Poem: Circle

[tugger]

CIRCLE

Down the alley
Around the Apco station

The brown paper sack
Gets passed from mouth to mouth;

The sacred rite,
The cool burning cure for the chill.

Brittle-boned and broken,
Who are these bent men

With brusque faces
Dark with the weary world?

As I walk past, to my warm work,
We look and look away.

--tugger

 

[bobbyburns]

tugger, you have me feeding out of the palm of your hand ...

 

[Stewart]

There's a few glaring problems:

1. the rhythm at times i.e. (e.g. The cool burning cure for the chill.)
2. and the spelling of past

Overall, it's a good poem. It evoked an images of desperation. Immediately we look at the vagrants and pass them off as something - stereotypes. The junkie, the alcoholic, the runaway. It forces me to look beyond the stereotype and ponder their circumstances. Maybe, like the poem's feeling, they are desperate. It makes me guilty when I walk past vagrants because they are just another junkie, alchoholic, or runaway.

The title certainly enforces the theme, insinuating that it's not just a one off event. We see people like this everyday.

 

[tugger]

Bobby: Why do I get the sense you were being sarcastic?

M-O-P: Thanks for your comments. Good constructive criticism is always valued. I've already fixed the typo. And I do need to pay more attention to rhythm. How might you have written the line you sighted? This poem is in second draft stage. Sometimes I don't get things so tightly hewn until after further revisions.

 

[Stewart]

And I do need to pay more attention to rhythm.

There are areas where the assonance and alliteration work within the rhythm and other where it doesn't. The use of enjambement is always effective. I like that.

How might you have written the line you sighted?

No, no, no! That's your decision. I'll point out areas which affected me and those that didn't. I won't write someone else's scene for them because it then becomes a shared idea.


Just an observation, the alley (excluding the station) is the only noun that doesn't have an adjective. Maybe one would help with the tone - especially as this is the first line in the first couplet.

 

[bobbyburns]

it's tugger's poem, goddamnit.

 

[tugger]

Just an observation, the alley (excluding the station) is the only noun that doesn't have an adjective. Maybe one would help with the tone - especially as this is the first line in the first couplet.

YES!

Thank you.