Hi. Here to review as requested~ (So sorry for the lateness.)
I'll make this quick.
You have a very concrete idea here; it's simple, it's sweet, and it's prosaic. What's keeping the emotions from coming through to the reader, I think, is that it's a little too prosaic, with the last line ('Bookstore boy he gladly became') standing as an example of awkward-word-shuffling that stands out amongst all the other complete sentences with the consistent subject-verb-object syntax. The deal with poetry is that, unlike prose, you have the freedom of meddling with words and clipping away at the edges because, ultimately, it is the flow of your poem that determines how well it settles into the reader's mind.
It's good that you have a solid idea of what you want to convey, and you have a neat story arc here--I think this would make a good short story, in fact, but what's pulling the quality down is that that's all there is to it--a story arc. It lacks a lot of emotion. The last stanza talks about the pride that the bookstore boy feels, but it just ... /talks/ about it, if you get my drift. A lot of the time, feelings in poetry are implied. There's nothing stopping you from 'telling' us about them, of course, but coupled with the passive voice, there's very little existing for the reader to connect with. Overall: reduce wordiness, clip unneeded parts, get rid of repetition and read this out loud to massage the awkwardness out of the flow.
Wearing a black shirt with “DYNAMIC” sewn on its back,
he treaded his way to the section where he was responsible at.
- The second line is awkward. I'd suggest rephrasing it. Maybe to something like: 'he trod his way over to where the manager had stationed him' or whatever. I think it's a little clunky even then, and my suggestion would be for us to start out with the boy at the beginning of an action rather than in the middle of one. You don't need to explain things. This is not prose, where you require a backstory for the reader to understand the present moment. It's a journey, where the readers see the bookstore boy gradually meld into his role, but it's not executed in a particularly evocative way. Incorporate some sensory imagery, stray a little from informing your reader of even the most minute details--experiment. What this needs is a rehashing. Fiddle with the idea, see if you can drag something deeper out of it.
Hope this helped. PM me if you have any questions!
Keep writing!
~Pomp c:
Points: 27
Reviews: 396
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