Poetry / Chimney (Analysis)

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Being a smoker myself, I liked this poem. I find this to be a cynical critique of the common life and how the speaker can’t happily participate with others. What I would suggest is diction: find more apathetic terms like “cancer stick” than “ciggie.”

I do not understand the idea that the morning cigarette “sleeps” when the first line describes coughing and smoking, I.E. being active.  This made the poem confusing for me, as it’s almost a haiku in it’s brevity and lack of information, but doesn’t really seem to fit together.

Hahah. I love the whole contemporary haiku edge. It makes me laugh. I do think, however, that if you want to do the form to make it a more obvious sort of contemporizing (ok, not a word, you get it), you could make the haiku more formal in terms of capitalization and punctuation.  Also, the last line makes it seem as though the morning ciggie is wishing day would break… so might want to make the POV more consistent. Overall, gave me a laugh and has an interesting edge.

This is a good play on the pun “smokes like a chimney.”  I like that there is a clear speaker established in this brief piece – many haikus struggle with that because this is such a restricted medium.

The reader has no trouble perceiving the speakers inner battle with the addiction and its effects.  There’s great tension created – which makes the word “ciggie” that more effective AND disturbing… it’s a pet name for a vice the speaker seemingly despises.

Pretty good haiku. My one suggestion is to replace the period at the end of the second line with a comma, assuming that the cigarette (and not you) is wishing day would break.

This tickles me despite my strenuous distaste for smoking.  You have almost made a euphemistic image of a cigarette.  Smoking in bed… tsk.  hehe

To be honest, I’m not much of an expert on poetry so I am not sure why you requested me to review it, but I will oblige. I have heard somewhere that really good poetry can say a lot with a small amount of words. I wouldn’t say this is a bad poem, but it just doesn’t do a lot for me. It doesn’t particularly hold my attention. I think that if you expanded on it, you might have better luck. It sounds like a clever beginning to a longer poem.

Strong message for such a short piece. The addiction to the stick overpowers this piece. Great write.

Ohh, there’s a pain i have seen many times in my life Chuckles took getting preggers for the 5th time for me to finally give it up perminately Whispers well i hope anyway.

This has a very powerful message to it, strong in it’s simplicity.  That being said it feel incomplete, like there should be another line after

Wishing day would break

Why do you want it to break?

What’s the purpous behind the need of the day?

Help your readers to better understand your meaning.

Try something like this

Cough, smoke, cough, smoke, cough.
Morning ciggie sleeps with me.
Heavy upon my chest, an unwanted lover.
Wishing day would break to free me.

something along those lines, it just feels like it’s missing something.  Now i’m a hopeless romantic, so i’m always going to lean towards a lover of some type but feel it out in your own way.

Great write, keep it up.

Well… it aches for more description even for it’s length.  I know that it’s a very short piece, and I like the simplicity but I think adding more sensory description would add to the potency. Thanks for sharing.

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March 21, 2008

by Shakespeare

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It’s actually a Haiku (I added it before the Haiku category was on Urbis) so the length is set.  Thanks for the review, though.

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