Call of the Moon by Kevin Eastman

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kailhofer
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Call of the Moon by Kevin Eastman

Post by kailhofer »

I freely admit to being no expert when it comes to poetry, so I don't like to comment on poems that I didn't write myself. <br><br>However, I thought that Kevin, a.k.a. Therio, shouldn't go on pins and needles any longer without anybody saying something, especially if it really is his first submission here.<br><br>Good for you, Kevin!<br><br>It is a wonderful and terrifying thing to believe in a piece enough to let others see it for the first time. It is your baby, and you're proud of it, but at the same time, you hope it's not an ugly duckling...<br><br>It looks good to me. I hope you get only praise for it.<br><br>Nate
Last edited by kailhofer on October 22, 2004, 10:52:29 PM, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Call of the Moon by Kevin Eastman

Post by kailhofer »

Thank you Nate. Yes, I have been waiting on pins and needles :)
<br>It seemed only fitting, since you were the first person to give me feedback for my first here, back in April.<br><br>Best of luck to you!<br><br>Nate<br>
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Re: Call of the Moon by Kevin Eastman

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Kevin<br><br>I'm not particularly qualified to judge poetry either -- the only stuff I ever did in a non-prose vein were sappy song lyrics (well, maybe there were one or two non-sappy ones, but they were exceptions). I used to do well in essay-type English exams dissecting poetry (once got an A for presenting a commentary on Blake's The Tyger suggesting that Blake was being ironic in his ferocious description -- because his illustration of a tiger looked downright meek), but even that was a loooong time ago.<br><br>That said, I think you might be better served by directing your writing energies into prose rather than poetry. You have some good imagery here, but I found the comma-separated verses a distraction from the mood of the piece. I think you may have been trying too hard to fit the words to the form you had chosen, and this got in your way a bit. I'd like to see you try your hand at a story -- 'flash' format if you can't quite commit the time and energy for something longer, even a vignette or scene that might be part of a longer piece. See what comes out when you just tell a story or describe a scene without worrying about the number of syllables in each line.<br><br>The one linguistic oddity in Call of the Moon was the sequence<br><br>The animals converge.<br>Forming their packs,<br>Like wild dogs.<br><br>This only makes sense if the animals aren't animals at all -- they are humans, or perhaps lycanthropes (fancy talk for werewolves). At the very least, one would have to assume that they are not dogs or other canine variants that run in packs (dogs forming their packs like wild dogs would be a tad redundant). Was this your intention? Was the reference to 'the party' the key indicating that the whole piece was a metaphor for the behaviour (canajan spelling, eh?) of a bunch of -- barumpbump -- party animals?<br><br>Anyway, good on you for throwing your hat into the ring (a cliche referring to a boxing ring, I think, but in this case it's more like a ring at the circus). Write more. Submit more. It's how we learn and improve. (Being perfect, and perfectly modest, I am beyond such petty concerns, of course. Oh boy! Boy! Peel me another grape!)<br><br>Robert M.
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Call of the Moon by Kevin Eastman

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by 'flash' format. Can you explain that for me?

Kevin
<br><br>My bad. Me bad. Ugh. Kreegah! Bundolo! Ahem. Flash isn't so much a format as a length -- usually under 1000 words. Ron Bruno's 'My Creature' fell into this category. Obviously, the extreme restriction on word count forces an emphasis on conciseness -- no long descriptive passages here! On the other hand, 1000 words would be quite a bit for a poem, so flash fiction has a lower 'density' than poetry.<br><br>Try it. You might like it.<br><br>Robert M.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
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