/lit/ - Literature

>>10396330
>Your ending is interesting, but I I feel the technical terminology don't work with the fairly romantic imagery you seem to be aiming for in the first stanza. Don't wanna be a hater, just some thoughts.

Was trying to go for a bit of a Websterish ending with putting all the physical parts of breathing as pure mechanical failures, each at an individual level going down.

As for the first part, I wanted to describe the feeling of being an individual in a city full of individuals, and how, at times, when you look at crowds of people, you feel pretentiously like you're the only unique person there. But you're not. And someone else, a different observer, will see you just as you are, a colored speck in the enormous crowd of people that come in and out every day.

Also, I found it funny that immensity sounds like immense city, and that was the basis of the entire poem

As for the structure, I was borrowing from T.S. Eliot and the way he always likes to break a sentence up in order to create anticipation, as seen with the ", encasing" line. I feel like I could do the "no difference to be seen"line much better, but like I said, it all needs revising. Tracy K. Smith uses a similar technique, but she also has stronger, fuller lines with rhymes through the sentences.

I appreciate the critique.


>Moods are a dance!
>To live is to dart between motions
>loosely trained to reason.

Good, catching entrance. Sets the mood with Excitement! Subject! Verbs! I enjoy the energy of the first two lines in comparison to the third. The contrast of living free, and being actionable, and then reflecting inwardly and calling them with a pensive light is interesting to me.

>When faultlines show swing over them,
>most days I’m planted six feet deep -
>blood vessels swell and rush into my temple.
>My neighbours say “Put on a show!”
>and so I drink and dance it off
>cursing my ailments and
>the pending morning.

Since you're not using a specific structure, and relying on free verse, you have the ability to be more fluid with where you place words. That is to say that words have a bigger impact when they're at the end of a line or at a start of the light. This stanza is great but it needs some more tension in it. I can see the overall structure of your poem start to emerge here; brightly bubbly beginning with an analysis at the end that feels cold, calculating, and remote.

>I'll awake and dance again
>with fitful grins through every door

good. best line in the poem I think.

>I waltz where the world guides me;
>my pocket dust is glitter.

makes me think of pocket sand

>scanning for dissidents if not an bridge.

typo here

>mans

plural of man is men, plural of human is humans. Its a weird grammar thing. If you were going for possessive, you need the apostrophe.