Critique of Dennis' Poem

Firstly, Blood In My Eyes is well-done. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The meaning of the poem is clearly about dying and being reborn, perhaps in lifestyle, if not spiritually. My first impression before reading the poem was that, this might be a very good poem, but it’s long. And in my experience, the longer a poem is the quality of each line is divided, because attention and revision are divided over more work. With that in mind, it might be that a lot of errors will be present. Whether or not that held true for this poem specifically, we’ll get into.

A lot of lines stick out in this poem, which may be a good or bad thing. But there are quite a few details I don’t understand, like why are some lines in quotations? Some are obviously dialogue, but others I’m not so sure. In line 18, Dennis writes, ‘and all that blood “all my blood” my blood’. Why is “all my blood” in quotations? Also, many words are capitalized, but I’m not sure why. For example, in line 37, Dennis writes, ‘Oh My God! It’s True? ---before Dying.’ I cannot see why truth and dying are capitalized. The difference between a noun and a proper noun is that a noun is any standard thing, like city, pencil, girl. A proper noun is a specific name. For example you have the thing death, and then the person, Death. So why is True and Dying capitalized? Are they trying to represent something bigger than their original definitions? I’m not sure. But I see at least 5 to 6 debatable capitalizations. At least to my knowledge.

Now, one thing I like about this poem might be a negative thing or a positive thing: I’m not sure. But while I was reading, I felt that the poem rambled on a bit. The point of the poem seemed more easily expressed in fewer lines. However, when I hit the final line, it felt as if the bulk of the other lines was justified. For some reason, that last line shined even more with a longer poem. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I’m not sure if my mentality was, “Yay! It’s finally over!” or if I thought, “Wow, that line was perfect to top all of it off!” Either way, I was left with a positive feeling. So I’m gonna go with this being a good thing.

There were some lines in the poem that didn’t read right to me. For example, line 26 has written, ‘and hid an abandon house for hours’. Are you saying someone hid the abandon house? Or hid in the abandoned house? I assume it’s hid in the abandoned house. I’m not entirely sure; I try not to assume.

Overall, I liked the poem, but like any other poem, it can use a lot of work before it’s complete. I would continue working on the poem if you were interested in improving it, and I would focus on eliminating everything you don’t need in order to express your main point. Thanks for the poem!