|
Stanza Order in a Poem
Hey, my question is pretty simple. I wrote a poem a few months back totaling 6 stanzas. I think it turned out pretty OK, and I've received good feedback. The only problem is, the order the stanzas are in (the order I wrote it in) don't seem to fit, at least in my opinion.
I'm looking for opinions on basically what order you think they should go in. I guess using numbers to represent stanzas for the order it's now would be the easiest.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Thanks for any advice/feedback/whatever.
[ ]
Want to answer more questions in the Work & School category?
Maybe give some free advice about: School?
I really tried to work out a sensible order for this poem, but the reason I can’t, and I imagine the reason you are having trouble doing anything but arbitrarily putting it in an order is because it isn’t clear what the poem is trying to achieve, or what individual stanzas are trying to achieve.
If the title is literal, then I might assume each stanza is examining an emotion, but I can’t really tell which emotion you are going for in each case. I have a hunch with some of the stanzas, but number 3 for instance, I have no damn clue. Hope? Ignorance? Despair? Its okay that I can't tell exactly, but you should know, and that should help you find an order.
I’m happy to take your poem line by line and let you know what is working, and what isn’t in my mind, but I can’t put it in order until I understand what it is that it is trying to achieve, and frankly, I don’t know. They are wonderful little character sketches, but there is no reason for them to be put together in a poem unless you are trying to achieve something with the whole.
My advice to you in a nut-shell:
RE-WRITE, RE-WRITE, RE-WRITE.
Keep re-writing until the stanzas show you a sensible order.
With each line, think of how you can evoke an emotion, instead of informing your reader they should have that emotion. There are a few places where you do this quite well, but most of the time, you tell a reader what they should be feeling, rather then showing them or evoking the feeling.
Decide how you are going to use punctuation. Sometimes you use periods and commas, and sometimes you don’t. Capitalizing every first word, even when the sentence is continuing from the previous line, breaks the flow. That is a very effective tool when you want to disrupt the flow of the words, but simply distracting to the reader when you don’t intend to.
ELIMINATE unnecessary words! Meaningless words are the enemy in poetry. People don’t speak in full sentences and most of the great poets were constantly ignoring the grade-school rules about forming a full thought because that is a good way to help a person get into the poem emotionally, rather then having them read it as they would a text book.
Take another look at ALL of your descriptions of people and their actions. Some of them are very awkward. The idea of a mature, professional woman ‘stroking’ a bottle is awkward to me, even young women rarely stroke anything on their own body, the word evokes sensuality more then longing or fatigue. Your nurse isn’t overweight or large in any sense until the line before she leaves, you describe her only as middle-aged and fatigued, so I initially thought the overweight nurse was a different person. The phrase ‘more and more loose’ is just, really weird to say out loud and uncomfortable to read. Your man drinks down his pills without his bed ever getting propped up, which would be totally fine if you didn’t write things so literally in full sentences. If you started to leave out other actions and words that do no support the poems message, I wouldn’t care or notice that you didn’t tell me his bed got propped up.
Send me a message in my inbox if you'd like anything else. It's a solid skeleton of a poem; it just hasn't got all it's vitals in the right place yet.
]
More Questions: |