/lit/ - Literature

Just a draft. Don't experiment with lineation enough, so am curious if it works.

>>15369938
I'd say your images aren't encapsulated enough (ie, they aren't strong enough on their own) to feel "finished" within their stanzas. A line like "The giver gave in," is, to my mind, way too over the top. I don't think your tone here is bad, though, I would just be careful with how heavy-handed some of the images end up being ("bone white"; "blood red"; "before midnight").

>>15370022
If you haven't read "In a Station of the Metro" by Pound....read it. And beyond, you're not the first to compare a train station to an underworld-like environment. You need to riff on your imagery and extend it to make it something different. "lifeless conversation" is a moralizing image--fine if the speaker was better represented.

>>15370056
This is all very general. You deploy images well, but, as others have noted, I think having a better sense of the characters from the get-go would help. This does not mean you have to forgo the muscular, clipped prose, but instead, give us more / better detail. Even just a more specific line about the bicycles that only a bicyclist would understand would be helpful.

>>15370412
I think using rhymes like this can be very ho-hum unless done ironically or quite drastically different than what we expect. That might just be personal preference, but I almost wish the ending was funny. Anyway, this whole business of "where I'm found" lacks a lot of specificity of either character or place. We really need a better sense of where this speaker is--a meadow? a hillside? a park? Nothing in this indicates that there actually is "a world within" him besides what we're being told. Expand out.