z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

The Teacher

by PinkPanther


Kneeling, lays brick atop brick carefully.

The sun bites until skin is dry and brown,

But arms endure, persist, stretch out to see

Walls that touch the blue canopy leave ground.

A benevolent heart compels to do

Kindnesses her duty does not dictate -

Giving days, resources, energy to

Ensure each corner’s sharp, each tower’s great.

When construction is over, her hands pat

A disheveled towel. Dust storms, swirls, sets.

That hand does not hang tapestries, and that

Eye does not choose curtains for the lunettes.

We define our minds - affix favored tabs,

She but builds palaces of the raw slabs. 


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Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:48 am
skorlir wrote a review...



Mmmmh... I have mixed feelings, after reading this.

I haven't done a review in some time, but I think I remember how I usually start these. :)

Take with salt; mind the edges.

Kneeling, lays brick atop brick carefully.


What lays bricks? Or who? And "kneeling" and "lays" don't work together here... there are a lot of ways to fix that, but as they are, they just don't make sense. Or, wait, this could work - maybe it's this guy, Kneeling, who lays bricks. But who is Kneeling? What kind of name is that?

Welp. Time for a rant. :P

It happens to me all the time: there is a vision in my head and, ah, it is so brilliant! - so I write... and hope that at least some of my vision will be captured in the words. Then I read it to myself, and I see that same vision playing back in lockstep with each stanza, each word, but... well, nobody else who reads it seems to see the vision. Usually they get most of it. Sometimes, they even get all of it. But it's not the same. When I finish reading it, my heart is beating, and I cannot help but smile or frown or just somehow react powerfully to what I felt while reading. Then when others finish reading those same words, they just say, "oh, well... it was good."

A lot of the time, that's where grammar comes into play. It bridges the difference between "oh, well... it was good" and heart-racing, mouth-twitching, brilliantly touching words. And I don't just mean correct grammar, but appropriate grammar - grammar that fits the piece, and makes it work.

Which brings me back to where I started.

Kneeling, lays brick atop brick carefully.


Even this early in the poem, I already feel distanced from the vision behind the words. While the "who" that is kneeling, laying bricks, and being bitten by the sun, is not meant to distract the reader - at least, not at first - it immediately distracts me. This is because brains (and my brain in particular) are kinda stupid. They want everything to just magically make sense. They really do. And when something doesn't, they flip out, like a dude who just tried to eat his hotcakes waaaaaay too soon off the skillet.

Of course, just because his hotcakes burnt his mouth does not mean Mr. Dude won't eat them. He just has to stop first. And wait. And try to work out in his head, are they cool enough yet? He prods them, blows on them, licks them gingerly to test their heat... And ultimately, of course, he eats them. And ultimately, of course, I was able to read the rest of your poem. My brain might be stupid, but it's not really stupid. It doesn't just assume that the words will never make sense; it tests them out, and teases with their placement, and sometimes makes up bits to see if the sentence makes more sense that way.

So yeah, ultimately I still worked out the meaning of the verse. And the end result was the same as if the sentence was grammatically perfect. I have a picture in my head, of a person, wearing a sunhat, working a trowel under the beating sun - sweating, perhaps, but somehow I know they're smiling too. And they're beautiful.

But how long did I take to get that picture right in my head?

I don't know, but the moment is lost on me. It's not beyond repair - once I hold that picture in place and really think about it (as I'm doing right now in order to write this), I do certainly find it beautiful. But I did not feel that way when I first figured out the words. No, when I first got over the grammar and put together that picture, it was weird looking - like someone was lazy when they took it, and didn't bother to focus the camera, and left the flash on even though the sun was out.

Then, with time - with exposure, you might say, if you want to keep with the whole "photograph" theme - the picture clears up. It starts becoming real, and it gets intense and colorful, and the beauty of it finally touches me.

Usually, the picture doesn't get that chance. It doesn't get to be stared at for a bit, separate from the words, and really appreciated for its own beauty. (Unless we're talking about a script here, and it's about to be made into a movie. But that's the exception. :) )

So... I'm back to grammar. Since the picture is formed by the words, and it doesn't get its own time to explain, the words have to be the picture. They can't approximate; they can't leave bits out; and they can't work together poorly. The sentences have to be right. And that's not the same as correct. Correct can certainly help - and usually it does - but it's not always right. (If correctness were the end-all, be-all of poetry, e.e. cummings would never have made it as a poet.)

And this first verse is only the beginning. (No pun intended.) All of the grammar has to be right. And it's just not. Not yet.

--

That said, this is a beautiful metaphor for teaching. Laying bricks, but working more than is required; correcting carefully each little piece until the wall is perfect, and is sure to stand forever, until nobody will see it anymore; until it has done its job beautifully, for the whole of its life.

