Poem For Hot Days

On Monday, when I came home, I dropped
all my stuff on the floor. I went into the kitchen, got a water bottle, one of those holey
containers of blue berries.
Put the water down, let 3/4 a cup of water rinse
the berries. Then I brought them into the living room, where the windows were open and the fan was on.
I put them on a folded paper towel, so the table wouldn't get wet, stain. I ate two handfuls (3 each) and threw away
the paper towel, put the container back in the fridge. As I stood there, knees bent, sliding
berries back on the shelf I thought
"I just wasted a paper towel, all that water
while people in Kenya are starving"
(as ma would have said) I shrugged, I'll save
the world tomorrow, it's too hot today.




I actually just wrote this on something that really happened, so it's very rough, but I like the concept, so critique away, please. Also, is holey (as in full of holes) a word?

EDIT: Anyway to get it so it doesn't look double spaced?

Wow, this is definitely very raw indeed. I understand that though because you said yourself that it's a first draft. So my overall impressions are as follows.

Firstly this struck me as more prose than poetry. You're concepts are good- but you tell us a story rather than convey your thoughts and feelings about an event/emotion through the structure of poetry i.e. stanzas. Although this could work, with some serious revision, as free verse as well.

The description I quite liked. By quite a vivid image of berries you're definitely on the right track-readers love details like that. But I can't stress this enough. Show us, my good friend. Perhaps even cut the bit about you coming home from school and begin at the rising of the berries? Use the theme of waste through your mother coming in and yelling at you about it? I know, bad examples but I'm just trying to get you in the right frame of mind for this.

So, three things

1. Show more- i.e. describe your concepts more fully and use poetic devices

2. Cut the over description

3. Make this have some kind of a structure

As for the double spaced thing at the end, I'm not sure, but PM one of the mods and they should have an answer.

Best wishes,

Eimear

Hello!

Eimear wrote:By quite a vivid image of berries you're definitely on the right track-readers love details like that.

I commend you for that, but it's not so much the over description, as it is the exactness, that gets me.

It seems a little unnatural. If I was washing blue berries, I wouldn't know I used "3/4 a cup."
The other detail I didn't like isn't as bad. It's just that if you say 2 handfuls, you don't need to say 3 each.

Muteman wrote:As I stood there, knees bent, sliding
berries back on the shelf I thought
"I just wasted a paper towel,

As I stood there, knees bent, sliding berries back on the shelf, I thought,

You need a comma after shelf, because it's like saying, "As I slid the berries back on the shelf, I thought..." And, then, you need a comma after thought, just like you'd need a comma after I said in I said, "I just wasted a paper towel..."


McMourning

A;right, good stuff, thanks. I think I'll slice and dice it today. Maybe throw in a nice metaphor or whatever they're called. I'm just glad I got something down, usually when something strikes me as cool, I never have a pen or paper.

First, as to your questions ^_^ Yes, holey is a word, meaning that something is full of holes, as you said. Though, even if it wasn't a word, you used it in context so that we know what it means. Sometimes, that's what poetry's all about. For your second question, all poems (and other literary works as well) are automatically formatted to be double spaced, so there's no way to change this. If you have questions about this, let me know and I'll try to find the announcement in the Information Desk for you.

I like the almost complicated simplicity of this. What I mean is that all the directions for rinsing and eating and watching the bluberries are so specific, but they're all describing something that, in actuality (eating blueberries) is very simple, as is the conclusion at the end.

One little nitpick: "I just wasted a paper towel, all that water while people in Kenya are starving." Did you mean "... paper towel and all that water..."? It seems strangely worded. Also, saving paper towels and water wouldn't help anyone who's starving because people eat neither water or paper towels. If it was something like "... when people in Kenya are in the middle of a drought..." or something (I don't know whether they are or not, and it doesn't fit with the poem anyway). I don't even know if that's something that really matters. I just thought it might be something important for you to notice and think about and decide for yourself.

Happy writing! ^_^