First Reader

Hey Tinydancer,

This is a touching piece. I like what you did there with the glasses, I find that so often when we mourn a person, we mourn all the small things. All the little details that struck us, as if each of us are just a composite of small little things, and as if in remembering those things we might not forget, or we might keep a small part of them.

I think that's beautiful.

Let's see if we can improve the writing.

They are alone
Apart from you
They have never been that before

I try to picture your eyes behind them
It%u2019s true


It%u2019s true

I would cut the above out. It's reads sort of like a prologue or preamble, where we don't really know what we're looking at yet, and there's no real value in it, and we don't need it. Take us there directly ~ "Eleven years ago..."

Now this piece is beautiful as a whole. It can also be better/improved upon as everything can. This is moving, but it does little to engage with me. It captures my sympathies, but not my empathy. I'm looking at the side-lines, but I'm not in it. Images you may have, but how do the weight of the glasses feel? How does the earl grey taste now? How did the speaker's mum smell? Now, these aren't really questions I'm dying to know the answer to or anything, but I want to feel the experience of the moment along with the speaker. Images are more than words - they are five senses.

You%u2019d adjust your glasses to read

This line here is so important, but it gets lost in the sea of narrative. Again, the same with your last piece, your lines flow beautifully, and you build a strong narrative, and there are emotions here. But clean up the language a little more, play with your breaks. This piece is a diamond in the rough, it's got a lot of gems in it, but it needs polishing. Express the idea in the best way, so that each line bleeds with time and care and love.

It's fine if you say:

"Dad snapped a picture" ---- but, everybody says that. We gloss over words and expressions like these, just like we gloss over things like "the grass is green" Try for a new turn of phrase. What about.... Dad snapped a memory. Or to keep with your narrative style, "the light of the camera washed the room" Go back through these lines and really try to zero in on the moment.

I wrote more on breaks and on poetry in general that could help.

That being said, thanks for writing and sharing this poem. Whether the events of this piece happened to you or not is not important, I find this does have a lot of emotion behind it, and a lot of authenticity too. I can feel the raw and personal factor of the poem and it aches. It aches hard, and I'm glad I've read it an I'm glad you've shared it.


~ as always, Audy