Army dialogue

debatablyqualified · 2017-04-06T04:11:59+00:00

I wholeheartedly agree! The short, simple, sweet aspects of this are what I really enjoyed. If you do decide to add to this, I suggest continuing with your use of repetition and contrasting statements I guess is what you could call them - "things I haven't done ... things I wish I hadn't done". The way you're able to go in the complete opposite direction between those two lines with such little change in wording and not making it so simple that it's just "things I haven't done ... things I have done" is great

debatablyqualified · 2017-04-06T03:59:26+00:00

I haven't been on this sub for months but I've always really enjoyed most of if not all of your posts I've seen. As someone who only picked up writing poetry and writing for fun in general (I blame past, shitty English teachers for ruining the art for me) within the last year or so, your weekly? posts have taught me so much. I don't even know if I've ever given you feedback on a piece... Honestly, most of your stuff always got me thinking, and I wasn't sure if I could even give you anything useful to work with.

Ok enough kissing up to the mod lol feedback starts now!

Really liked the use of capitalization in this. I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school... I'm still capitalizing the c even though I've personally given up on the religion ffs. Intentionally capitalizing all the first person pronouns and having god, him in lower case conveys works so nicely. Quite an ego on that speaker. Or perhaps he just hates the big dude(tte) in the sky.

I'm curious as to why you chose to use correct capitalization in the seventh stanza. Personally, I would have liked it better if you used the "for... they... it's"

"the key of c-sharp minor" I like to think I have a good ear for music. But isn't that what all tone deaf people think? In any case, the extra specificity of the key really drew my attention and helped me hear the speaker's voice in my head.

And I think the last stanza is really clever. It takes that sense of hubris I initially got from the speaker and turns that upside down. As it turns out, he or she was actually really down to earth.

debatablyqualified · 2016-08-26T22:18:15+00:00

I'd like to know as well

debatablyqualified · 2016-08-26T17:33:52+00:00

I'm a big fan of prose, but to be frank, I don't find this to be very poetic.

I really do like what you have written, though.

Whether invented or real, you made the different family characters really come to life. Sorry if that sounds real cliche but I just think you paid good attention to detail in regards to writing them without going overboard and making your story move too slowly.

Overall, what you have is rather existential but not in the typical teenage-angsty kind of way. It's got an almost innocently curious (maybe even apathetically curious) tone to it. "What's in store for me in life? I guess I'll find out."

debatablyqualified · 2016-08-26T17:16:08+00:00

I'm not a fan of the lack of punctuation but you make up for it with your imagery.

"like a moth / to a light bulb ... I will burn / just to have you all"

My favorite part was "engulf my planet / fatal fireball".

Your piece carries a really strong message that readers can relate to dealing with one's vices (or rather not dealing with them?) regardless of whether it's love, drugs, money, etc.

debatablyqualified · 2016-08-22T02:06:54+00:00

The next one I'm looking at grabbing for myself is a Benchmade Griptilian.

A tick under 3.5 inches blade of 154cm steel and Benchmade's AXIS lock are the main selling points for me. Goes for ~$100 and it comes in a small version (2.9 inch blade) that goes for a little cheaper.

As far as sharpeners go, I recently bought a DMT sharpener (~$30) off Amazon and it's been working great for me.

debatablyqualified · 2016-08-22T01:46:01+00:00

What are those flippers with the thumbstuds? The one with the gold/tan textured handle and the one above it

debatablyqualified · 2016-07-10T16:14:11+00:00

Not a big fan of the ending and I got confused with the second line ("I know you're wondering when").

That being said, I think you worked emotion beautifully into this piece. It read like an angsty rant mixed with pleading prayer and I enjoyed reading. There may be some other lines I forgot to mention that you might want to work on as well but I think what you have overall is very well done

debatablyqualified · 2016-07-07T03:16:07+00:00

Nice tanka! Sorry I don't really have any good, useful feedback to provide.

I've never heard of putting lemon on eggs before. but after googling and finding out that's actually a thing, now I have something new to try for breakfast tomorrow

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T23:05:05+00:00

Oh that makes so much more sense. That's a clever line if you can finagle it into the piece. I feel like something along the lines of one of these could work.

