Young Writers Society

Hmm I'm not sure your editions do anything for it. It still has the same problems the first draft did.

Hey! Sorry it's been so long. I'm here.

This is nice. Really nice. I am still drooling over your description of the watermelon. Ryds has already given an in-depth technical review, so I'll take a different tack.

This is a bit of an Ikea poem. A lot of great bits that aren't quite fitting together properly. Heather is right; disconnection, fragmentation that sort of thing. Sometimes it works. This is not one of those times. But as I said, Ryds covered that one.

There is one other problem. It took me a few reads to put my finger on it, but I eventually figured it out. It's so impersonal. It's a beautiful scene, but it's like looking at a picture in a gallery rather than seeing it in real life. The audience is very much outside the piece. The problem stems from the fact that (for the first four stanzas at least) there are no pronouns. There is nothing to indicate who is speaking to or about whom. The reader has to piece it together themselves. While ambiguity can be a clever technique, you have to give your reader something to go on, otherwise it remains inaccessible. No one likes intellectualism.

You're close, man. You really are. Why paint me a picture of a landscape when you could just take me there and show me?

Le K.

Hi! Alright so you have some very powerful images here but there's a lot I'm not sure about, mostly your flow. I'll try to point out what I can and hopefully be of some use to you

Stanza One: You start off with a line that's disconnected and vague and you continue on that way. Later the disconnections work because they help build up emotion, but in this first stanza they don't. They make it too difficult to be drawn into the poem and you should instead strive for a slightly firmer foothold before you shake things up. Something as simple as a 'the' at the beginning of the first line would make a lot of difference.

I'm not sure about 'early-roughened' because it's awkward in the mouth. I like what it's saying, but it isn't easy to read. I also don't like 'coated in the coughings' because it's trying too hard for that alliteration and ends up suffering because of it. I'd suggest 'brushed' would be a stronger verb and it would tie in nicely with the plosives of the next line. Maybe 'brushed in the leavings' or 'brushed in the diseases'.

Stanza Two: This is too fragmented, you need to use a few more linking words. The movement from image to image is confusing enough without making the transition jerky too. Maybe an 'of' at the beginning of line four, I think that would make this a much easier to read stanza. Other than that, not much to comment on. Your verbs are a little vague for my liking, choosing to give emotion - forgotten/ stubborn - to the doll rather than scenery. I really enjoyed the dust and the prickly grass in the first stanza, that gave a much better sense of run-down and neglect through the images it presented. Show us that the doll is forgotten, rather than telling us: maybe it's missing an eye, thread-bare, road stained.

Stanza Three: This was very confusing! You switch too suddenly to somewhere else entirely, to a mother and a kitchen and you leave your reader behind, still standing on the dusty road. There needs to be more indication that this is a flash back and that the girl is thinking. I also wonder if we couldn't have a few more hints of what's going on in the present before we touch on the past. I get the idea that she's run away from home but I'd like more certainty.

I'd also like less fragmentation. You can be vague and snap-shot like without having to cut out half your words and make the flow awkward. Instead, you could have something like:

Wood on wood, a rusted hinge slams
and becomes mother clattering plates.
Wedges; pink, white green
and the crunchy cold
of something soft
down her throat.

Stanza Four: Nothing to pick apart here, very nice.

Stanza Five: Again, you want to be less fragmented and I'm confused. In my experience salt doesn't make anything sweeter. It's why I don't like salt very much. I have this huge sweet tooth and salt always adds a bitter edge to dishes so I prefer to use pepper to make it spicy or paprika and sweet chillie if I want it to have a sweet flavour. You lose me on the main point of your poem because honestly, I fail to agree with you on salt being sweet, which very much makes the end a no-worker for me as well.

Stanza Six: I like this return to the earlier scene and the salt connecting both of them. That's nicely worked in and it makes for a solid stanza.

Stanza Seven: As I said above, this doesn't work for me because salt isn't sweet. I think you might need to re-think the set up.

Overall

I love the imagery you have here but it feels too disjointed at the moment and there wasn't a clear enough storyline. Even if we set the salt issue aside for now, what have we learned about this girl? We don't know why she's alone or why she's on the road or how much time has passed. You don't want to give all your story away in the poem, but there should at least be hints of whether this is a child who has run away from home or a child who has lost her home. I'd like to see some sense of setting so we know where to place her, on the road of course, but going where and coming from where? What's the rest of the story?

That should give you something to think about for now, but if you have any questions, do feel free to ask! I'm happy to expand on parts or explain myself better if there's anything you're unsure about,

Heather xxx

Wow, that was a good poem. It had a beautiful ryhthm to it and it has very vivid imagery. It was so nice that I personally cannot see anything wrong with it. Like StoryWeaver already said, I would've liked punctution but I've already had your reasons explained.

My favourite lines were the last ones, they seemed very powerful and it was a great way to summarise the poem. Great job!

Deanie x




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I really like this, it reads like a story and has a really genuine and true feeling to it...based on a real situation, perhaps? In any case, it had a great flow and was beautifully-written. Honestly, I don't even want to critique it; it's virtually flawless anyway. Part of me was longing for punctuation, but I think that's a style preference more than anything else.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver