Clinging to Hope

Hey Rosan,

Great concept poem. You've got a lovely, smooth-flowing narrative here and I appreciate your efforts in rhyme, I felt it was pretty seamless, nothing really stuck out as obvious or forced, which is great. Also thought it and helped with the movement and pacing of the piece, it hardly felt like a 9-stanza piece at all, you kept it light and crisp and not at all heavy or bogged down with too much unnecessary fluff, which is rare and great to see.

Of course, I haven't read any of your other pieces yet, but I'll definitely keep an eye out -I think you've got rhyming down pretty well - if you haven't already and you want to go further with it, I recommend playing with your line breaks (what happens if you build rhyme in the middle or beginning of lines, instead of at the end of the line?) and playing with assonance rhymes (so instead of obvious rhymes kid/did, explore: did, live, bridge, crib) by implementing these, it might help make a more bland and tried approach, into more shocking and innovative lines. I see that you've already got sprinkles of that in some of your lines such as adorned/formed in that 5th stanza, it'd be cool to see what poems you can create if you were to focus on it

Another tried and true way to editing this piece and any others in the future is to watch out for repetitive or superfluous statements. This goes along with keeping the piece crisp and precise, but also by cutting these lines out, you have more room and space to add more interesting things such as imagery and metaphor.

So an example:

They gave him a bud
dried out and adorned.
He looked at it pleased
as happiness formed.

Here, "looked at it pleased" --- and "happiness formed" are expressing the same thing. Say it once, say it right. Looking at the flower makes him happy. The trouble with rhyme schemes is that you run into this problem a lot, where people repeatedly say the same things in different ways in order to maintain the rhyme scheme. While it's understandable, as rhyming in 9 stanzas and maintaining that is not an easy task -- it does provide weaknesses in the piece. Trying assonance rhyming or near rhymes may give you more freedom to use a whole variety of words that you can use to further expand your idea with new and interesting lines.

He kept it with him
hoping to cope,
to remember the day
he was given new hope.

Here is the same thing as above. "Hoping to cope" and "given new hope" express much of the same ideas. Check out http://www.rhymezone.com if you haven't yet, I used to use it often as a great tool for helping me pool together rhyme possibilities in my lines.

Anyway, these are just some quick things that I've noted that are more along the technical side of poetry. Content-wise, I thought it was a really interesting and heartwrenching story and we see it too often on the news stories about abandoned or neglected children -- the sea of blood line at the end, I don't know how much relevance this is to you -- but it totally reminded me of Dexter :3 Which is all too cool. So yeah, an interesting story - I love the idea - possibly one way to improve your content is to improve your techniques in imagery. Specific images: more close to home, more tantalizing, more personal -- but also more words. General images: can be short and crisp, but add distance and vagueness in exchange for commentary and idealism.

General images such as child/bud (instead of for example: chrysanthemum leaves / or chubby toddlers) make for overarching sweeping commentaries which can be useful, but not very interesting -- and they put distance between the poem and the readers.

A good rule of thumb is to mix it up. You can still write poems that provide commentary on life in a general sweep -- but also mix in some specific images in the right places, for maximum effect! so that the readers have a chance at connecting with the piece. An example of this would be the bud -- you've mentioned in throughout this poem, and it's an important symbol - but what kind of bud is it? A bud can be anything. But the moment you mention something specific like: red cactus buds -- all of a sudden that brings a picture to a place/color/texture/feel/mood/tone/atmosphere, etc.

Hopes this help!

~ as always, Audy