Poetry / My Ghost (Analysis)

Nice work, this.
Sounds like a true story. Perhaps a current struggle.
Strange that I should read this now. I have a friend who is going through a similar “ghost” story. She doesn’t live too far from you either.

I am not sure what it is about your grammar that is troubling you. Aside from a couple of contractions that did not have an apostrophe I didn’t have any fault with that part at all. I put the ones I spotted below.

He always said hed
that hes never
that hes still

What I would suggest is that you try to eliminate some of the repetitive phrasing. Examples:

I’ve tried to say
I’ve tried to hate
I’ve tried to be

You might also consider limiting the use of the first person “I” in places. There are some sentences that have “I” or a variation 4 times.

This is a really good piece. Hope I get to see what you do with it.
Oh, and you are right, I think, candor and truth are excellent ghost eradicators. LOL

I actually didn’t realize I was reading poetry…it does need some structure and it will be more effective.  It does sound like stream of consciousness right out of your brain, which is fine but then you would benefit from going back and cleaning it up so that the reader can have some sense of clarity.  The thoughts and the feelings are there and are nice but would be so much more powerful as poetry if it really read like poetry.  I recommend trying to decide what kind of poem this is and creating a basic structure and working from there, maybe expressing your thoughts more concisely.

i really liked this piece. i work in a place for ex-prisoners and homeless men, often with past addictions, and the place is called the house of genesis (new beginnings). but i could really relate myself to this ghost character, and you write in a way that is easy for others to relate to, which is powerful. and i dont think it matters that you dont check punctuation, i like the flowing nature of it – break the rules of grammer and convention, as long as it is clear(ish) to others. my advice is that you keep writing!

if i was going to relate my beliefs, i would say that being born again is the only way to overcome old cycles, or ghosts. (but i wouldnt want to put you off!)

nice work

You’ve got a good subject. This could be very esoteric and mysterious with some dialogue in it. You know conversation between you and the ghost. It seems to me to be a prologue to a short story. Maybe poetry if you consolidated the words and wrote in iambic pentameter.I revise my stuff all the time. Good luck

My primary point of contention would be structure and presentation.  As it is put forth here on the page, though it reads with the passion of a poem, it’s prose style and presentation makes me wonder if it shouldn’t be considered ‘flash fiction’ or some variant instead.  To increase the readability of this (for your audience’s sake), consider breaking the paragraphs up into stanzas and the sentences into lines.  Create, through the use of presentation, the flow that the words have yet are stifled through the almost short story presentation.  Break it up on the page as it flows when you speak it aloud.  Just that presentation alteration will significantly increase the impact by your controlling the reader’s flow and rhythm of information.  Again, as formatted here, it feels like it should be classed much differently.

I understand the technique which you state in your notes, but for the sake of review, once the work has materialized and is free from your head, pay attention to the form in which it has appeared before you and consider your reader.  I have ignored (at your request) the grammatical errors, but one point of advice which goes hand in hand with the presentational format (and thus flow) is, while you go over the raw words and arrange them as they best fit, therein is the opportunity to correct the other.  It makes it more difficult to read when one has to decipher the hidden code of misspelled words.

Subject wise, I both understand and enjoyed…a creative portrayal of an interesting theme.  Again, it would have significantly more impact with purposeful presentation.  Please inform me should you do so…I would love to feel what impact this has the potential to carry.

I have to be honest – it’s kind of rambly.  It took a couple of reads to really “get it” and I’m still not sure I did.  I like the concept, whichever way you go with it, and there a couple ways this could go. Is this ghost a part of yourself, or the memory of a real person that’s gone now, but you can’t shake the emotional memory of him?  If this was clearer, I’d have an easier time empathizing. As it is, it didn’t really draw me in. But it definately has the potential to do so, with some objective “cleaning.”