Young Writers Society

Hey there, welcome to YWS!

Specifics

1. Loving the rhythm in this first stanza but I think you could drop the 'so' from the second line as it feels like it's there only to be a filler word. That would put you out a beat but maybe you could have something like 'Makes my chest feel queasy' or replace chest with pretty much any body part - legs, lungs, blood, skin etc. There will nearly always be a better word to use than 'so' or 'very'.

2. The rhythm changes in the second stanza! I think if you're going to have a rhythm you should choose to keep it at least mostly consistent throughout. Whether that's going to be consistently 6666 or 6868 is up to you but having a pattern across the stanzas will make it flow better. I often think aiming for the common meter (6868) is a good way to go and your first stanzas would be easy to adapt, like:

The whiskey on his breath
Makes my shaking knees feel queasy
Though I was scared to death
Leaving Peter was not easy

He hit her yesterday;
I had no way to interfere
My mind will run away
But my daughter keeps me here

He stepped towards me with his evil glare

I really liked this poem. It rhymes and has a bit of suspense. It made me want to keep reading. Keep up the good work.

Hello cmullin!

I'm very familiar with "My Papa's Waltz" so I was drawn to this poem because of your description.

First, I'd like to say that I think you did a really good job working in the rhythm of the poem to begin with. When I read the first stanza, I was very impressed at how well you got the two to sound similar, so I was really excited going forward into this poem. It was easy to recognize what you were doing after hearing the tone and knowing what this poem was about.

I feel like later, after that stanza, you sort of got away from the tonality though. This is because "My Papa's Waltz" was done in iambic trimeter, mostly, meaning it has 6 syllables per line [trimeter (3 feet)] and each foot is pretty much iambic [soft strong beat]. While you do that a lot in your poem, at the second stanza you go as many as 9 syllables in a line, and the most the poem ever did was 7, so you need to trim it back. Once you get 6 syllables on the first and third line, and 7 syllables on the second and fourth lines of each stanza, I think you'll actually be spot on.

It might take some doing, and rewording, but I think you can do it mostly by trimming your lines down, and beefing a couple of them up.

I find the best way to count syllables is to read it in your head and have your hand over the number pad on your keyboard. Each time you say a syllable, touch a number heading upward. That way the number you land on is the number of syllables per line and you can read instead of focus on counting.

I hope this helps! I'm really happy to see this on here. I think it's great.

Aley