My Degree or, The Repossessed by Richard Tornello

It's a fun idea, but I do have a couple of small (ish) suggestions.

1- Possibly it shorter needs to be.

2- As the above shows, messing around with the word order makes you sound like Yoda. Please, please promise me you'll never do it again to hit a rhyme. (I'm thinking particularly of 'I did a loan application make')

Promise I to you, word order? Rhyme it not.

Your comments, thanks. I was thinking more of an Elizabethan style than Yoda, to quote Marlow "The tears that so distain my cheeks"

RT

[TaoPhoenix]

It's a fun idea, but I do have a couple of small (ish) suggestions.

1- Possibly it shorter needs to be.

2- As the above shows, messing around with the word order makes you sound like Yoda. Please, please promise me you'll never do it again to hit a rhyme. (I'm thinking particularly of 'I did a loan application make')

I think the bigger difference is that people speak to each other in "prose", but complex word phrasings have been a tradition in poetry for centuries.

Completely at random I selected my volume of Keats from my reference shelf. Even further at random I stopped at the poem titled "fragment of the Castle Builder": (The title character begins speaking:)

In short, convince you that however wise
You may have grown from convenient libraries,
I have, by many yards at least, been carding
A longer skein of wit in Convent Garden.

Your age and sagacious wit
I doubt not a bit.
I will thread my verse
to offend? Say I, not.
To you, in face to face.
Your comments, my thoughts will grace.


RT

You have valid points about Keats et al, and if you're trying for a deliberately old fashioned feel I apologise. My feeling, however, is that the modern use of poetic form usually tries to make it as unobtrusive as possible, while rearranging the word order tends to draw attention to it.

Yes there was a slight attempt at the older style. Sometimes, I simply enjoy the sound, or the manner in which the sentence feels. (A well turned heel and a well manufactured phrase, is beauty in and of itself). If we have the heritage why not draw from it? It's the execution of the idea that may be the question here. And that execution is a qualifier of a good piece of work or not.

Thanks for the comments and critique. Taken in and digested.

Richard.

.., messing around with the word order makes you sound like Yoda. Please, please promise me you'll never do it again to hit a rhyme. (I'm thinking particularly of 'I did a loan application make')

Isn't this rather a matter of individual taste? Maybe then I should adhere to de gustibus non disputandum. But I have to agree 'a loan application I did make' to my ears might have made a
slightly smoother flow of speech.

I reread the poem just now. It (your reformat) does roll off the tongue better. If I remember correctly, and I am getting old, someone else did mention that same issue before I sent it in. However in my stubborn manner, I ignored them. The difference between OK and good.

Thanks again.

RT

Just a tag-on : having other people read my stories has often been a ...(I would say "God-send" but I'm an atheist) ...a gift. Thank ...(heavens?)... the sky that I've had the good sense in the past to allow others to critique my work before I put my ignorance out there for all to see.

One more thing, while I'm sitting here at lunch, they can't take back what's inside your head - and that IS more important than a piece of paper. But what if they could take it back? Hmmm? Now we're talking sci-fi.

I tell my son, "be sure to get several copies of your transcripts, before the whole loan thing goes sour"...(and eventually it will!). Stay out of my head, my BA in Ed is mine I tell you! Mine! Mine!

Wise advise.

Yes I send mine out too. The poem was completed some time earlier. And until the current critiques I forgot the earlier and similar indications and warnings. A clearer mind, and less ego/pride will persevere next time.

RT

good one, didn't mind the word order too much. and the concept is great, what if they did start revoking degrees and stuff? well actually i think they do, i know if you don't pay for tuition long enough they withdraw your academic credentials. don't mess with the man, son.

liked it, most of it was witty and funny - "a Jill" always goes down well. hahemm. anyway, yes, what was i saying?