mvminer reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100%% of the Item
FINALLY a decent piece of poetry for me to review! Hope you don’t mind if I take my time, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting.
About your “Age” question: Keep them in, they’re fine, but as you’ll see, that doesn’t mean they can’t be tweaked, cant be smoother in ways, so that they actually blend into the poem instead of them sticking out like…sore thumbs! LOL Sorry, had too :).
Anyway. Starting at the top. First line, be weary of taking (omitting) VERBS out of lines of poetry. Verbs are your backbone and with that in mind, I would put a verb in after BRAS, even it is just “Came on”—it still suggests a motion which is NEEDED in the first line of a poem this long. Get the BAll Rolling.
(oh—the title is weak, but only after reading the poem, find somethin that points to something BIGGER without spelling something obvious out for the reader.)
Quotes like the ones your using: Choose them very carefully. YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING, remember, but you have to walk to the fine line of Keeping it Interesting/Not telling the reader Too much/and remaining true to the tone. Here, you’ve chosen two. The First one presents something very ODD logically, and the second is OVERLY direct, especially in contrast. MArry the two together, keep them short.
“Forgot to notice” is flat. Try “Forgot was…” something else that SHOWS us something. Or just something more interesting langauge-wise. “I sprouted eyes and ears…” which would tell us how you became aware of what was happening before other people realized it, remember we the reader can often relate to that transition.
“Apparently he’d been good to me when I still celebrated only single digits”--that whole sentence is a mess hun. Why is APPARENTLY even in there? Definitely don’t need STILL and ONLY in the same sentence, SO WORDY. Why not bring HANDS into it early and say something like “only when I could show how old I was with my fingers”--not those exact words (im tired) But THAT IDEA.
How on earth does “Buffalo nickels” ADD to the POEM. I understand it might be personal to you, but ITS LOST ON US and therefore Random and therefore Not Quality writing. TIE IT IN. or Toss it out.
Slapped in the parking lot scene: I’m afraid, the way it is, you’re not going to garner much sympathy with that unless you give us some indication of how “uncalled for” it was. I mean, a sixteen year old girl, I can imagine there’s many situations where a father would not be condemned for slapping his daughter. The way it is We are Always going to wonder “Well…what’d you do?”
Promise scene: I’d make it a little smoother and shorter, such as “By 16 a broken “promise I won’t tell your mom honey” had me vowing… (we get the point)
There’s only so long you can keep the read WITH the sentence when you’re sticking quotes and stuff into it, keep it as short as possible so that we can still read it WITH ONE NATURAL BREATH.
Not even if every sentence started “I’m sorry…”;—If you’re not going to continue that then put the WITH in and end it properly, plus the whole Ellipses followed by a semi-colon is just Weird.
“Not even if every sentence started with ‘I’m sorry…’/At 18 the memory…” is how I think it should/would run better.
“Had been MOVED OVER”—Come on! You can’t do better than that? You’re trying to convey the emotion that comes with seeing your father cheating with “MOVED OVER”???
I like “Then 24 came and the ambulance stood me…” better. Once again, smooths it in.
I’ll stop there, too tired. It is a decent piece, the reason i’m willing to write so much is that it HAS POTENTIAL to be REally Good. LIke THE ENDING is Really good. Like it a lot. Don’t mean to sound so critical with all the other stuff. Just tryin to help. Take care.
M.
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