literature

H

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prettyflour's avatar
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Literature Text

History hinges on hedonism
take this holy holocaust
it has become the human hurricane
to have and too hold
come hell or high water

Hardly handsome humanity
maybe hallmark humility

Hypnotic horizons cause harmony
are too hard to hold together

Hollow where heaven is honored as home
to heal the hungry with hope
and to hold the hands of the heavy hearted
H
© 2011 - 2024 prettyflour
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Farren-WintersStudio's avatar
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Overall
:star::star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Vision
:star::star::star::star::star-empty: Originality
:star::star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Impact

From the writer:
Alright, so I want you to know that I'm not here to call you names and be mean for the sake of being mean. You marked this as requesting critique. I'm not one to hide my true intentions behind a bunch of nice words that do nothing to help YOU. I am commenting because I feel that you have a foundation in which you can further improve upon. So here we go.

My first impressions are that you took a risk by trying to use a single letter for your poem. Inspired by the "V" speech from "V for Vendetta" ? I don't know, but this is what it makes me think of and I give points to anyone who takes a serious attempt at it. Now, here's the unfortunate part, I have a GREAT deal of trouble following what you're saying. I get the impression that it's: as many "H" words assembled into a sentence as you can get away with. A few sentences are borderline nonsensical.

That's the FIRST IMPRESSION, what I first thought of when I did my first few read throughs. Now, lets take a look at a few specific ideas and methods for getting there. The big thing I'm having trouble with here is figuring out your theme. Other than the letter "H", what are you wanting to communicate to your audience? Your first line implies that this is a story about history. Your third stanza though has nothing to do with your first.

I recommend you start with a core thematic idea, write out a rough sketch of it, then start rewriting it using different words to convey the same idea. Use several rewrites to shift your wording to the scheme you wish to use. If you haven't ever read it, look up the "V" speech I mentioned earlier and examine how it clearly tells a narrative. He tells you an entire story and while you may not know all the words he uses, you can look them up and they DO fit the intended imagery he's creating. THEN the "V" words sever the flow of the narrative. Another version is the /b/ speech written by 4chan and anonymous.

Some of your lines are not far from being perfectly serviceable, thy just need to be shifted about a bit. For example:

"Hypnotic horizons cause harmony
as too hard to hold together"

could be lightly edited to this:

"Harmony, honed by hypnosis,
hard to hold in hand"

Harmony is the subject of the sentence, "hard to hold in hand" notes how difficult it is to hold on to, and "honed by hypnosis" tells you how it was created. This tells the reader that hypnosis created the harmony, yet this harmony is hard to hold on to. Implies it is not true harmony or that it is fleeting.

I'd like to see you try this again. I'd like to see you start with a singular idea and tell us about it. Use "H" again if you like, but I want you to use those "H" words in service of telling the story as opposed to making the story serve the "H" gimmick.


I want to remind you, you haven't done a bad thing here, you took a crack at a difficult thing. From here it is a matter of improving your command of language. Good Luck!