The Love Song of Juliet

Hi, so thought I'd give you a few comments on this. I'll try to only be positive and constructive since that seems to be what you want, though I feel I should first say that I wasn't a huge fan of it. I found it to be too passive and too fragmented and not consistent enough. I'll try to advise you on how to change that.

Specifics

Stanza One: Alright so this isn't poetry. If you took out the line spacing then it would read the same as prose and that's not poetry. It isn't just prose spaced out on new lines, it's much more than that. You need a flow and the line-breaks should be purposeful. They should be doing something for the poem.

You also need to choose your language more carefully. You could get away with these words in prose but in poetry you get less words to tell the complete story so every word should count. You want to avoid vague phrases like 'I stood there' and tell us instead where you stood.

For example, if I put your words through my poetry transfigurator, your first stanza might become:

I stood in the alcove,
sweet whispers in his ear
like dribbles of honey.
My fingers pulled puppet strings
and the dagger fell
as my hands were drowning
in a pool of blood.
That night

Okay so it's a quick example and I apologise for the lame over-dramatics, but you get the idea. You want to paint a picture and you want to play with the words to creat tone, voice and style.

Stanza Two: There's a few places here where you could have chosen a different word and it would have made the line so much more interesting. Like in that first, change 'glint' to diamond of fork and suddenly you've got something new. Poetry is about finding a new way of saying an old thing or putting together words that you'd normally never pair.

Stanza Three: I'd omit the 'so' in the last line and just have 'my blood thins' as that would sound better. Also, don't be vague! Instead of it happened again, why not 'Two weeks passed and I killed/ again;' which would be more exciting.

Stanza Four: This stanza seems to say nothing to me. The others are rather concrete and you can picture what's happening but then suddenly you decide to be abstract. Try not to mix two styles in the same poem; you need to be consistent.

Stanza Five: This time you change tense from past to present which also breaks the consistency! It's also a much more lyrical verse than any of the previous ones and again feels out of place. It's good to experiment with styles and I like this stanza, more than any of the previous ones to be honest, but it belongs in a different poem, not here.

Stanza Six: Okay so now she's in the ground. I'm not sure how she got there and all of this is very disconnected. You need to give us enough of the story that we can fill in the blanks for ourselves. You need to give us clues. Perhaps her 'Romeo' was displeased with her. Perhaps you could have a stanza where they thought and then maybe we'd be able to infer that perhaps he killed her out of grief. But we need clues!

Stanza Seven: Present tense again, avoid that! I like the metaphor here though and the colours. There's a lovely sombre tone to this which reflects the words, but again, it doesn't fit with the other stanzas.

Stanza Eight: The register is so different here! You go from Metronome to skank far too easily. If this is all one voice (and you present it as such) then you have to decide who she is and through her language you build that image. She can't be one moment sophisticated and the next teenage and foul mouthed. Some people are like that, yes, but you need to make her less changeable so we can get a feel for her. You have only a few lines to show us who she is so you can't contradict yourself at every turn.

Stanza Nine: This is a strange staza and I'm not sure where it comes from or how it applies to the others. I don't really know what to make of this one.

Stanza Ten: I like this. It ties back in with your first stanzas and the killer and her personality. It's also a good, strong way to end a poem.

Overall

I think you need to strip a lot of this away and decide which story you're telling, what happens in it and who is your character. At the moment there are too many different styles and inconsistencies, but there are parts which are good and others that need some work and you need to sort out the strengths from the weaknesses.

The post-modern style you're trying to create here isn't really working for you. It's a difficult style to attempt and I think perhaps you need to work more on tone and voice. This is a little bit like trying to run before you can walk, though it's all good experience of course.

I'd suggest reading more poetry and writing more poetry. There's potential here and we only learn by experimenting so as an experimental piece, this is good. But I think it's something you want to put to one side and try again later.

Hopefully none of that was too harsh and feel free to ask me any questions you might have,

Heather xxx

I loved this! The rhythm was perfect and you can tell you put a lot of work into it, I especially liked the first few paragraphs and the last. I haven't really got any critique other than personally I'd prefer a different title only because I've heard the word love song so many times It kind of doesn't mean much. But that's just my opinion. Anyway It's a lovely piece and I certainly get a romeo-Juliet vibe though it is very unique.

<3