woah! i loved the last line. fit so perfectly :)

It was exceptional. the last line is what captured my attention. "men are known to lie" it really gives the emotion that you're trying to portray. i suggest you write a dual poem of someone who is waiting for the soldier to come home. only a suggestion

This was a very in-the-moment and straight-to-the-heart piece, and that's why I loved it. Your choice of words is brilliant, it makes it really easy to imagine everything you described and gave the poem a really haunted quality.

I liked that you set it in the present tense, it made me feel more involved in the setting. I also liked the way you phrased the lines and inverted some sentences, it gave the poem an interesting rhythm.

The rhymes for the last two lines fit wonderfully and ended the poem with a bit of bitterness, which I think worked well.

Fav!

(Review Marathon - Link in profile)

No, I think leave it as you have written it is fine. If you add more 'I's in the poem the 'I's will become too repetitive. You just need enough 'I's to made the reader feel that he/she is the that person and that is enough - just so you don't overdo it.

Narq.

Wow. Just the first stanza...there's so much power and struggle in the words 'lurch', 'lugging', and 'pollute'. Lovely word choice. 'My wallet houses forgotten joys'. I can totally visualize a little cascading, clear set of plastic-covered photos and how much they mean to this character.

'Parasites feeding on my groaning kind'; these lines you come up with are simple, haunting and beautiful. Geez, keep up the wonderful work.

And I love that the last two lines rhyme. And that the character is so uncertain of even his own chance at livelihood. Great job!

April Fool review:

I am unbelievably rubbish at poetry, so apologies if I've overlooked something important in form/structure/ect. - I always take it very much at face value.

The description of the gore and desperation here is wince-worthy (in a good way), but I have to say, from the summary I'd expected quite a different piece. The content is far blunter than the summary/tagline makes it out to be.

It's not that I don't like the poem, I just really love the line you had in the summary:

"He said he would come home. He'd crossed his heart and hoped to die. He did."

It just really packed a punch for me.

The best part of the actual poem is definitely the last stanza - the rhythm of the words flows into a really nice verbal pattern, that almost reads as lyrical, and that last, jarring line leaves it with a haunting feel.

Have you ever read the war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon?

Right off the bat I just wanna say that I like this poem.

For one, I like the descriptions. They are very colorful and easy to picture. I think "My wallet houses forgotten joys" is one of my fav lines. Interesting way of putting it, and also it has emotion attached to it.

"staring straight at I"

The I just seems awkward... I don't know why you want the I, but me sounds more natural. The rest of the poem had a natural way of putting things, so this part took me by surprise..

Ignore me if I have misunderstood the rules of English again :P

Two last lines: Awesomesauce. Appropriate rhyme darkness tragedy Frac is happy.

Dude you totally should have had this in WCC -_- I'd probably vote for it. (this was the poem, right? XD)

Pfft.

Keep it up!

-Frac, from April Fools RG Style

You should be doing the Review Marathon (link in my profile)

Thanks for your review awhile back, sorry it took me so long to return the favor.

I like your word choices a lot. They give the poem a very formal feel, which works nicely with the piece. I also like that last line. The way you phrase it is a really nice touch that works well with the piece. My only complaint would be that you end it with a period, but the whole piece is not one long sentence.

"Lugging my war-torn leg." Shocking, sad, and vibrant imagery!

"Shrapnel and bullets." Nice diction here.

"Mushrooms." Good description of the bomb smoke in the sky.

"I stagger past unspeakables." WOW! The tone of this line is absolutely brilliant-it's captivating and jaw-dropping!

Good work! :)

Right, I've been meaning to review this for a while. Now I need to get some sort of motivation together for 'analysing' some other poetry, so you're my warm up. XD

I definitely think it works better now that you've changed it to present tense. It makes the reader feel more involved and also more helpless, because they want to help the man but can't. If it was in past tense it would be more removed and therefore wouldn't evoke the same emotions.

In the first two lines, I'm not really sure if 'hare' and 'lugging' fit together. When I read the word 'hare' I get the image of someone running fast, or sprinting, but that's imossible if you have a lug a leg around.

I like the line [Shrapnel and bullets pollute the ground]. I think it's the word 'pollute' that makes it good :) I've never heard it described that way before. Wooh for originality! :P

[My wallet houses forgotten joys] I like this, cos it shows us how long he's been away from his family. I'm guessing the 'forgotten joys' are photos, right? :P

[I stagger past unspeakables] eek. I like that you say hat rather than trying to describe the unspeakables. Because, obviously, it then makes them unspeakable :P

[Parasites feeding on my groaning kind] urgh, this actually made me shudder. Gross thought. :P I guess it shows the disgustingness (methinks that's not a word...lol) of war.

[I surge over the cliff] I like this - it makes me think of the sea. Which is probably random... but it does anyway :) It's a good image too. And it makes the reader sort of half glad that he made it to where he wanted to, and that he'll be at peace after seeing/being in all of the horror.

[There is nothing spared on this Earth except me and I] I loke this line, although it did confuse me with the 'me and I' at the end. If you're going for enjambement, then I'd put a comma after 'I', because then it would be like [There is nothing spared on this Earth except me and I, Gun strapped...] and then get rid of the 'I' before 'cross'. Erm, not sure if that made sense. What I meant is that if you read that stanza as a sentence, the 3rd line would be a subordinate clause, and so you wouldn't need the second I if you had the comma. Not sure how that would mess up the rhythm and stuff though.

Okay, I lovelovelove the last line on it's own, and the way it rhymes with 'die' in the previous stanza. It really emphasises the tragic ending of the poem (sorry, I've been working on my Hamlet essay :P). I think that the beginning of the poem showed desperate hope (sort of...), whereas the end showed despair and yet still hope, but this time a sort of blind, stupid hope (in that he's 'surging over the cliff' but says he's not going to die). I also like the consistency you've included throughout the poem with the format (e.g. subject verb for each first line) and then the last line ignores all of that just by being on its own. So it intensifies the effect.

Yeah, so all in all I enjoyed reading this. As always :) Sorry this review isn't as long as other ones. Haha.

-Amy

Nice poem, I like the whole concept of it. The tense seems to waver a bit but other than that nice poem.

I don't know if it was intentional or not but the last line rhymes with the previous one and that creates a nice effect. Good work.