Please critique my poem before I submit it to a critical poetry workshop (:?

Question

It's my first revision of an old free verse poem, to be posted in one of the 'general' forums, I'm hoping to improve it enough to post in intermediate-level, which will take work. Lots of work :/
Please let me know what you think, or if I could improve on anything!

Rainbows In Oil (v2)

It was pigment-splashed and black,
carelessly spilled, laced with mystery
and pooling on the asphalt strip.

Spectrum arcs are born
in the sky. But here, now,
swollen clouds have spritzed down,
in each droplet, a rainbow
to decorate this wanting sulphur slab.

So what of those kaleidoscopic tricksters,
taunting us from azure unknowns?
Hunters of mirage, we always return
with snares empty, and collages
complete with foggy photographs.

What of the imperfect prisms that do, indeed
refract cloudily
and perhaps less vibrantly,
still shimmering in the slick, black muck?

Answer 1

spritzed down seems a strange expression to use for rain.

'wanting' - would 'waiting' be better?

What is a 'sulphur slab'? - the pavement?

....let's stop here. My thoughts are that you have far too many metaphors, and although it is good that you have avoided cliches you seem to be straining too hard to call something other than what it is, your choices sound like 'scientific journalese'





My advise? Simplify your poetry. Describe what you see (using your normal vocabulary)



For me your best bit is 'Hunters of mirage.......photographs' this is simple, unique to you, and says something interesting about us - that we are always searching for the unobtainable, and find ourselves often with just 'foggy photographs'

Answer 2

Honestly I don't know anything about poetry, so this will probably be a waste of an answer, but I love poems and I love the sound of my own voice (even if its echoing around in my head) so here I go:



It sounds nice enough. Reading it doesn't make me think "this is sounds wrong" anywhere. I do find myself asking though why you care about these things though. What makes a rainbow in oil different than a rainbow in the sky? Is it any less illusory? Can you reach down and rub rainbow onto your hands from a puddle of oil?

I also like the thought of comparing "so what" to "what of"/"what about" in stanzas 3 and 4, but it gets a little confusing when trying to figure out how much importance or interest you have in the more humble rainbow, more especially when you describe it in the terms that you do. If I were you I would think about being less "harsh" on the oil rainbow, unless of course you want to be harsh on it, but if so, why?

Now looking at your first stanza and talking about mystery, I might suppose that you mean only to study the thing in this poem, and to ask why other people don't ask the questions you are, but if that's so, don't you think that the unpleasant descriptions you give of the oily rainbow answer that question for you? The only kind word I see is "decorate" and you use that in the context of a harsh, inhospitable environment, perhaps indeed making it more hospitable, until we get to the later verses anyway.

Answer 3

Rainbows In Oil (v3)



Pigment-splashed, spherical and black,

carelessly spilled, covered in mystery

and pooling below asphalt steam.



Spectrum arcs radiate

in the sky, high. But here, now,

swollen clouds spritze down,

each droplet a Crayola box

decorating this textured black petroleum slab.



What of those kaleidoscopic tricksters,

taunting us from life’s azure expanses?

Hunters of mirage, we return

with snares empty, and collages

assembled from clichéd photographs.



What of optically imperfect prisms

who refract cloudily, imperfectly

yet still violently aggregate

in the textured, black-sheen muck?