poetry is in taking those bits of information and touching them and smelling them and showing them to people. You've got the outline of the piece here, what you want to say, and it's cool, so the next revision will be to show it, make it happen on the page without having to explain it. For example, the second stanza:
Now, one year later
Sitting at his desk
Hands clenching his head
Many problems strewn across the table
I went straight for the second stanza because the first could probably be omitted completely. It's purely informational, except for the last line, which we'll keep. We can include the information in the second stanza without needing the exposition. The first real tangible action in the poem is in this stanza, "Sitting at his desk / Hands clenching his head." This is a good place to start. If he's at his desk, we can infer that he's sitting, so that's one word gone. Let's replace it with some of the expository information I cut out before, in a concise way:
He raised a hand, they cheered.
A year in, at his desk,
Hands clenching his head,
Many problems strewn across the table,
The expository goals of the original first stanza are still accomplished; now it just happens in the reader's mind instead of having it explained to them. I like the line "Hands clenching his head." It's a good phrase. It has a nice series of 'h' and 'c' sounds that feel good, and it's active: I know the action, and can feel the knuckles at my temples. The last line is both plain and necessary, though. "Many problems" is very unspecific and not evocative of anything. It's not very original, either. What the problems are is not really relevant, though, so we need to find a different way to accomplish the goal. Thesaurus time. Also, is it a desk or a table? If it's a table, then the geography becomes a little unclear. If it's a desk, then there's no need to say it again. I'll assume it's the desk you're talking about. So we can strike that word, and here's the result:
He raised a hand, they cheered.
A year in, at his desk,
Hands clenching his head,
Paper headaches strewn around him,
I stuck the word 'problems' into thesaurus.com and read a bunch of entries, and the word headaches stuck out to me as being connected to the action, clenching his head. The problems seem to involve a mess of papers, and you use paper specifically later, so it was a natural descriptor, and the phrase "paper headaches" is more evocative, more specific, and creates the intended scene for the reader.
Just an example. That's how my revision process works. Yours will vary.
2. Enjambment. I think the poem could flow a little better from line to line, stanza to stanza. Right now it reads like a paragraph of prose chopped up into lines. The lines are mostly end-stopped, at the ends of phrases where punctuation would be (and should be). Try to spring a few more surprises in there. Enjambment often gets used as a substitute for punctuation, and it isn't that at all, it serves different purposes: it can highlight a word or phrase by giving it its own space; it creates the visual picture of the poem on the page; and it changes the speed and intensity with which the poem is read. A poem with lots of short lines and enjambed phrases encourages a breathless and fast read, where a poem with long lines and complete phrases encourages a stately and steady pace.
I like the splits at "slight / Shadow" and "no / Shadow:" they put the emphasis on the word Shadow, and drag me into the next line.
3. Meter. Part of what makes this piece seem more like prose than prosody is the pacing of the lines. I feel like it wants to be a steady, even, and flowing, and less like conversational speech. The way to do this is to watch your rhythms. I'm not saying you have to be in trochaic hexameter or something, or even worry about that, but listen to your phrases out loud, hear where the pauses and breaths are, and where the long and short words are, and you'll hear where a line needs to hold a little longer, or where an awkward mass of syllables are.
Woo. Didn't mean to write a book there. I guess I like to hear myself talk.
It's a good poem, your friends and other previous readers are not wrong. Criticism is what you will have it be. I hope I said something at least mildly constructive and useful to you. Thanks for sharing your work!