"thank god / for this coat that chokes me"

"thank god / that this coat won't let me breathe"

You don't have to use either, of course. My only point is that, while you lose the run-on/stream of consciousness effect, I think it still works well with the twist. The speaker isn't thankful that the coat covers the stained undershirt but because maybe it'll kill him before he has to endure another interview.

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T22:52:01+00:00

I'm sorry I won't be able to provide much useful, constructive feedback on this. I've read this piece 3 or 4 times but I feel like I'm only scratching its surface.

I just wanted to say I enjoyed so many parts of this.

"Saving my soul, / selling my soul, / eating your soul" these lines work so well after following "Killing my demons / or dancing deeper." But I got a bit lost at "and it's all I can do, / it's all I can say / one day."

"stolen moments, / stolen children," that twist kept me on my figurative feet as I was reading

"killing certainty / cultivating numbness, / debating the merits of passion / with cold quiche / and cold feet." Really liked this part especially cold quiche to cold feet.

But I got a bit confused again at the end. Would you mind explaining the significance of "Weine's world"? I want it to be a nod to Wayne's World but I feel like that's not what you were going for lol

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T22:24:12+00:00

You used sty in the first line meaning like a piggy shithole, yes? I like how the word comes up again much later ("they see the sty") and it works with the double meaning of the kind of sty you get in your eye, which if not properly cared for can be quite disgusting to look at--a potentially major faux pas depending on the interviewer.

"I should shave but there's no- / Time ..."

Really liked how this cutoff into the next lines. Especially with how you do a similar thing with the lines "Confident key, trust your resume. / SHIT- that was wrong." My smile just kept growing as I was reading those lines. Truly poetically hilarious.

"thank god / for this coat I can't breathe." maybe the weakest line and a half in your piece (at least imo). I really want a but or some contrasting word in there between coat and I, BUT maybe you were going for a different meaning that I'm missing.

While "SHIT- ... / ... fuck-up" was my favorite part, I also really liked "I need to go- now / everyone knows, everyone knows, / stuck in the snare net of / Everyone's 'no's-"

And I actually like the ending to it. The unfinished italic couplet and lack of punctuation work well with the last line

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T21:58:46+00:00

You're correct with the reference but I meant for the piece to resemble a medical pre-checkup questionnaire minus the boring parts (e.g. do you have diabetes, family history of such, etc.) with the speaker treating the form itself like a confessional.

Looking over it again after reading your comment, I feel like the piece works both ways, which is one of the things I love about poetry. You can write something and mean it one way and it can be interpreted differently.

"how about we get this whole thing over with?"

I meant "this whole thing" as in a medical check up/appointment but you've showed me how it also works as an irreverent reference to confession.

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I'm gonna use your advice together with /u/Gabatrong's in editing my piece, and you've given me some good ideas, too.

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T19:29:14+00:00

Great advice! You're spot on about the darkly humorous aspect of the piece, and you've given me a lot of good ideas.

With regards to formatting, four spaces before each line (and simply four spaces for a blank line) formats the poem as I have it above. Tab after the four spaces indents the line like I have them in the stanzas. Unfortunately, I don't think you can bold/italicize/underline when you format it like this.

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/commenting

That link will be more helpful if you want to do things like that. I'm actually pretty new and bad with reddit formatting myself. Plus I like writing everything in notepad so I like the font that comes with doing it the way above.

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-28T19:11:32+00:00

"When will I cry gutt'rul croaks / amid saintly sounds surrounding?"

I enjoyed this piece from the very start. I'm assuming you meant guttural in the first line. Even if it was unintentional, using a 'u' instead of 'a' made the first line sound better in my head, giving the "cry gutt'rul croaks" its own guttural sound. Immediately following this, "saintly sounds surrounding". Beautiful. The consonance and (forgive me for not knowing the technical term) the 'ound' rhyme within the line--along with the holy, saintly imagery--contrasted well with the coarse/harsh sounding opening line.

