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Gridley--I didn't comment because I'm not thoroughly confident in my critical skills, and try to be
We never leave the lights on for ourselves --It's kind of a no-no to put your own title in bold, or italics, or quotation marks, or to have it underlined. All to maintain the illusion of modesty, I gather.
We pledged to seek out the oh-so proverbial god in the machine,
you and me, Susie Q I'm not sold on "oh-so." I'm not sure you can earn the "oh-so" so early in this piece. Maybe, maybe....
—I call all the ladies Susie Q— --I was not particularly fond of these asides throughout your piece. I do like the meaning of this line, but the punctuation, the way the punctuation sets it out so far from the rest of the piece and the flow of the rest of the piece really bothers me. There are a couple different ways you could work this (and the others) in differently. You might want to experiment--with different kinds of punctuation, with changing to whom the speaker directs this line... other things.
me and you, kid explorers,
but we found no whispering secrets in their pried-off metal casings,
just a host of gears, wires, and bendy metal thingies --I think I see what you're going for here with "bendy metal thingies," and I like it, but that seems, maybe, inconsistent with the rest of your line. I know that children aren't stupid but "gear" seems kind of precise compared to "bendy metal thingies." I do like the assonance in this line, too.
that we’ll never get back together again. I really love how ambigously this line can be read.
So we went looking elsewhere.
We combed the earth in rocket ships pierced through with corrugated silver studs I really like how these explorers comb the Earth (capitalized) in rocket ships (are the studs corrugated? I don't think so, are they? The ships are corrugated and then pierced with the silver studs). The ships are earth-bound, Earth-bound just like these kids. The corrugated ships do comb the earth. It's a really, really cool moment, but...
and we plummeted into maps of churches I've not been sold that you can have it both ways with "plummeted." Just think about replacing that verb with one that doesn't rely on the depth of space.
bending roughly white lines on blue paper
written out before the day you were born.
We searched for the god in the sound of insects
and the god in the moon in the center of it all
and we searched for the god in the great Joseph K.
—I call only one man Joseph K.—
and throughout most of the places that were not prisons.
Betrayed by drink and incessant prattle, --"incessant prattle" is a cliche.
we even searched for a god in the lies that children tell,
but that too came to nothing but meanness and mudpies. --I like that when you start getting abstract, you then bring things back to something concrete.
So we looked for the God inside ourselves, perhaps a dash or a colon here instead of a comma?
me in you, and you in I, I guess, If you were to do the pulling back thing (which I mention in the next comment), I would use an elipse here. In any case, you need something other than a comma here--a full stop or a semicolon or the elipse with four dots; then capitalize "hell" on the next line.
hell, who bothers drawing lines once the clothes are off and on the floor. --"hell" and "I guess" seem pretty casual to me here, after the intimate tone you'd developed, like you were talking about something personal and meaningful with one other person, but things got intense, so you pull away (I use "you" here in reference to the speaker, but I'm sure you, Gridley, knew what I meant). I think that could work if you, Gridley, were at the end of your piece--but it gets personal and intimate again.
We sat there, atop each other, in turns and seasons, okay, I understand that you need "in turns and seasons" to clarify that you're not sitting atop each other at the same time, but "in turns and seasons" is pretty blah for the words, and you're ending your line with it. What about something like, "In turns, we sat atop each other" or just "We sat atop each other in turns." The rewrites may not be real sock-it-to-me kind of lines that way, but at least they eliminate (reduce?) the faux-importance implied by those commas and that diction.
savaging our bodies open with all the sharp knives of kitchen drawers, drop the comma. Drop the "all the." I'd substitute "from" for "of." I don't really like "savaging" as the verb here. Cutting up bodies with kitchen knives--yup, pretty savage. I guess I want my expectations challenged. I want the moment to be gentle instead of savage. It reads like destruction, when what you're really writing is a creation story, right? The destruction of the act would be assumed; let the language describe the act differently.
and anything else at hand,
what were those? meat scissors? I am not a fan of the rhetorical questions in here. If you mean to keep them, though, you'll need some different punctuation at the end of the preceding line.
And we searched, drop the "and." It really weakens the line.
pushing through our bellies with fingers,
like a sad man wading tentatively through a flooded basement,
filled with floating swampy mounds of paperback books,
water gone pulpy and softly thick,
in search of some lost golden ring.
And we smiled when we had failed yet again.
Smiley smiles. That sad man should have seen us. We should have seen us. "Smiley smiles" kind of made me cringe. It just seems a little too cutesy
But the truth is this, colon here? that I smiled just because you did,
and though I did not understand it then comma here?
I see now that it was the same for you.
And everything went mirrored memories around us,
and I will always believe you shouted out these following words: I would drop "these following words" and the colon. It really weakens the quote. If this were my piece, I would end the line on "out" and then put the quotation in italics instead of quotation marks.
“We should remember this when the shoe is on the other foot… but we won’t!”
and I am trying to tell us exactly that right now, with these very words,
because after that bit it was almost already over,
and then you turned yourself into your own world.
And I turned myself into mine. I like the sense of your last lines, but it all sounds pretty boring. It's a fairly weak ending that I'm sure you could rewrite to be more powerful.
For all the red marks on your paper, I did like this; you have some cool things going on here. I also want to thank you for writing in sentences. |
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