No title

No, 'pursue' is wrong; it should obviously be 'pursuit', but you have dumped that for the rhyme and no other reason. You are sacrificing meaning and poetic impact for cheap rhythm and rhyme-- and you're failing in the rhythm anyway. The poet does not force words into form-- s/he finds the fitting ones. The torture you are putting these words through is obvious from the fact that you felt you had to isolate the rhymes on separate lines: by you / subdue / pursue / of you. Ugh.

The core concept is good-- animal vs animal-- but I would scrap the piece and start again from 'scratch'. Get rid of the adverbs-- all those 'ly's (cruelly, easily, delightfully), and choose verbs that do the job-- for instance, instead of 'cruelly tempt' try 'lure', which also has animal associations.

Work in nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs. You need to spend more time looking for the mot juste.

Your grammar and punctuation are sloppy-- you cannot abandon them when you abandon prose. Look at your first sentence (which should end with a period or a semicolon, not a comma)"

'It’s the animal part of me that's so cruelly tempted by you.'

Passive voice is alway weak, and cleft sentences are even weaker: it would have been difficult to make this sentence more ineffective! Lots of words with little or no meaning (the introductory 'it', 'that', 'so') or far too general meaning ('part'). What is the 'animal part of you'?-- Be specific, be effective:

'You taunt the cat in me'.

As soon as you introduce 'me' and 'you' into a love poem, everyone else (i.e. your reader) loses interest-- it's like watching two teenagers necking in the park: really, I'd rather not! The poetry is yours by right and by art-- you don't need to plunk yourself into the middle of it. The reader is not interested in reading about your own little emotions, unless they are exquisitely rendered, revealing a new view of their universality.


That should get you started. I look forward to seeing your revision.

It's up to you to decide if it's worth trying-- if it is, you're a poet; if it isn't, you're not.

In this case, I agree that a new version is called for-- but I think it's certainly a good idea worth playing with some more-- by no means, however, can you 'leave it alone until I acquire the sufficient skills' because the only way you'll develop those skills is by writing. Don't save your 'good ideas' till last; you'll never get there. Write about what grabs you now now.

If you really want to work on your stuff, I'd suggest you participate somewhere like EVERYPOET. They can be-- will be-- cruel as well as honest, but they will help you if you stick with it. Be sure you look through the site thoroughly and read all the guidelines before you post a poem-- they can verbally slice, dice and marinade a poet who posts at too high a level!

I hope you don't mind if I join in your discussion.

When I first read your poem, FL, I had the sense that these were intended as the words to a song. Something in the style of 'I get a kick from champagne', or 'I've got you under my skin'; though with slightly different content, of course.

Did you model it on anything in particular?

MrP

I'm very sorry to say that criticism should be subtle and encouraging to upcoming poets, but mister micawbar sure doesn't seem to know that.

I personally think that your poem is good Fair lady... especially the idea behind those words... Keep going...