The tone changes too abruptly in the first line of the third stanza. Swearing, especially when addressing children, is often difficult to make poetic.
The over-the-top change of tone is supposed to mimic the change of tone that we/society/media/the machine take with people just before their teen years. And swearing (from a kid's perspective) is a token of the transition from being "just a kid" to "preparing to be an adult", as is its attendant crassness.
My prof's beatnik-y, and is, in general, of the mind that capitals and punctuation are for structured/formal poems. He also has a vendetta against commas :)
This actually differs from the final formatting, but I was too lazy to render it to HTML. In the formatted version, the last two lines are offset and slightly larger than the rest of the text.
Comments 3
Reply
The over-the-top change of tone is supposed to mimic the change of tone that we/society/media/the machine take with people just before their teen years. And swearing (from a kid's perspective) is a token of the transition from being "just a kid" to "preparing to be an adult", as is its attendant crassness.
My prof's beatnik-y, and is, in general, of the mind that capitals and punctuation are for structured/formal poems. He also has a vendetta against commas :)
This actually differs from the final formatting, but I was too lazy to render it to HTML. In the formatted version, the last two lines are offset and slightly larger than the rest of the text.
Reply
Here's the proper formatting
Reply
Leave a comment