Comment from lightink

Excellent

Mickey, there's something about just casually rewriting your sonnet in a day or so that makes me pissed! ;) It's like a mockery of how hard I worked on mine! Bad boy! Joke aside, I can't believe you actually did this!
While the first one almost promotes living in denial, the second one is much more hopeful. It's like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde wrote them. :). I prefer the message of the second one! I also enjoyed the extended use of enjambment. Apparently, Gloria is a good influence! Excellent writing!

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from doggymad

Excellent

Great work Michael, this work resonates with me as we are going through a very strange phase of weather here.

So far we have had three hurricanes, relentless rain, and today snow that wasn't even forecast.

Best of luck with the compilation

hugs

Freda

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from Barb Hensongispsaca

Excellent

Oh nice. and I cant even do one.lol
it is the end soon. I told people that we cant take all the stuff out of the mines and not fill them up. All it takes is one shift and domesday will act like dominos

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from MAMGALAM

Excellent

A poem created with the title....
A title created with the poem...
Wonderful work...feeding the thought...
Beautiful thought....more beautifully worded and most beautifully presented...congrats ...

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from Jay Squires

Excellent

How I do admire your energy and your charge into the fray with these two poems.

You have evolved (so this unpoetic ear says) to quite a poet, Mikey. Your two poems here answer the challenge so well.

If everyone accepted the problem we inherited and contributed to with the feistiness of your challenge we would soon have solutions on the table to correct it.

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from kiwisteveh

Excellent

Mikey, as you know, I went through the process of writing one of these two, so I know how extraordinarily difficult the task is - in fact I am still struggling with mine, since I am supposed to edit the last two lines to fit better with the next stage of the task....

I see a clear difference in quality between your first and second piece,

The first one, though bleaker, reads much more smoothly and, to my mind, is more natural in expression. I like the energetic opening using direct speech. Hopefully the final line shall never come to pass. The only confusion I have is that the ending makes it clear that man has gone, yet immediately before that you have the 'On the Beach' scenario of sitting waiting for the inevitable end.

In the second sonnet, you seem to have struggled much more with the demands of the acrostic. 'Incites', for example, seems to be a word that you probably wouldn't have used if you didn't have to start that line with an 'I'

The meter is also not as strong - line 5 in particular seems short of a syllable or two. Also 'teemed' seems wrong (I would expect 'teeming'

Better get back to mine if I'm to post it today.

Steve

 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

Comment from Phyllis Stewart

Excellent

These are both excellent acrostics and good sonnets, and I have nothing to say about the technical aspects. I do have a thought, tho. If the temps rise five or six degrees and the seas rise four feet, as they predict might happen, humanity will be unaffected. Folks will just have to move out of Florida, which will become a bunch of islands, and other places that will become part of the ocean. But that certainly doesn't mean the end of civilization! People are panicking about nothing. Personally, I would not mind one bit losing half of CA and all of NYC and other east coast places. We can surely do without New Jersey! LOL! :)

Actually, the virgin soils of Siberia and northern Canada will grow a lot of crops that they cannot produce now, while the current US wheat and corn fields could be used for a different crop or more range for livestock. Different is not necessarily worse. :)

Besides, there is no way we can change the course of climate change. The manmade part is three percent! It warms and cools every few decades/centuries... a natural cycle. People lived in the Ice Age and survived. I'm sure we can survive a bit more summery weather. THat's preferable to the opposite, I think.

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 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

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reply by the author on 12-Dec-2015

Jeez. That could be the start of a campaign in FAVOR of global warming!!! HAHAHA! "Do we really need New Jersey?". I for one would love to see a little ocean along with all this sand I wake up to every day. You DO have a point. :)) mikey

reply by Phyllis Stewart on 12-Dec-2015

So you're in S. CA?

By the way, I edited my review and added to it... don't know which version you read.

reply by the author on 12-Dec-2015

I read the first version I think. Interesting info in the revised. Makes sense.
Actually I'm in the Mojave Desert, so I stand to benefit from the situation. :))

Comment from rama devi

Excellent

Second review

Thanks for letting me know about your changes. I'm exhausted (blurry eyed and anemic) so can't re-read right now but I believe you, of course! :-))


First review (FOUR stars)


Wonderful work, dear Mikey! I love the double focus of this, each with the same acrostic message. Very powerful and effective. Superb rhyming and near-flawless meter in both sonnets, with subtle voltas and powerful closing lines (each beginning with YES--love that!). There are some issues with ease of read (punctuation and enjambment) as well as scansion. All are minor but, added up (as there are many), I must deduct a star. Happy to upgrade if revised...let me know.



