mike -
at first i wasn't sure exactly what you were doing with this, but it quickly became a very clear narrative. i think the idea of bringing the moon home as a token of love, of reconciliation with your wife was a great way to twist the picture. your writing is clear and straight forward - it has a very solid rhythm that skips a beat every now and then so it doesn't become monotonous. i think my main issue was that you sort of stayed surface deep. you outlined this problematic marriage and your chance at rekindling, using an array of literary devices (like the outer space portion) but never actually gave us glimpse INSIDE the marriage.. there was no gritty detail. even a line or two that humanized your characters and made me feel for you a little more emphatically. so much relies on relativity man. you have to break out of the purely allegorical and flesh out some character. i mean, you mastered this verse at a certain level. in the way you performed this type of interpretation, there's not much else to be done in order to make it much better. now you have the potential to dig deeper, and breathe more life into a piece so there's more than 2 sides to it. more than the face of the moon, and the face of your lady. like i said man.. for what it was, you pulled this off skillfully in a way that was fun to read. i really have no complaints on it. but just telling you that won't teach you anything.. and we've all got something to learn..
frank -
when i started reading the quote i was afraid you had taken this in the exact direction as mike. i was wrong. your tribute to michael jackson was, again, a really awesome way to push this pic to it's limits imo. i think what made this battle great was the vastly different approaches to the same image. probably my favorite aspect of these types of matches - assigned topics - is discovering how each writer sees the image for themselves. what it speaks or means to them. a chord it struck. obviously mike had a more interpersonal relationship-driven take on it, while you immediately saw the moon as a symbol for the legacy michael jackson. i mean it's dope man. i would have never thought to take it there and was actually really impressed with your execution. it was multi-faceted and sort of sporadic in classic franklin style. it was melancholy and morose.. it was mourning. it was happy memories and bittersweet laughter.. the summer-day flashbulb memory kind of had me stuck for a minute, because i remember the exact moment i found out myself that summer. there were certain portions, like the paris estate / masquerade bit, that i re-read a few times just because i wound up liking it so much. you have a repetitive tone in much of this piece that did, admittedly, grow a bit tiring because of the lack of your diversity in word-choice, but i felt like you were hammering in a point to some degree and in that sense it was effective. you employ strange devices-like-this-one and others, although its just something i expect from you now. that whatever you produce will be unexpected, but very profound in an odd, harlem subway sort of way. i almost felt closer to mike after reading this as ridiculous as that sounds. maybe it was just how you wrote it that struck a chord. anyway - i hope you continue to show up cause this is going somewhere.
while i thoroughly enjoyed both verses for different reasons,
my vote goes to Frank.
great battle guys. keep doing what you're doing.
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