"Death of a Star"
Blinded by all those years in the spotlight--
brainwashed by self-promoting rhetoric
hallucinating through chemical haze
you envision yourself a megastar
of never before seen magnitude
perhaps even a god,
calling your whores goddesses
No Astraeus are you!
Spewing your pompous, incoherent dialog,
the media comes running
anxious to see what is next
recording each moment
happy to oblige
as you implode
©Copyright Ginny Brannan March 2011
*Astraeus: the Titan god or deity for stars & planets
Oh, yes I know him well!
ReplyDeletefamiliar...ok from a crit standpoint, you have a story here...make it come alive, it feel rather show not tell...would mix in more black hole allusions and make it vivid...just my thoughts...smiles.
ReplyDeletethe word-use is impressive in many places and I love the proper nouns. 'Calling your whores goddesses' is wonderful line. quite a gritty write here; I think though that more needs to be expressed using visual poetic device (metaphor, etc); it's mostly told. The emotive factor would be multiplied manifold. For eg -
ReplyDeletethe media comes running
anxious to see what is next
recording each moment
I feel you might be missing the chance for some great figurative language to express this happening here.
Also wonder if centre-aligning is best for this one? I find that only villanelles and other poems in tercets of roughly even length do well centred (bar visual poetry designed to be).
Blinded by all those years in the spotlight--
brainwashed by self-promoting rhetoric
hallucinating through chemical haze
you envision yourself a megastar
of never before seen magnitude
perhaps even a god,
calling your whores goddesses
No Astraeus are you!
Spewing your pompous, incoherent dialog,
the media comes running
anxious to see what is next
recording each moment
happy to oblige
as you implode
Thanks for linking up, Ginny
Thanks Brian. The poem came before the title, and I thought the title kind of fit. But understand what you are saying about pulling more black hole illustration in, perhaps somehow in the metaphoric changes Luke has suggested.
ReplyDeleteLuke, really appreciate your suggestions on formatting. I wasn't sure, and thought it looked interesting centered. Will correct that now.
Re: The three lines you suggested using more metaphor on--sort of wish that you had expounded with a bit more specific example, but will see what I can come up with to bring those lines up to the rest of the poem. Thanks again. Appreciate the honest critique--everything I learn only helps my poetry improve!
Ginny, I love the notion of an 'incoherent dialogue' I feel that there is a lot of richness there you could explore ... especially with the implosion at the end. I felt I wanted more of the implosions and the media recording implosions. But this is just my opinion. I do like this piece.
ReplyDeletewell i am not going to give you crit but just wanted to say the following lines I enjoyed thoroughly
ReplyDeleteBlinded by all those years in the spotlight--
brainwashed by self-promoting rhetoric
Luke is giving some great crit here ! Check my abacus!