Bitterness - edit

[dukealien]

Bitterness


Making pills and button batteries
taste awful is an insufficient ward
to keep a child from swallowing them down;
nor does it work with rainbow laundry pods.

For children learn unpleasant remedies
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those gag-inducing spoonfuls made them well.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres
in following its Leaders, for at first
they made trains run, and even money worth
face value and those envied Kulaks gone.

Then, as grim loss of liberty proceeds,
they still embrace their bitter servitude
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love.

original version;

Making pills and button batteries
taste awful is an insufficient ward
to keep a child from swallowing them down;
nor does it work with rainbow laundry pods.

For children learn that bitter remedies
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those nauseating flavors made them well.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres
in following its Leaders, for at first
they made trains run, and even money worth
face value and those envied Kulaks gone.

Then, as grim loss of liberty proceeds,
they still embrace their bitter servitude
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love.

[rowens]

It does go through hard. You're making your verse do its job.


I've realized that James Merrill is the master of American verse after Robert Frost's clunkiness and Auden's Leanneness.


I feel, dukealien, that you would do well to  make opposites united, and have your strong views measured by the quite often opposite but powerful subtle verse power, transplanting Pope, I'd say, James Merrill.


That's the direction I'm going when I do rhythm and rhyme in a strict way.

---

Auden and Merrill are the go to's for this style.

Of course, you don't need any other style.


I simply see how you might like to play with those textures of those ghostboys on a poetry site.

[dukealien]

It does go through hard. You're making your verse do its job.


I've realized that James Merrill is the master of American verse after Robert Frost's clunkiness and Auden's Leanneness.


I feel, dukealien, that you would do well to  make opposites united, and have your strong views measured by the quite often opposite but powerful subtle verse power, transplanting Pope, I'd say, James Merrill.


That's the direction I'm going when I do rhythm and rhyme in a strict way.

---

Auden and Merrill are the go to's for this style.

Of course, you don't need any other style.


I simply see how you might like to play with those textures of those ghostboys on a poetry site.

High praise, and possibly actionable.  As to Pope, one lacks that talent of always having the right word in mind before it's needed - I tried to write a poem (or essay?) comparing forms in poetry to gears in bicycling.  It stalled before the end of the second stanza.  As to Merrill, well... talent leads one into strange passages, but I'm not one.

[Richard]

Hey Duke,
I quite like this piece and do have some notes below.

Bitterness -I like the title a lot because it ties together the ideas of bitter medicine from one's childhoods to accepting awful things from political leaders because people want to believe they're working in their best interests, like the medicine. 


Making pills and button batteries
taste awful is an insufficient ward
to keep a child from swallowing them down;
nor does it work with rainbow laundry pods. -This is a good line that foreshadows people's questionable actions that we see in the parts about accepting leadership's poor choices.

For children learn that bitter remedies -I wonder if you should use a different word than "bitter" here, since you already sort of used it in your title. 
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those nauseating flavors made them well. -Would love a specific example of a nauseating flavor. I remember an awful medicine from my childhood that tasted like the fakest banana.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres -I like that the poem changes its focus using a word like "just" instead of something more expected like a "but" or "yet." I also assume that the word "just" was used for ironic purposes as well. Nicely done. 
in following its Leaders, for at first
they made trains run, and even money worth
face value and those envied Kulaks gone. 

Then, as grim loss of liberty proceeds,
they still embrace their bitter servitude -Again, I would suggest using a different word than "bitter" here so the bitterness of the title stands out more. 
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love. -I never even noticed that the last 2 lines rhymed until I read this for the third time, so I think that's a sign of a solid rhyme. 

Overall, this poem is built on a great concept and is strong as it is. Most of my points are more nitpicks than anything. Nice work

Cheers,
Richard

[dukealien]

edit;


Bitterness


Making pills and button batteries
taste awful is an insufficient ward
to keep a child from swallowing them down;
nor does it work with rainbow laundry pods.

For children learn unpleasant remedies
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those gag-inducing spoonfuls made them well.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres
in following its Leaders, for at first
they made trains run, and even money worth
face value and those envied Kulaks gone.

Then, as grim loss of liberty proceeds,
they still embrace their bitter servitude
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love.

---

@Richard - Thanks for the encouraging critique.  I've made changes to S2 to avoid "bitterness" and make the repulsive flavor more specific (to me, the chalky mint stuff that left a long-lasting bad taste in the mouth was the worst).  But I did leave "bitter" in S4 -it sounds so well with "embrace" and "servitude" I'd almost rather change the title.  And by S4 the title is pretty far away...?

[Richard]

Hey Duke, I remember the chalky mint stuff too. I like the change to "unpleasant remedies" in S2. I wonder if in the last line of S2, you could get even more specific by saying something like: "those chalky mint spoonfuls made them well" or "those spoonfuls of chalky mint made them well"? Just a thought. You could always play around with it to get the right rhythm. Wonderful poem.