Monday, April 4, 2011

Black Hole

"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


6 comments:

  1. familiar...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.

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  2. the 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 -

    the 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

    ReplyDelete
  3. 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.

    Luke, 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!

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  4. 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.

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  5. well i am not going to give you crit but just wanted to say the following lines I enjoyed thoroughly

    Blinded by all those years in the spotlight--
    brainwashed by self-promoting rhetoric

    Luke is giving some great crit here ! Check my abacus!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for reading my poetry and sharing your thoughts.