Zen King: This was one of the first times where you translated your caustic but honest Open Mic stylings, which form sort of this mismatched dull boy-CopyPat-Fig hybrid that can be extremely emotive and potent, into a topical verse. You did so by twisting the topic into your own comfort zone, which I'm not a big fan of in the grand analysis of writers but tends to work on a week-by-week basis. The take on the topic was interesting and creative, but the vulgarity picked up a bit too much. You've done that before. Basically the first half of the verse was more enjoyable. But then you closed with that great open-ended scene and really brought the verse and topic full-circle. I like how you embrace the ugliness of life.
Pent uP: You hit all the check marks, to an almost disconcerting point. For one, you seemed to simply take the narrative structure of a larger verse and compress it into a shorter verse rather than fully embracing the 16-line maximum and writing something built to shine. You withstood your limitations rather than building off them. The content was creative and effectively broached the topic, with enough visuals and enough background to feel informative. But there was no sense of urgency at the end. The end was clunky as a whole, in fact. Yet here's this verse, and it's a very good verse. The rhyme break of peak and wheel disoriented me on first read but became a charming fuckup in an otherwise very polished read. And I respect how polished this was and how creative it was and how you took a great topic that wasn't great for a short-verse format and turned it into a very good verse. And I think your verse was much more challenging and much more directly related to the topic, but I also think Zen King's verse resonated with me a bit more. The difference is he had a section, maybe five-or-so lines in the latter third, that missed and broke his earnestness into a parody. The procedural nature of your verse felt a bit programmed, but the only slip up came on a single rhyme. And I'm a man of craftsmanship.
Vote: Pent uP
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I'm just swinging swords strictly based on keyboards, unbalanced like elephants and ants on seesaws.
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