Small Losses and Straws

I cried when my Nina Simone CD broke
because that’s what I am
just worse than the CD
now I can’t hear her voice
her blues gave me a rich man’s choice
now I’ve got those blues worse than I could ever choose
I felt like putting on the Sex Pistols and smashing shit up
that won’t do, all my stuff is already so used
I guess I’ll just settle for Billie Holiday


First off, I love your title. It is intriguing, and immediately engages the reader to want to know what you are saying. I am assuming the “straws” is in reference to picking the short straw ? I am going to go on that assumption for now ok ?

I want to show you something real quick here. These two lines

“because that’s what I am
just worse than the CD”

do little for me in terms of clarifying the previous lines, or the ones following. They come off as filler really Hun. Lets look at the piece without them.  I am also going to add a small amount of punctuation, and capitalization. Because here is the deal on that. As a reader, I can deal with either if it does NOT hinder the piece. For me, this one is hindered by their absence. There are places where your sentences run together when read aloud. ( I always read poetry aloud. ) such as here

“her blues gave me a rich man’s choice
now I’ve got those blues worse than I could ever choose”

I am also going to remove CD for the same reasons I mentioned earlier.

So here is the piece edited slightly  -

I cried when my Nina Simone broke.
Now I can’t hear her voice.
Her blues gave me a rich man’s choice
Now I’ve got those blues worse than I could ever choose.
I felt like putting on the Sex Pistols and smashing shit up.
That won’t do, all my stuff is already so used
I guess I’ll just settle for Billie Holiday.

The voice in this has become far clearer to me now. There are hints of such things as personal emotions, generational attitudes, class ideologies, etc . In just that little bit of editing you have created a solid first draft in my opinion. And yeah.... you created it. I didn't. I have barely altered it.

Now the last thing I will say on this piece brings me back to the title. I would love to see that great title incorporated more into the piece. I will offer a suggestion how to do that. Do it with the verbs. I will give you an example

I snapped small when my Nina Simone broke.
Her voice hides its length from me.
Her blues once harvested my choices
and bettered my odds.

This example is not a perfect one, but hopefully you get my point. The image of the straw is embedded into the piece without taking away from your original tone of voice. This technique of writing is called compression. You are compressing your thoughts with the image, making them one. It is very effective when done well.

I will let this stand for now. If you want to pursue this ? Let me know. I think you have a good piece to work on here.  :)

Thanks so much for your valued critique. I believe there does need to be at least a couple changes there. It's a good amount to think about, so I'm just going to let it sit in my head for a minute. I really like the idea of an off chance some kid would read this piece and say "What's this guy's problem, why doesn't he just listen to it on his phone?" perhaps their parents would understand. Again thank you, and I'll come back to it later today most likely.