Morgan
Catch by Langston Hughes
Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
Curved
Beneath his arm.
Being a fisher boy,
He’d found a fish
To carry—
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.
My Take::
Fetch
Tall man came
Carrying his desires
On the bridge of his back
And those desires
Had its weight
Wrapped
Around his neck.
Being a humble man.
He established a dream
To carry-
His desires
Near death
To grow.
I think you have the layout right, but I feel like you gave us really big abstractions, whereas Hughes is being very concrete. You have this big boy, who is a fisher with a mermaid on his arm and he is going to marry her because it satisfies two of the things he want in life. What got me about Langston’s poem was how causal it is introduced that the this guy, just known as the fisher- returns with a mermaid on his shoulder and he is going to marry her. Questions pop up into my head: how was this dude smooth enough to talk a mermaid into coming back with him? Or did he just catch her? Are there more mer-people, who will this one of their females? Etc. You want the reader of your poem to be asking these questions after words, in my reading. Try something you never thought you’d have but then got it. Like for me I waited two years to get a new computer and I’m not complaining I have it, but the hype of getting it was just gone all of a sudden, kind of like once this guy got what he wanted.
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