Beating hearts like ours (The Chauffeur)

Hello, carolinahsson! Mage here to do the long overdue, promised review! I'm so sorry for taking so long to review this! So let's get to it, shall we?

I've already mentioned on your wall that I'm not experienced with poetry, so I can't make any comments on the rhythm or structure of this story. But I can make a suggestion about this poem. In the description of it, you say it's being told by the woman and the chauffeur with each having alternating paragraphs. Sometimes it was hard understanding which was which, despite the information given in the description. My suggestion is to use a different formatting for one of the two. The woman could have her part in italics, or the chauffeur could. While italics show a difference, they don't take the reader out of the work as much as bold text would.

This was incredibly well written, and flowed nicely. I enjoyed reading this a lot. Keep up the spectacular work - which I doubt you'll have trouble with - and good luck on your writing endeavors! Have a great day/night!

Carolina,

There's a solid beat and rhyme scheme in this piece that engages the reader throughout the poem. I especially enjoyed your opener with the Her / Chauffeur lines. I understand that the lines flipped from the beginning to the end, and I like that it mirrors the flipped situation (we start out admiring him and her and talking to the chauffeur, only to walk away from him/her and begin to admire the chauffeur) so, that was done really well - that's the sort of nice cohesion between structure and story that make a piece technically symmetrical. Symmetry is one of those aspects that just adds an emphasis to the meaning of a piece, it's like to highlight this is what is meaningful, but I also think symmetry in and of itself is also beautiful, so it's a wonderful technique to use.

That all said - I wanted to delve some more into the structure of this piece, because while I think the story is endearing and fun, I think some of the structure bogs it down. For example, the line breaks here are short and choppy, and the shortness and choppiness is emphasized with your stylistic choices - but such choices do not match your rhyme scheme perfectly (compare your rhyme scheme in stanza 1 (very regular, great flow!) to your rhyme scheme in stanza 2 (irregular and forced) So there are some incongruities.

I understand that there's a break in the line at every sentence phrase and also a rhyme at the end of every other line-- but I think that when you try to establish the poem with such a regular pattern, it sort of jumbles itself when the patterns break and no longer adhere to its strictness.



^^ What I've done here is I've color-coded your matching sounds. Stanza 1 is marvelously regular in such a way that your sounds are symmetrical within each line. I love how you end lines 1, 2, and 4 with "er" sounds and precede the lines with "ee" and "oh" sounds. Stanza two sort of breaks that, but I can sort of kind of see where it was trying to do that (the said and red rhymes--but then "know" and "burned" stick out like sore thumbs which is why it doesn't flow as smooth) because it's not as regular, it comes across as forced.

While I am being technically nit-picky for pointing it out - I point it out only because it has more meaningful disruption to the piece - where it took me a few readings to work out who is saying what to whom. There are a lot of he saids, I saids and broken up phrases of said dialogue that makes it really hard to decipher who it is who is saying what. One way to fix this is to add punctuation and quotation marks, the other way to fix it is to be more strategic with your line breaks. Perhaps make your lines longer and break them at the end of a dialogue? I think by doing this you should be able to clarify to the reader who is talking.

I think even little structural changes like that should make this read a lot smoother. I hope this helps!

~ as always, Audy

The style of writing is quite good. The plot has been conveyed clearly.

The character's feeling has been potentially spelled. & the way you have carefully chosen the words really need a big applause.

What attracted me most is the style of writing you used to bring out the character's pain. GOOD WORK. Keep up.

There is a frightening maturity lurking just under the surface of this poem.

I can't stress enough how highly I think of works that don't just tell you what they mean to say, but they wrap the message around an intriguing concept and lay it on the reader. What I mean to say is that I absolutely loved the idea of this work.

I mean, you could have easily told your story directly to the reader and that would have been just fine; but the concept of telling your heart aches to the chauffeur and having him give advice is both creative and rewarding. It reminded me of the song "Bad Religion", by Frank Ocean.

The first stanza is simple, yet powerful; it poses a simple question which opens this back-and-forth between the narrator and the character of the chauffeur. I liked how each received one stanza to speak their mind; the lines were short and on point, creating a sort of eerie imagery, like in the second, third and ninth stanzas.

'Beating heats like ours / He quietly said / Aren't quite ready / To go to bed" - this is proof that you don't need fancy, sophisticated words to deliver a powerful blow. Well done.

Simply put, it was a satisfying read.