Comparative Poetry Drafts

Working on poetry is tough. It's often thankless work that most people read and end up scratching their heads over. It elicits responses like "It's nice" or "Sound's pretty," which amount to little more than nothing. I don't expect a Freudian dissection of the work and there is no right answer, but from now on, non-readers of poetry, make your best efforts to focus on a specific—if only one—facet of a poem that will give the artist the satisfaction of a valuable comment toward improvement.

Below are two drafts of a poem I wrote for my seminar in poetry. The first is what I handed in to be workshopped, and with the help of my peers' excellent critiques, I revised it to the poem below the first for submission into my end-of-semester portfolio. Compare and contrast and let me know what you all think of the changes.

Raconteur

Setting craftsman, you crosshatch revelation

quilts for been-theres and wistful savants.      

Pages pop with organic glow, an ebony clarity

pixelated dreamers take into their wisdom chambers.

You serve tonics marked joy, grief, and misery

mixed specially by your sensitivity for savory scribbles made

into sensory salves. Under honeycombed membranes,

a deceptively voluminous body lies waiting

for the jolt to spring forth from comatose layers.

The void's cloaked edges flake, and strips bow back and collapse

to reveal that brilliant, fanfare-confident  

Ah Ha!

My Sweet Muse

She comes without warning,

never at my behest,

to baptize my blotched mind

in sensory salves marked:

joy, grief, love, and rage.

Honeycombed brain chambers ooze

through to fingers and secrete

savory scribbles

in ebony purity

toward that rich, darling

Aha! moment.