NOTES


Scary but possible--and well voiced lines:

Recov'ry's dream will never be our fate.
The time has passed to heed the urgent call.


Love this emphasis on past tense. Note one spag suggestion (optional):

Humanity claimed triumphs bold and grand.
Someday(,) perhaps(,) our story will unfold.

POIGNANT LINE:
For surely there's some hint we walked this land.

POWERFUL:
Is not a single word left to be told?

*This needs commas for smooth read:

Now sit by shaded tree enjoy the breeze.

Now, sit by shaded tree, enjoy the breeze.

Not sure about using WELL twice in a row here:

All seems as though life's well; why worry so?
Leave well enough alone now, if you please.

Maybe try:


All seems as though life's fine; why worry so?
Leave well enough alone now, if you please.

Love the voicing here...but why the question mark?--

Don't spin, you worried few, your tales of woe?

Love the closing two lines--so dramatic, powerful and effective:

All's hushed the Earth turns on in endless blight.
Yes, man has gone-- we died without a fight.


This line needs punctuation, IMHO:


All's hushed the Earth turns on in endless blight.

Suggest:

All's hushed; the Earth turns on in endless blight.

or


All's hushed--the Earth turns on in endless blight.

or


All's hushed. The Earth turns on in endless blight.


SUPERB opening line and shift in tone and 'tense' from past to present laced with hints of potential hope:

Eventually(,) we will have gone too far


Well voiced, with superb enjambment and fine rhymes:

Response is needed now--set high the bar
To clean our air and oceans. Rearrange (great rhyme with change--as they share meaning as well as phonetics)


***this line reads with awkward scansion in meter:

How fuels that we overuse do harm.

Suggest making fuels one syllable:

How fuels we overuse may do us harm.


This needs commas, IMHO, for sculpting cadence and clarity:

Someday our atmosphere will thin no doubt.

Someday, our atmosphere will thin, no doubt.

Great lines:

For temperatures that rise, give great alarm
Inciting melting ice and global drought.

However, the comma is misplace, IMHO. Suggest:


For temperatures that rise give great alarm,
Inciting melting ice and global drought.


This is well voiced but awkward due to lack of clear enjambment and punctuation:

Now think instead of oceans teemed with fish
And air so clean it doesn't sting your eyes
Let forest rains return it is our wish

Deliverance from man-polluted skies.

Suggestions:


Now think instead of oceans teemed with fish
And air so clean it doesn't sting your eyes.
Let forest rains return--it is our wish:
Deliverance from man-polluted skies.


Good closing couplet--with hope in between the lines:

And let us all do everything we can
Yes, bring about a better earth day plan.

I think Earth should be capped in last line...?



Powerful post, passionately voicing an urgent message. Bravo!

Warmly, rd




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 Comment Written 12-Dec-2015

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reply by the author on 12-Dec-2015

I'm so delighted you found this first!!! I made every change. It reads sooooo much better now. I capped both "Earth" and "Day" in the last line as it is an actual annual event. I'm so pleased you enjoyed this. What a great and worthy project. I like to see people rise up for a good cause. It stirs my old bones. :)) Thank you so much. mikey

reply by rama devi on 12-Dec-2015

Ah yes--capping Day too is important there. I failed to notice that! Glad you liked the suggestions. Stirs my bones too! I did not feel like writing and had to force my entry (thus, not my best work, as my muse has her own timing for things!) but I am glad to participate in this because of the cause's important and urgency.

On the way to re-review.

Whew--revising so many of these today--tiring and time absorbing! I have to get off my computer for some hours. I am procrastinating working on editing for clients...something I rarely--almost never-do. :)
Love,
rd

reply by the author on 12-Dec-2015

Get some rest. There IS life outside of Fanstory. Ha! Just kidding. Of course there isn't. :))
Thanks again, mikey