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![]() I've started to review this several times and each time I've found a reason to put it off. I've had a general sense of what I wanted to say but it's a tricky poem to assess. It has problems, but I haven't found the right expression for them. The fact that I like the approach, the subject and the attitude you strike with it only complicates the issue. So. No more excuses. First a quick digression on how I try to analyze a poem like this. None of this is hard and fixed and I'm always pleased to find a poem that thwarts the structures I try to apply to it. But in general I look at four separate elements as comprising a poem: content, structure, subject, and the relationship between the surface elements in the poem and whatever real-world analogues may relate to them. Every poem will create a unique balance between these four areas and if it does so consistently throughout the poem, the effect will be a satisfying one for the reader regardless of the type of poem it might actually be. Content is simply the raw material of the piece, the images, the nouns and verbs, the linguistic planks that get hammered together to make the poem. It is the figures of speech, the sense data that provides the reader with their actual experience of the poem. Structure is the language used to convey the content. It is also the arrangement of that language on the page. It can be language that rhymes and falls into fixed meter, or it might be language that is broken up, disjointed, scattered about the page like debris after a storm. Subject is what is suggested by the content and it's structural presentation. Subject can be implicit in the words themselves; it can be obscure, even unintelligible, in which case it is up to the reader to complete the circuit and by bringing their own experience to the table, create the purpose for themselves that the poem offers. Subject can exist on the surface; it can also exist as a phantom partner, floating along in the same general space but out of sight, insinuating itself through combinations of imagery, connections, suggested overtones in word choice. The last category, relationship to the world beyond is a measure of the degree to which the poem evokes external elements (i.e. it's a poem about a particular painting, or a memory, or Grandma's old rocker) and how much of the poem exists only in a linguistic space. To a certain extent, all poems exist only in a linguistic space, but in some the real world is still recognizable, others it collapses into something that is pure language. (These poems tend to make people complain "It doesn't make sense!"} Understand, there's no right or wrong with whatever choices one makes regarding any of these categories and particularly in the way they each contribute to the overall effect. What's most important is that whatever arrangement you select, you maintain it throughout. That arrangement constitutes the "rules" of the poem, such as they are, and your reader may not intuit the point at which you break the rules you've set up, but the result will be a poem that seems to have lost its way. What I like about the poem is the quirky space it inhabits, a metaphorical space as opposed to a physical space. There is a dismissive attitude towards the Overman, reducing him (and, by implication, whole philosophical systems) to an image of an odd little man behaving somewhat clownishly. I also like the last line that avoids strict grammatical sense but implies much in spite of it. The title doesn't bother me, though I think you can come up with something that does more, for less. Titles, particularly in poems, have an opportunity to either crystalize the core of the piece, doing so in a way that the poem itself might not attempt, but which brings the whole thing into focus; it can also play tricks on the reader, suggesting one subject, then letting them discover that the poem is about something different. Yours is simply a literal statement, one repeated in the first line. It doesn't need to be repeated like that. You'd do better to leave it untitled. And the tag line under it is nothing more than a smug, self-conscious joke that doesn't work. The use of the term "Overman" sets the Nietzschean context, and the poem itself accomplishes the rest. It is simply a theme, and, like all themes, it sounds pretty trite and boring when spoken aloud. Themes are not for the poet to verbalize; they are for the reader to intuit. Now to your content: it's weak. Your two most vivid phrases, The Everything Word-Search Book and Abdicating his throne call attention to themselves far more than they warrant and are too heavy-handed to blend in with the rest of what is a fairly subtle poem. The first image doesn't make sense, but that's is no indictment of it; poems aren't prose and are under no obligation to conform to linear, cause-and-effect definitions of prose sense. But while there are any number of things that it might suggest, the image is so loud and intrusive that it has no chance to suggest any of them to us. The second image actually opens a line that ends in a surface contradiction that seems to have no purpose other than to be "obscure" without offering anything in the way of interesting language or innovative connections by way of compensation. The last lines are definitely interesting, though your repetition of walking with me is a lapse. It's an example of making what you say more of a priority than how you say it. In a poem, how is always the most important consideration. Walking isn't a wrong verb, but it does what it does and nothing else. There is no suggestion of intent, purpose, perspective. There's a better verb to be found, particularly in the second instance when you are ostensibly summing up the whole piece, establishing an arc, as in "Oh, he's not just walking, he's _____________________." whatever you choose. My biggest complaint is that you actually have one set of rules guiding you through the first five lines, a different set for the remaining seven. If you are looking for irony in the first set, you are going to need to come up with a different activity for the Overman, or at least you will need to take a different attitude towards it. I'm certainly not going to suggest anything; it's not my poem and these are the crucial images in the piece. But I have no doubt that you can come up with them. Just keep in mind that there is a tone and point of view in the last set that needs to be prepared in the first. Don't waste your lines on surface jokes. Find something that makes what comes after feel like a continuation, a completion or perhaps an unexpected revelation. That wouldn't be too shabby.
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