Tightrope

[dedalus87]

Hi Yjack,

Thanks for posting! I thought the rhyming was good and the poem had a nice rhythm to it. However, there were too many lines that either led nowhere, or felt like non sequiturs. Also, for the most part it seems like you're going for an archaic feel to the poem, but occasionally you use certain words that don't fit in with this theme. I have some more specific comments below.

Tightrope


I have shunned the white July sun and shivered in the unkind December. This line is a bit long compared to the rest of the poem. Also, the imagery doesn’t make sense. The first part paints a picture of a recluse, shunning the sun in summer. But the second part doesn’t build on this or add to it. It just says I was cold in December.
I have known too well the hard ground and the bitter night.
I have learned, but there is only so much that can I remember. I don’t see the need for the strange grammar. “so much I can remember” sounds better to me.
Will I ever do things right? This is too vague. We don’t know what “things” the speaker is referring to; it just reads like a generic lament.
 
I have attempted the long, straight and narrow.
I have prayed hard with bowed head on icy knees for kingdom come,
I have with hope fletched, drawn and loosed my crooked arrow.
My tortured truth is that I am not like some.
 
Reach for my heart with your sweet redemption,
But touch my soul with a 10 foot pole, Again, the imagery doesn’t make sense to me. The speaker wants me to reach for his heart, but not touch his soul? If this is supposed to suggest some sort of paradox, where he both wants and doesn’t want to be reach out to, it should be expanded.
I have always been that one maddening exception,
As I perform my hard won but well cast chosen roll. Role instead of roll. “my hard won but well cast chosen” is clunky and should be reworded.
 
You are warned; I stand a confessed devil,
And when it counts I will show myself as Satan’s boy,
So much a noteworthy hour when I am on the level,
My wicked tongue, sharp and twitchy, is just his toy.
The imagery up until here has been sober and chilling. At best, having “Satan’s boy” rhyme with “toy” can create some sort of comic effect, but that only undermines the rest of the poem.
 
There are those who can walk the tightrope.
There are those, lithe and clever, who never fall.
When I am flying on that pipe smoke, This slant rhyme comes out of nowhere. Up to this point all rhymes where true
I am assured that I know it all.
 
Some do quite well upon that tightrope,
But there’s no balance in my soul.
I am flying on that good dope. The word dope sounds wrong to me. It doesn’t work well with the archaic feel of the rest of the poem.
It seems the only peace I know. Slant rhyme