Reviews for Drop Dead Red - FictionPress.com

Midnight In Eden
2008-01-30
ch 1,

abuseThis may be weird but my main problem with this piece is the over description you use in places. I don't think this poem needs to be as long as it is because so many of your descriptions double up and overlap in such a way that some become utterly superfluous.

For example, even in the first few lines you describe the hands as both the hands of an angel and of a doll. I'd get rid of the "angel" description because it's not as detailed as the latter and it feels like filler. The repetition at the end of the stanza is also quite pointless, the last line could easily be stricken.

In the second stanza the structure of your first stanza is a little awkward. Something like:

"Glamorous halo, spray painted golden
and shined with the oil retrieved from
greedy Mother Earth by the
untouchables who carried it,
piece by piece,
back to its shattered master.

might work better. The double up of "and" is what jars there the most. Last line: "goddamned " feels very out of context and almost too blunt for the poem.

Then in the next stanza you do a triple description of:
among men, the
untouchables,
the cast-off offspring of gods.

I think we understand that men are the untouchables and that line could also be easily stricken. That whole stanza is a bit too much "telling" for me too and feels more like an explanation than anything else.

Fourth stanza issues, for me at least, stem from this section:
Betrayal is a cruel mistress robed in red—
the color of a **—
when greed is robed in gold—
the color of a goddess.

The parenthetic elements here are jarring, it'd be easier to link it back to the color i.e.

"Betrayal is a cruel mistress
robed in the red of a **
when greed is robed in the gold
of a goddess."

Also the comma on the seventh line isn't necessary.

In the fifth stanza the repetition of opportunity is again jarring and the ellipsis random, a comma would be more suitable.

Fantastic last line but almost too isolated. Linking it back to the previous stanza would give it a little more power methinks.

I've nitpicked but that's because the overall premise is strong and intriguing. It just needs some work to reach its potential.

Good luck with an edit,
Midnight

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