ALChemy25 Feb 2006

No matter how beautiful your writing is (and this is some of the best formal verse I've read) if you write something this long you need to change things up a little, break the monotony. I would break up the man's speach into parts and between the parts a stanza of descriptive narrative like he then paused to go take a nap or something. Break it off into lessons(lesson 1, lesson 2 etc.). At least that way if the reader wanted to take a break they could leave when the man goes to take his nap and come back feeling like they don't have to go back over the last couple stanzas to find their place. The same way a story should have different scenes, the same way a good writer might stop part way through a long scene to go to another one and then holding your suspense conclude the former scene, that's how you should hold the reader to your poem. I think it's probably one of the hardest things to do in poetry but I think it'll be easier for someone as talented as you than it would be for most of us.