The Figure Skater

An short experiment with imagery, somewhat based of my experience in fifth and sixth grade as a competitive figure skater. Hope you enjoy.

on the ice, you're different all together.
you're as lovely as a springtime rose,
as graceful as a snow-white swan.
I watch you leap and twirl, make line-drawings in the ice.
how do you stand the frigid ice-rinks
wearing nothing but a sequined dress?
no matter -- they're beautiful on you.
and you slip off your skates, change into your jeans,
and pour over exams, you're never truly happy,
not until you're on the ice,
that which is your home.
you've told me your secret desire:
you want to go the Olympics, bring America the gold.
When you do, I want to be there watching;
you're a lovely figure skater.

Hi, I am certainly no poet so I can only give you suggestions. This was really good and I saw imagery so you got what you were going for. A few of the lines could be improved upon though. I think you could make the poem a lot simpler by taking out bits of words and phrases. You would make it less like a description and more like short descriptions.

Elinor Brynn wrote:I watch you leap and and twirl, make line-drawings in the ice.

You have two 'ands' here. I think though that you could get rid of the 'ands' all together here. It would almost make it smoother. This line interests me because of the first part. I watch you leap. You can read that in one breath or take a pause. I watch, you leap.

Elinor Brynn wrote:how do you stand the frigid ice-rinks
wearing nothing but a sequined dress?

I thinks these two lines just have to many syllables in them. Maybe too much description? Does,

how do you stand the frigid rinks
wearing just a sequined dress?

I'm not sure. But, it seems to flow smoother. It goes off the tongue easier or something.

Elinor Brynn wrote:you've told me your secret desire:
you want to go the Olympics, bring America the gold.
When you do, I want to be there watching;
you're a lovely figure skater.

"I want" just doesn't seem right. It dampens the mood. Though the person probably wouldn't be there for the readers I think "I will" would be a better choice of words. Kind of like singing you should try to hit the note above a high note so you hit it on the dime and the one below a low note. You have to make a poem show full emotion. 'I want' just isn't the same as 'I will."

This poem actually brought emotion in me and the last skated was on a tiny pond years ago with my brothers skates so that wasn't the reason.Thanks for the great read.

Hope I helped,

A. S.

Good work but its a little bit short... Better improve it and make it a bit big...
Keep up the good work...

Personally, I am a figure skater which makes me a lot more critical of it. The ideas are there, they're nice but where's the passion? As a skater, I've always thought there's more to skating than that. There will be the drama, the social aspect of it, the passion, the drive, the frustration, the perfectionism every skater has etc. I just think you left some aspects of skating out of it. You said you were a figure skater from 5th to 6th grade. That might be why it's different, since you were younger it probably felt simpler. Personally, I sort of miss that, when it was only about the skating. That's why your poem felt a little black and white to me. However, you did a very good job with it.

Okay Eli,

We’ve already talked about this and I know as it’s a personal poem you don’t want to be attacking it too thoroughly in the change area. As such, I’m thinking I’ll instead address the basic areas you want to look at improving. You have the base here, a solid concept and a good narrative to work with, where you’re falling is in the execution of your idea. I’m going to be giving a lot of suggestions here and all of these will be coming from the perspective of the reader. Like writing other mediums, writing poetry is both personal and subjective, your reader is going to take out of it whatever he wants without much thought to what you actually intended. So, from there we look at your poem as a changeable, malleable beast to be tamed to your audience while at the same time trying to retain your original integrity.

It turns out what I was going to do didn’t work out for me, because I changed my mind even as I continued this critique. Your poem is lacking a subtlety that comes with emotion, connection and imagery. You have some of these elements but they’re not working in your favour at the moment and I’m hoping to pull these things in to a useful perspective for you. I’ll start with imagery, more particularly similes.

Similes: “You’re as lovely as a springtime rose” It’s sweet, it’s to the point and it’s currently entirely ineffective. We understand that roses are lovely and particularly fresh ones in the season of rebirth; spring, but what really makes them lovely? Is it the scent or the colour or the way the petals brush upward against your cheek, soft like kid gloves? You’ll notice the simile just then “soft like kid gloves” instead of a vague suggestion “lovely as”, the use of ‘soft’ here gives reference. The rose petals are soft, like kid gloves, which is why “she” is lovely, because her skin is soft like rose petals, like kid gloves, like silk. The springtime rose is vague, the lovely is vague.

I suggest expanding on your simile: “You’re as lovely as a springtime rose;/blushing pink from your centre a spiral of fabric and ice/leaving slick line-drawings./My graceful swan.” Give your poem extra depth by deepening the layers because at the same time we’re feeling more, the emotion is spiking upward, and this is certainly something we need in your poem. Using this kind of imagery, open and descriptive, allows the reader to see the events in your poem and use those images to feel for your narrator. You don’t have to rely on similes or metaphors to make this happen, instead you can just add a word here or there to spark up the poem and connect with your reader that little bit more.

You’re currently only slightly connecting with your reader. Your topic isn’t alienating and anyone can connect to this kind of poem if they want to. However, we’re not feeling what you’re giving. We’re hearing you and saying “yeah, okay. There’s ice, there’s a lady, there are hope and there are dreams. Give me more.” We want to feel it along with you; we want our hearts to ache along with yours but we’re blocked from that right now.

Now, this blockage isn’t intentional on your part, not really. Instead it comes with a lack of understanding of poetry’s workings, I think. Right now your poem could work as a very nice story and a sub-par poem, in terms of complexity. In terms of good, it’s there. What we need right now is some emotion. I know you have the emotion but the poem needs to have it as well, and right now it’s a little forced, somewhat formal for what you’re telling us.

Take your first line: “on the ice, you’re different all together.” < That’s a lot of words to explain a single – rather simple – thought. “On the ice, it’s different,” This is shorter, gets to your point and loses some of that stiffness you have going. Now I’m going to re-arrange a couple of your lines and poke them a little to see what we get.

First a new start: “On the ice, it’s different,
Your simile a little tweaked: you’re lovely, like a springtime rose;
blushing pink from your centre,
a spiral of fabric and ice
Incorporating your fourth line: leaving slick lines for me to watch.
Fifth and sixth: How do you stand in frigid rinks
in nothing but that sequined dress?
Seven onwards entirely gutted: No matter – your slip off your skates
And you’re pausing until you’re home,
Here where the secret is desire:
Olympics, American gold
and me watching.


Okay so! Entirely re-arranged by accident. But, have a look at that and consider what you think of it. I’ve re-written your poem and it’s shorter now but it’s stronger in the emotion department. We’re feeling everything in the Now: The events are faster and there’s nothing cluttering up the flow. Of course, I know how the poem is to you and you should leave it how you like, if doing this is cutting it up too much. I think your initial feelings are still there, but they may not be.

If this doesn’t work for you, feel free to hit me up again and I’ll do better with a second critique.

- Penguin.

Just noticed and thought I'd point out, since no one else has: you mean 'pore' over exams, not 'pour' as in liquid. Otherwise, great poem! Although the last line did seem a bit weak. As an experiment in imagery, "You're a lovely figure skater" seems a bit of a let-down - I'd go for a big metaphor to finish off with.