Thread: Baby Born
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Unread 02-07-2024, 09:51 AM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Halcott, New York
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Yes, go back to the original, Jim. In general, your tendency to over-think mars your revisions, waters them down with explanatory asides, extraneous images. The thinking, the over-thinking, may be responsible for the poems to begin with, but you need to learn when to grab the ripest thought and then hold it, confidently, in the poem, before it melts and meanders into further thought. It's a matter of timing, a matter of when to choose, of when and how to hold.

I agree with Cameron about the sentimentality of grandma, and think you could simply say someone's jawline, which would point to the possibility of sentimentality which you gently veered away from. You kind of have it both ways then.

I think somethingness and somewhereness would work better with out the too-clever suffixes.

Just look at her!
A ball of something

arrived from somewhere
via the darkest passage


And I think it should be not with 'the light at the end' but with 'a light at the end'.

All that said, I think the original is quite good, one of the best I've seen you post up here.

Nemo
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