To be honest, I don't like the fact you've structured this as a poem. It'd be much better as a paragraph or something. It just doesn't work as a poem, for me.

"When we got there
all we found was the barren rusting ground;
another empty thing, among vacant lots."

That part, however, is awesome. The rest is kinda boring, to me, though that could be because of my ignorance of Wells and Bradbury's respective works of literature, Herschel and the Mariner Probe.

6.5/10, IMO.

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I quite like this! With some revision, this could make a great poem.

A few comments in-line:

When Herschel spotted distant water in
I suggest breaking after "water" rather than after a preposition, which is rather weak.

the crimson quiet orb behind the sky,
Hmm. I feel you're padding this with too many adjectives. Why is the orb quiet for instance? "Crimson" is okay, but I personally prefer "red". I haven't decided whether I like "behind the sky" yet. Do you have an explanation for this?

he sparked [in] dreams, [in] stories, life outside
Earth, in the heavens-we were not alone.
I don't understand the grammar and punctuation of this. Do you mean: "he sparked dreams, stories about life outside / [the] earth -- in the heaves, we were not alone." This makes better sense to me.

They (Bradbury and Wells) described the first
contact (read: combat), silver saucers held
a vague and bulbous, fragile gray people
with neon lasers green and dreamlike peace.
The Mariner (our answer to their absence)
a journeyer across the void to meet
at Mars, a newer face.
I like the use of parentheses here, something which I normally don't like in poetry. Clever way to introduce more information to the reader!

When we got there
all we found was [the] barren *comma?* rusting ground;
another empty thing, among vacant lots.
Great ending. I suggest more paring down: "another empty thing" says very little. How about: "all we found was barren, rusting ground - vacant lots.

My major critique has to do with your use of adjectives, which I find to be excessive. I'm not against all of them; "crimson"/red is apt and "barren, rusting" is genius because it describes so well your version of Mars: it's barren, yes, but also has that sense of an alive death (oxymoron, heh) in "rusting", something that has never been alive, but is decaying. "Bulbous" evokes a very alien image, which is good, but "vague" is overdoing it. I also like "fragile, gray" for "people", but I wish you found a way to push it to another line, or wrote it elsewhere; it's a good description, but too many adjectives on a line is excessive.

Try to make up for the loss of adjectives by using more interesting verbs.

If you're wondering why I'm going on about adjectives/modifiers so much, let me know. I'll send you some articles you might like to read.

What I really enjoyed about this poem is that sense of loneliness humans experience coupled with a desire to reach out to the rest of the universe. I love how Mars is then described as a space found often on Earth (vacant lot). The poem is rich with meaning and I know I'll be coming back to read this a few more times.

Hope you find this useful and good luck with the workshop!

Aditi

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Thanks for your critique!

This poem I also wrote for school . The assignment was simply to create a poem with a pentameter rhythm, so some of the line breaks are in odd places I wouldn't put them normally because I was trying to make everything fit.

As okay, metre. Hmph, that's still not the best way to break lines. I don't have any suggestions there, though, because I can't write metre myself. Let's what eveningdownpour says.

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a "voyager" works better than journeyer because it has the allusion to the voyager missions.

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Also voyager sounds better to me, probably cause its on the same line as void.

Thanks! That was a good idea.

(also your signature quote is cool)

you're welcome! and thanks!

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