This may be a long poem, but it's damn good. The imagery is fantastic, and the break-down of each part of the poem preceded by a different part of the body was a fantastic idea. I love how you even manage to make those different parts of the body into short poetic verse on there own.

The image preceding this piece isn't even necessary because the words stand so strong on their own.

Though the poem is mostly all lower-case, I noticed a few inconsitances on the words you did capitalize. In one verse you capitalize "Victorian", but later on keep "victorians" in lower-case. If you are going to capitalize Victorian, you should probable do the same with "roman" as well. You could also change "paper mache" to "paper-mâché" if you were so inclined.

Thanks so much for sharing this piece, it was a pleasure to read. Keep up the superb work!

Note: Many of the things I pointed out no longer apply. I've moved this critique to the appropriate place mostly as history, but also on the off chance that someone will see it and feel the need to argue with me. Arbitrary stars are based on my original impressions, not the current version so that it will match the critique. What can I say, I'm fiesty fish?


Great piece that you've got here. My comments are all very minor. I'll give just a tiny bit of technical (opinion) input, and then I'll talk about content.

I'm not a fan of the erratic line formatting. Tastes on this vary greatly, I'm just extremely old fashioned in my choices. I'm not suggesting to change it per se, just bear in mind that occasionally readers are turned off by it. If it wasn't your poem, I wouldn't have stayed.

However! With that said, you've made excellent use of line breaks for pacing. I know you probably still think that they are arbitrary, but I assure you that no line break is ever meaningless. This piece proves to me that you don't really break your lines haphazardly, just intuitively. Great job on that front.

I found myself a little confused with the scattered pronouns. The first person pronoun was expected. The poem has the word 'self' in the title, so that one is expected. The various 'hims' and 'hers' that appear aren't distracting. The antecedent is generally easy to find or to divine. I'm even cool with the inclusive 'we' because it may or may not include me. The one that I had a little bit of trouble was the second person 'you'.

The stale old crusty poetry textbooks say never to use the second person in a poem. I don't agree with that sentiment. I think that there are times it works brilliantly. It can serve to draw your reader in, or to address directly a subject you would never have the ability (or the courage) to say the things in the poem that need to be said to directly. In this case I found myself a bit confused about when you were addressing me, the funky looking fish guy reading the poem, and when you were addressing the unavailable subject. Sometimes it felt like the you was inviting me in, and other times it felt like it was shutting me out and addressing an absent mother. You then seem to address the same mother in the third person. Perhaps I missed something or am simply confused.


Now, that's the hard part. Finding things to fix with a poem this deeply personal and sweet almost feels wrong, so I hope I haven't overstepped. You manage to pull off a personal portrait in a way that is very difficult to do. The body part layout would have entirely flopped if not for your wonderful imagery. Each piece of anatomy you named off was then tied to a larger picture of you, which is exactly what a portrait needs to do. You might have subconsciously linked some of these, or it may have been done intentionally. Look at the first and the third: toes/eyelashes achilles tendon/face. Those relations of the part to the whole are what makes your body part layout work. Well done.

I also enjoy how you don't present a one sided picture of yourself. You've had some beautiful days. You've had some pretty crummy days. People have loved you. People have made you feel unloved. It's very easy to either whitewash a life or to grey wash it. You've walked the line very elegantly with your ballerina toes.


All in all, I'd say this is an excellent piece. I enjoy the vivid imagery and the bitter-sweet emotions you evoke so much that I refuse to let the things I found distracting detract from my enjoyment. I know you probably weren't exactly expecting a response this long, and that it was completely unsolicited, but I hope that it helps in some way.

Nothing but love,
Tyrannosaurus