All Comments on 'The Grim Walker'

Originally the word ease was at the end of the second line, not the third line.

you know I don't know what to make of this, don't think you need...

there were some things that grabbed at me. First off, I actually liked the placement of ease it gave an emphasis that felt appropriate. What threw me here was the moving back and forth with the tense. In the first line "the rain was falling... ...when he came strolling..." and then we seem to move into the present "and there is water dripping... he is accessorising... and a truck drives past and soaks him."

I also didn't like the passive "was bouncing" instead of "bounced" or in present tense "bounces". Poetry seems so much more vibrant when the verbs are active. "...he seemed to be trying to shake off his feet." The "to be trying" is passive and the "seemed" was, in my mind, inconclusive.

I wonder if you might consider bringing the entire poem into the present and dropping the passive verb choices. Perhaps something along the lines of:

rain bounces off the road as he strolls past my home //

though strolling suggests comfort and he moves far too slowly for a man at his //

ease; //

and oddly, he trys to shake off his feet //

and his facial muscles strain too... //

maybe he shit himself and it slid into his shoes? //

who knows? //

and water drips off his nose //

and off the bill of that baseball cap //

that he accessorises with constipated determination //

and the ‘fuck the weather’ stance. //

And then a truck drives past and soaks him...

The formating here is off, I like how you centered it. The // represents line breaks.

Again... just something to think about.

Beyond the verb tense, I liked the image you portrayed, though cringed at the thought of him shitting himself I liked the juxtoposition with his constipated determination. And just I was beginning to wonder about his gait and his appearance, the poem shifts to the truck dousing him as it splashes by, explaining it all. Nicely done.

jth. : )

For example, in the first two lines: "rain was bouncing off the road when he came strolling past my home / strolling suggests comfort though; he moved far too slowly for a man at his ease;" the narrator simply tells the reader what to think about the man's walk. Poet Guy thinks this is better accomplished by trying to choose language to present an image of the walker that the reader him- or herself will conclude is, variously, ill-at-ease, uncomfortable, moving slowly, etc.

Poet Guy does not understand the reason for the centered format, but admits he is a conservative as it comes to formatting, so that may just be his prejudices in action. He was surprised to see the word "truck," though. He would have expected "lorry." Is truck the common word in Australia?