06-05-2025, 03:18 PM
I dipped my hand into the furnace, - Comma unnecessary.
to see if water could ignite the flames. - "flames" by definition are already ignited. Also there's a foot here to remove, considering much of the rest of the poem is in tetrameter rather than pentameter.
The infernos licked my burning hand, - Comma unnecessary. "inferno" would refer to the place, or to the conflagration as a whole, so it reads wonky to have the word substitute for "tongues of flame".
and hungrily sought to swallow me— - Em dash unnecessary. "hungrily" is a dash redundant.
whole.
I plunged my foot into the freezer, - Comma again unnecessary.
to see if fire could spark the ice. - The sense here is better than the first two lines of the previous stanza.
The frostbite licked my numbing foot, - Comma again unnecessary. That the rhythm here is decent only reinforces how "infernos" in the third line of the previous stanza is wrong.
and silently ached to consume me— - Em dash again unnecessary. The line also feels trite: there has to be a more evocative way of delivering its sense.
hollow. - What exactly does "consume me hollow" mean? The question is rhetorical, as I can imagine the line refers to someone being sucked dry with something, but for other readers I imagine they'd ask this more earnestly. There's no hint in the previous lines leading to this conclusion, not really, and of course the expression itself isn't idiomatic.
Heat no longer wanted to be; - Better a colon than a semicolon.
it threw me up, forever damned,
flames rising from my deepest shames - Ironically, punctuation is missing here. Much better to have "shames" be singular here, as in the Herbert poem.
a casket now serves as my
furnace.
Cold no longer wished to hold; - Again, better a colon than a semicolon. Also the rhythm's off: you're missing an unstressed syllable somewhere.
it tossed me out, forever lost,
ice dripping down my hidden sorrows - Again, punctuation is missing. The image in stanza two is that the speaker plunged their foot into the freezer, so how come the ice now drips down their leg?
a coffin now serves as my
freezer.
Something's missing in the last two stanzas, something to make them read more worthy: maybe a stronger sense of specificity, of what sort of shame the speaker suffers and why exactly Hell would not be Hell to them, inasmuch as the poem lacks the novel structure and more commanding sense of rhythm and rhyme of its principal inspiration. Otherwise, the sameness of the last two stanzas reads like tedium, rather than reinforcement: I am not, for instance, intrigued enough to ask why "casket" and "coffin" are so differed between the two.
to see if water could ignite the flames. - "flames" by definition are already ignited. Also there's a foot here to remove, considering much of the rest of the poem is in tetrameter rather than pentameter.
The infernos licked my burning hand, - Comma unnecessary. "inferno" would refer to the place, or to the conflagration as a whole, so it reads wonky to have the word substitute for "tongues of flame".
and hungrily sought to swallow me— - Em dash unnecessary. "hungrily" is a dash redundant.
whole.
I plunged my foot into the freezer, - Comma again unnecessary.
to see if fire could spark the ice. - The sense here is better than the first two lines of the previous stanza.
The frostbite licked my numbing foot, - Comma again unnecessary. That the rhythm here is decent only reinforces how "infernos" in the third line of the previous stanza is wrong.
and silently ached to consume me— - Em dash again unnecessary. The line also feels trite: there has to be a more evocative way of delivering its sense.
hollow. - What exactly does "consume me hollow" mean? The question is rhetorical, as I can imagine the line refers to someone being sucked dry with something, but for other readers I imagine they'd ask this more earnestly. There's no hint in the previous lines leading to this conclusion, not really, and of course the expression itself isn't idiomatic.
Heat no longer wanted to be; - Better a colon than a semicolon.
it threw me up, forever damned,
flames rising from my deepest shames - Ironically, punctuation is missing here. Much better to have "shames" be singular here, as in the Herbert poem.
a casket now serves as my
furnace.
Cold no longer wished to hold; - Again, better a colon than a semicolon. Also the rhythm's off: you're missing an unstressed syllable somewhere.
it tossed me out, forever lost,
ice dripping down my hidden sorrows - Again, punctuation is missing. The image in stanza two is that the speaker plunged their foot into the freezer, so how come the ice now drips down their leg?
a coffin now serves as my
freezer.
Something's missing in the last two stanzas, something to make them read more worthy: maybe a stronger sense of specificity, of what sort of shame the speaker suffers and why exactly Hell would not be Hell to them, inasmuch as the poem lacks the novel structure and more commanding sense of rhythm and rhyme of its principal inspiration. Otherwise, the sameness of the last two stanzas reads like tedium, rather than reinforcement: I am not, for instance, intrigued enough to ask why "casket" and "coffin" are so differed between the two.