Hello Walt,
My name is Lin and I am one of the reviewers for the
"playground city" depicts a gambling casino town with a boardwalk. The reach of the poem is far and wide, taking a look at "young street stowaways", "boarded abandominiums" and "desperate bets losing welfare and social security checks".
It is written with no capitalization and no punctuation save for a few apostrophes. It could use a little more punctuation. Even e e cummings used punctuation and capitalization. Check it out. e e cummings was a master at placing his work on the page in ways that either indicated a "second voice" or most often, to create natural pauses. Though he had a gift and a talent, his Ivy League education gave didn't hurt, and he became first known for his poetry through writing awards won in this college venue.
It is not an easy task to write without punctuation and capitalization and still convey your point, your imagery, and the feeling you intend to your reader. Your work is a good attempt.
However, if you are going to continue in this style, some of the verse is not set up correctly to be successful. In particular, your second stanza. To bring the meaning out, and the proper natural pauses in, it needs to end after the word by, or have a dash after the word by. Otherwise, the reader may read it this way: "...as early risers walk on by in the casinos..." - only to have to self-correct once the run-on is felt. Avoiding a stopping point in this style is very important to the reader.
The message itself is well stated, and the poem has a point. The work is good. The detractions are two. The first impression is that of yet another poem with no capitalization nor punctuation. For some, this could make the difference between the reader going on to read this poem, or not. The poem has merit, and should be read. But there are very many writers who have adopted this unnatural style, but do not have the finesse it takes to pull it off.
Meter, too, is important to free verse, though your piece flowed nicely. You have the finesse to pull off this style - at least in this work. It needs a little help, but you have managed rather well. So, to me, I am not seeing a poem that was just put into this style in order to disguise a weakness in punctuation. I am seeing a work that was written, gone over and most probably edited. In other words the work was done taking proper effort to bring it off within your intent.
Keep writing, and checking your own work. It will get better and better.
I look forward to reading more of your writing in the Weekly Newbie Challenge.
Best wishes for all of your writing efforts.
-Lin
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