Poetry / You & Me (For Jessi)

Sadness, loss, and love are the emotions I got most clearly from this. If this is cancer he/she’s speaking of, I’d say he or she has resigned him/herself to dying. I’m sorry. On the poem, I especially liked the references to bubble gum and shoe strings. The ineffectiveness of such small tools makes more clear to me the image of a person falling into pieces--like trying to gum together the shards of a vase. I never visit graveyards--indeed I don’t think I could stand to, but those two lines about graveyards and hospitals create a picture of such loss, as if all your friends and family are gone, leaving only you and Jessi. You’re right I think—love is life. Without love, you have only death that hasn’t yet arrived. Kudos.

Mandy

The pain in losing someone is ever so evident in this piece. It makes my own heart thaw from its usual cold frozen depths to appreciate what I have now and not what coulkd be… I love this piece and believe it should be shared with the world… On a more literary note the lines seem a little mixed up on the breaks and the rythym doesnt really flow the whole waay through.

I love the way you conveyed your passion and love for this person, the sadness was real. You have a wonderful writing style, keep it up.

I would give it extra thought. Your wording was a bit confusing

I got a true feel of your relationship here; of the unsureness your feel, the fears she has, the emptiness looming close to you. I feel your love of her, your wanting to erase her “diagnosis.” I enjoyed the bits of imagery pertaining to your life that added to the sadness that can be everywhere, but it seems you kept it at a distance; like you keep it all at a distance to not feel pain. Like how you’d like “this tattoo I’m getting today/ would protect me against this ending/ even though I know it won’t”

The only critque I would have is the over usage of the word and. A little editing and this would be great.

I enjoyed this, but wasn’t blown away.  Particularly effective in the first half is the image of your lover falling apart in your hands as you try to use idiosyncrasies to keep them whole.  It speaks not only of how the mind in general works, but how we remember people we’ve lost.  that was touching

The journey of the 2nd half felt cliche to me, even with the specific details intermingled couldn’t save my attention.  The idea of siezing all the things you wanted to do because you are going to die felt calculated to me, tried and true but predictable.

A little formatting would go a long way, the current waterfall of words doesn’t suggest where one would actually break when reading this outloud.  At least I hope not as that would be torture in some sections.

The ellipses are a pet-peeve of mine.  One usually uses them to indicate left out thoughts/words or hesitations, here they are used in place of periods or dashes.

“play them love songs”—the use of “them” over “those” is clearly intentional, but it felt like a ruler on the back of my knuckles everytime I read it.

Overall, this is full of heart but needs a little shining up in my humble opinion.

koolieo!

Although I was a little confused as to who was “you ” in some of this and I was not quite sure about the “dance to them love songs”  I still couldn’t help but cry. I loved it.

I like this poem, it’s softly sad.  My only real suggestion is that you overuse ‘and’.  It is forgivable in poetry to edit out some of the ‘ands’ and let the line stand on it’s own.  ’(A)nd dance with me there too’-it would sound better if you deleted the ‘and’ and started it with dance.

I think you’ll get a better flow.  Good work.

Gut-wrenchingly tender and emotional. All great poems conjure your emotions in the reader and this piece did just that. There weren’t really any errors in terms of grammer that I could make out. This is just a really good poem.