Thanks for the examples! They help a lot in me thinking this kind of through.
Starting with my off-the-cuff reaction: I like your poem better. :-)
I think part of that is because yours has more obvious repetition giving it structure, especially at the beginning ("some things are about as likely"), and part of it is because you have fairly long lines, so you avoid the "runner gasping for breath" pace I mentioned in a comment above. But it's also that I look at the Anand poem and think . . . okay, I suppose I can see a contrast between "dolled up" and "deserts," but why the line and stanza break between "starry annuals" and "shrubs"? I guess one suggests flowers and the other doesn't? Ish? But that's an example of where the break feels arbitrary to me: like Anand went "welp, I've filled this line, so it's time for a new one," without the pattern of a meter to dictate that the break has to go there. The line ending on "void" works better for me, because the stanza break is a void, but "a ring" to "of six flower heads"? Again, feels arbitrary.
Now, in this particular case I suspect I'm also running into the fact that the poem is so short, I don't have much time to get invested in it, and what it's saying doesn't hit any particular buttons that will overcome that limitation for me. If it were four times as long, it would have more opportunity to hook me, and then I would be more inclined to like the overall effect even if I could look at any particular line break and go "eh, why?" But in this case I have a tougher time seeing why these lines end where they do, except that the poet had filled them up.
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yati
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Date: 2018-02-23 10:24 am (UTC)Starting with my off-the-cuff reaction: I like your poem better. :-)
I think part of that is because yours has more obvious repetition giving it structure, especially at the beginning ("some things are about as likely"), and part of it is because you have fairly long lines, so you avoid the "runner gasping for breath" pace I mentioned in a comment above. But it's also that I look at the Anand poem and think . . . okay, I suppose I can see a contrast between "dolled up" and "deserts," but why the line and stanza break between "starry annuals" and "shrubs"? I guess one suggests flowers and the other doesn't? Ish? But that's an example of where the break feels arbitrary to me: like Anand went "welp, I've filled this line, so it's time for a new one," without the pattern of a meter to dictate that the break has to go there. The line ending on "void" works better for me, because the stanza break is a void, but "a ring" to "of six flower heads"? Again, feels arbitrary.
Now, in this particular case I suspect I'm also running into the fact that the poem is so short, I don't have much time to get invested in it, and what it's saying doesn't hit any particular buttons that will overcome that limitation for me. If it were four times as long, it would have more opportunity to hook me, and then I would be more inclined to like the overall effect even if I could look at any particular line break and go "eh, why?" But in this case I have a tougher time seeing why these lines end where they do, except that the poet had filled them up.