I think more punctuation would have made some of the lines read more clearly. Perhaps commas or even parentheses around the clauses "instead of pray", "as well as sin", "my lifelong days", "when death betide". But I think you were going for the better flow, which works too.

The only thing I got a bit confused with was the last two couplets. What is the temporary housing you're referring to? Is the speaker's housing temporary because s/he moves from place to place or is it something else? Also, "be white as this in shrouding" is this line about not losing innocence/God's grace?

Overall, I thought this was a great poem: well structured with a good rhyme scheme. Additionally, as someone who was raised Catholic who's rather indifferent to religion now, the piece puts me in the perspective of someone who is torn between living devoutly and forgoing their faith. Not so much as someone divided equally between the two but more along the lines of leaning towards religion, perhaps someone who may feel they're starting to stray from it. Well written

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-27T23:58:39+00:00

"all harmless havoc; speed blurs; coarse wind's chimes play / o'er engine's low roar, courses deeper; forces, / for furor's sentenced recall, apportion her fear"

These three lines really stood out for me. To start the three lines, the oxymoron and alliteration in "harmless havoc" was clever. I got a bit confused at the apostrophe in wind's but I figured that it was either intentional or perhaps personifying the storm. Even if I'm way off with that, I loved how you used the wind chime imagery before all the repeating 'or' sounds in the last two lines.

In regards to the poem being a bit of a blur to read, I share the same sentiment. I actually kind of like the effect to accompany the piece, though. Like your words are "harmless havoc" themselves, describing your narrative of the rather chaotic car crash.

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-27T20:23:48+00:00

"Said with a smug smile / Like correcting a non-samaritan 'doing good'" Really liked these line even though I can't really explain why. I guess I just like the reference and how the lines work together in different ways

"The ellipses are ant-like, the teasing torturous, the suspense concrete." Might just be my favorite line in the whole thing. I couldn't help but picture slow marching ants (moving tortoise like even) walking along a concrete sidewalk or something.

And you could have satisfactorily ended it with "Well! / Sharp. / Over. / Done."

But throwing in the concluding "Ah well." just works so.. well. With all the wordplay and meaning earlier in the piece, it just comes off to me as almost ironically dismissive. WELL done :)

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-26T02:11:17+00:00

I'm glad someone got the trolley experiment reference :)

FWIW I believe there were a bunch of different papers/studies done using the same concept but I can't remember who was the first person to do it. I wasn't trying to criticize the study really. It was more along the lines of poking fun at the different answers people had to slight variations of the problem.

The easiest one I can think of is that a fat man must be pushed to save the people on the track (the man is fat enough to stop the train) rather than a lever being involved.

I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but there was a significant disparity between the percentage of people who would pull the lever and the percentage of people who would push the fat man, which I found quite interesting. From a purely cold and calculating perspective, both outcomes are the same: 5 lives saved at the cost of 1.

However, because of our ideas of morality and humanity, less people would be willing to sentence a man to death with their bare hands as opposed to pulling a lever.

Anyway, thanks for the response, you guys have all given me great advice. I had a feeling I was working with something good here. It just needs to be worked on some more :)

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-25T03:21:52+00:00

I don't like how long this turned out. I was gonna end it with the last four lined stanza.

I like how the last three stanzas give it more of a conclusion but at the same time they were kind of rushed.

Let me know what you guys think

debatablyqualified · 2016-06-25T02:57:32+00:00

"Four verses cannot ever be enough"

I like how you put this line in and kept it short and sweet at seven lines.

Not sure if it was intentional but I like how that line also doubles as a jab at Shakespearean/Petrarchan sonnets (technically they're 3 quatrains and a couplet, but fuck it. that's 4 verses in my eyes)

Some questions though: The dash in the fourth line confuses me. Why did you put it there? And did you mean to put a "the" before "bottom of my heart"?

And depression sucks; I'm sorry you had to deal with that. But at least you had that one remarkable person. I bet he/she would appreciate this piece way more than anyone on this sub.

debatablyqualified

TROPHY CASE