Young Writers Society

It’s a rainy Soundview-Something Street upon Gig Harbor,
a swollen sky of a semi-precious grey[u]s[u] that
clouds of steel wool have woven, shrinking in the wet sky and
pulling them closer to Earth’s shivering skin.

For an open of a poem, this is a lot of important things to have that many things with the same starting letter. I have been told before that my work does the same sort of thing and I was reminded, as I will now pass along to you, too much of a good thing is still too much. This will be my only comment on alliteration.

I can't say I completely understand where you're going with the second stanza. We have a person who is missing someone who has an obviously unique dialect to the speaker. The speaker is frowning at her ability to contain her missing the leaving individual. Then at the end there is this beautiful line which draws me right back into the poem after feeling like an outsider to this world.

When I read the last line of the third stanza I completely missed the in front of you. My brain is programmed to miss these determiners ('the, a, etc.), and it makes the sentence confusing. I would suggest marking the phrase "the you" off with something else extra to draw attention to the fact that it is not just you.

So we have steel diamonds? Diamond is harder than steel, so which is it that you want? Pick one and avoid mismatching things which are related so closely like diamonds and steel. It is a little jarring here. The rest of the stanza goes wonderfully back into the poetic voice you have.

Ah, now there is an appropriate use of alliteration. She stopped smiling? I would think that instead of unfurling, they would unite.

Alright, those are my reading comments. Now for the the hard things.

First thing first, it is a pain in the butt to say 'Gig' when you have no reference for if it's supposed to be Jig, Gij or Jij, or gig. If you don't quite understand the differences, I'd be happy to explain them later. Either way, this piled on top of the slippery sounds of the succulent steaming esss is a bit too much. I would suggest changing the name of the street, and the town. It will be easier for a reader to understand a name that they are more familiar with, along with getting rid of some S's in the first paragraph.

The points I underlined in the first paragraph are things that don't quite fit together. A and grays doesn't sound right. "a semi-precious greys" To break this down linguistically speaking, we have a determiner, adjective, and because we have a determiner we need a noun, which in this, is grays. The determiner a refers to a single item. It could refer to a single set of items, if the items are considered a set, but the set is singular, like a group. Putting the plural S on grays does describe the sky better, but you have to change the determiner, or, as I would suggest, take it out. Steel wool is a little awkward because my brain automatically thinks steel is the noun, but steel is being used to complement wool, the real noun. Personally, I don't really like the picture of steel wool weaving anyway. I weave and having something floppy and pokey like steel wool weave would be very difficult. It would constantly be getting caught on the yarn. Having steel, a smooth substance, weave, is actually more relate-able for me in that case.

The other thing about the first paragraph is it doesn't seem to be saying much. It's almost like you're just writing for the S's benefit. We have a town, and in that town there is a beautiful gray sky. The gray sky is raining. It's a great set up, but it doesn't bring us into the story. It just tells us about the setting. I would think with your talent, you can do that while putting some form of action into the same stanza.

I don't like the second stanza's open. I love the end, but the opening few lines don't make much sense to me. I stop disliking this stanza around the time when you have "and frowned" because I read "A-frowned" and have to reread it, which breaks me out of the original train of thought. What I dislike about it is probably one of the things you wrote this poem for. "lit'rally wonderful," Now I don't pick a fight with that you're expressing his dialogue as literally as you can, what I pick a fight with is where you put the ', Personally I say "li'rally" and cut out the T, but you're having this individual keep the T, and slur the E out. To me that makes it awkward. You could even do Li-rally to show a pause in the word. The first time I read it, I read lit rally, like a rally for literature. It took me reading wonderful to pause, go back, stare at the word for a while, then move on shaking my head. Also, why do you choose to say the rest of the sentence like that? Tacking everything together in one sentence makes it seem like the only time he ever said that was when the speaker was sixteen while it was sunny. It isn't sunny today, why would he say the day was wonderful if he only said it on sunny days? Do you see my conundrum? I love the way you express the relationship, but there need to be a separate idea for when he says that, and make sure you're sure about how he says it, and when you are beginning to talk about the past.

The next paragraph doesn't bother me too much, but there is something I don't understand about your symbolism and I'd like to know if it is my thought process which messes this up. If her coffee chills while she's thinking about this, then time has left her in the dust and it has had time to chill, so why is time lingering? Why is time hesitating when it has long since passed her by to chill her cup? It seems like time would linger if she was thinking back on something long and it has really only been a few seconds, not that it has been a short memory and a long time has passed.

I already talked about the sterling diamonds. It really is a unique image, but confusing. I already talked about the end as well.
So there you have it, a long review for your work. I hope you enjoyed my comments, or at least I hope you liked the feedback about your beautiful work. It really is a well said piece, it just has some glitches where I think you might have gotten carried away with the words instead of the meaning behind them. I know I typically will have that problem with things when I am too engrossed in the story. I hope you revise it so that it doesn't pause other readers too, and keep writing. I love your imagery.