It's positively inspiring.

Sloppy, and a little tough. But inspiring.

I guess I don't know what else to tell you. You already did the important part really well - you created a new way for me to see teachers, a new image to represent the work they do. You just need to stop appreciating your vision, and focus on the words. In the past, I've spent a lot of time correcting other writers' words... but I guess that doesn't seem appropriate. Just read your piece carefully, and look around - look and see how other authors write, whose works you easily understand, and try to borrow from them. Read other people's reviews, too - of works that are not your own - and see what fixes they tend to suggest.

And, for what it's worth, most of your verses are brilliant. In particular the very last verse. And apart from my confusion concerning "tabs," since that word just doesn't naturally mean anything to me (except maybe browser tabs, which makes no sense), the last two verses together really make the poem.

It may not be what you were expecting (and it certainly wasn't what I expected to write), but hopefully it helps.

~Skorlir

(Oh, and I do realize that this poem could be read with the title as the first two words of the first verse. But that's a bit unclear at first - since the title is not immediately placed in front of the verse, and the verse starts with a capitalized word. And even so, the rest of the poem is still not quite there yet.)




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Sat Jul 12, 2014 6:57 am
Wolfi wrote a review...



Wolfie has arrived by request! :D
I noticed that you have precisely ten syllables in each line. As a result, the sentence breakups are a bit odd, but if you like that style, I'm sure that it's fine. You said that this is a sonnet. I'm not a poet, so I forgot what is needed for a poem to be a sonnet. Is it ten syllables per line? If so, I like the way you have it. But the weird sentence breaks are... well, weird.
The rhyming is perfect. It's written in a way that helps the flow of the poem but isn't too distracting.
The whole teacher-bricklayer metaphor was very well done and your imagery was splendid. This line, though, didn't make sense to me:

Walls that touch the blue canopy leave ground.

That "leave ground" is what confuses me. "Blue canopy leave" makes me think of a blue tree with a canopy of leaves, but that's leaf, not leave. Is it supposed to be something about a blue canopy leaving the ground?
Overall, this was a very beautiful poem to read. I'm sure your teacher and classmates will love it! You did an awesome job! :D




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Sat Jul 12, 2014 5:24 am
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Aley wrote a review...



Hi, I'm here to review in place of someone because they asked me to.

First thing first, I'd like to say your avi is adorable, and I like what you did with most of this poem. It gives a great image of what's going on and you don't really need to explain how she's an a-typically exact type of person. We actually know quite a bit about this individual just from the sonnet, which is nice. You also did a good job with not breaking up the poem into stanzas, that's not really the structure's thing, but you might be interested in this: How to format your poetry on YWS which can show you how to get rid of the annoying paragraph breaking for every line.

As for it being a sonnet, you need iambic pentameter. You've got the pentameter part down, but I'm not so sure about the iambic part. As Hannah's lovely Knowledge Base article shows, Secret Treasures in Poetic Devices down in Meter and Rhythm, we need to start with an unstressed syllable and move to a stressed one. Also the syllables need to alternate between stressed and unstressed.

There are some places that don't feel as though they do that. Let's start out with your first foot. "Kneel-ing" Of these two, which do you hear more of when you read it naturally?
I hear more of Kneel than ing. This is typically the case with ING because it is so common and it's a suffix. Some other things that commonly are not stressed include "of, but, oh, and, for, the, a" because they play minor rolls in sentence structure. While it's not always the case, usually stress is focused on nouns and verbs rather than things like prepositions, conjunctions, and filler words.

This being said, places where you have "for the" and "of the" actually are two unstressed beats in a row. You also have some three syllable words that have two unstressed beats together such as "canoPY" "enerGY" "CAREfully" and "KINDnesses".

In summary, you are having the same problem I have when I am trying to write in structure XD Can't figure out what stress goes where. The best suggestion I can give you, is to read it as naturally as possible, and if you start slipping, like saying the beat too strongly one way or the other, and you lose how you're actually supposed to be reading it, ask someone else to read it to you, and record them, if they let you. Then listen to it back and see where they put their stresses.

If you'd like more information on how to write in Iambic Pentameter, I have a great article for you. How-To: Iambic Pentameter

Overall, as I said, the poem itself is pretty good. You bow down to the syllable count a bit too easy and some places are awkward, but it's not horrible. It's pretty good considering the restriction. I think the line that needs the most attention for that, is the first one.
I really love the story, and I'm impressed your syllables are spot on. Now we just have to get the beat.

-Aley




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Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:31 am
cleverclogs wrote a review...



Hello, cleverclogs here to review as requested! :)

I don't know the technicalities of a sonnet, so I can't really review the... sonnet-ness of this, so I'll focus on content.

The beginning line was very disorienting to read. I felt like it needed a recipient of the brick-laying, like he or they. I don't know if it's intended to be that way because it's a sonnet thing, but you could change it.

Again, I don't know if it's a sonnet thing (poetry is always different, so I'm trying to be careful, please bear with me:)), but from what I know, each line does not need to be capitalized. Capitalization is only necessary when you're beginning a new sentence. I'm going to use a few lines for an example:

The sun bites until skin is dry and brown,

but arms endure, persist, stretch out to see

walls that touch the blue canopy leave ground.


Also, for the whole poem, you have an ABAB rhyme scheme, but in the last two lines, it suddenly switches to AA. It's like, "pat, sets, that, lunettes", and then out of nowhere, we have "tabs, slabs." Yet again, I have no clue if this is the structure for a sonnet because poetry isn't really my area, so ignore me if I'm wrong.

This poem took me a bit to process. I had to kind of read it out loud, being very careful not to miss anything. I like it when poems make me do that, because then, when I'm done processing each word carefully, I can take in the poem as a whole and begin appreciating it. I loved that your pristine wording and use of words made me do that. Good job! :)

Also, I really loved the metaphor. Teachers (well, most that I know of) go above and beyond to make their students great, and they hardly get anything in return. In fact, I live in the state that has the lowest teacher salaries, and it's horrendous. I heard of one teacher that had to quit because he couldn't support his family. It really shows our priorities, doesn't it? Rant aside, this was a really touching tribute to teachers everywhere. You ought to show it to your own. :)

Overall, really great poem. I can't really see anything content-wise that needs improvement. I don't know why you asked me to review it when it was obviously so amazing to begin with. Keep up the fantastic work!




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Sat Jul 12, 2014 2:16 am
yubbies21 wrote a review...



Hello! I'm here to review this for @ThereseCricket, since she hasn't reviewed Sonnets before :) I haven't much either, but I know the basics, so here goes nothing! Wish me luck! :D

This poem is well structured. The wording is unique on every line, not repeating the same word over and over again. The beat is matched well and the syllables are perfect! It's really hard trying to get all of that right, I know, I've tried! :P I could never get the iambic pentameter right in a Shakespearean Sonnet :) So kudos to you!

The rhyme scheme is executed well. In most rhyming poems I read, it always sounds rushed or forced. However, in this poem, it flowed smoothly and didn't seem forced.

I like how the title "The Teacher" plays into the meaning of this poem. The images you created are real, life-like, and very vivid. I can see these pictures in my mind. Excellent job! Creating images in a sonnet, a piece of writing so confined and structured, is very difficult. But you have pulled that off masterfully!

Thank-you for the hard work and effort put into this piece. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad I had the opportunity to review it! :)

Merry Christmas in July!

yubbies21




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Thu Jul 10, 2014 4:47 pm
AdmiralKat wrote a review...



Hello! KatyaElefant here for another review! Let's see what we have here...

I am first going to say the things that you can improve on. I feel like you could definitely improve on organization. I could see that you could certainly make a stanza, every 4 lines or so. That's all I can criticize on this piece for the moment though.

I love the general theme of this poem. The title suits the theme very well. I am glad that you gave this poem such an obvious name or I would have never have guessed on what this is about because I am terrible at that sort of thing. In such a short poem, I could see the imagery in here. I could see the slabs being built or the dust storm swirling. The metaphors/ similes (at least that is what I think they are 0-0) are excellent here. You have to really think about the sentences to really get the point of the poem. I like the fancy language that you include here because it really adds to the effect. This poem led me to think of the fact that teachers are underpaid because without them we wouldn't have anyone to move the knowledge on to children and then our society wouldn't move on because no one knows anything and so we have to rediscover everything (ohhhh. Good story idea.... I might do that XD). Anyways, great job on your poem. It is really fascinating. Be sure to keep writing. (As a small note, you can edit your pieces because I noticed you have 3 more The Teachers'. You can save coins in that matter.)




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Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:12 am
Authorian wrote a review...



I was a bit skeptical for the first few lines. But was quickly drawn in. It's a sweet poem, with a flowing, consistent beat. I like the idea of 'The Teacher' if I interpreted the poem correctly (which I'm no professional.) Than it's interesting how the story goes. The Teacher teaches, educates, and sharpens her students. Too quote- "Ensure each corner's sharp, each tower's great."

Apart from the story, the presentation is wonderful. Crisp, simple, and to the point. You were excellent with the rhymes.

Overall, a 8.7/10 Great poem!!





Spend your days thinking about things that are good and true and beautiful and noble, and you will become good and true and beautiful and noble.
— Matthew Kelly