Young Writers Society

Just a quick commentary review here -

he smelled of sweat and sawdust and lumber
large, muscled arms that would engulf me in
warm hugs I desperately clung to.

when I kissed his cheek I could feel the prickle
of his stubble brush against my face and it tickled.
it always tickled.

his hands were rough, calloused from long years of
hard work; a good man trying to build a home.
six years old and I remember tight hugs and
lost smiles that never reached his eyes as he
hugged us goodbye outside that airport gate.

he wore the color of freedom, of gunpowder and
honor --eighteen months too long.

Hello Jasper!
I hope you don't mind me calling you that.

This is a really good poem.

I really enjoyed reading it and I'm looking forward to reading more from you.

I do have some suggestions for you though.

First off, you probably should put space between your lines, and also separate them in categories.

Also i do see a few grammar and punctuation errors you may want to fix.

Put some more feeling into it also....

Either than that this is great!!

Keep up the good work!

Have a great rest of your day!!

Sincerely Anma

Hey, first of, i really loved your poem!
It had some really amazing imagery and I could really feel the emotions shining through.
The enjambment added a great effect on the reader- you had so much to say about your father that you couldn't just limit yourself to one line, you had to spill over.
I liked the punctuation too, it really helped the poem flow.
Overall, i thought it was a very sweet and emotive poem! Can't really think of anything else to say, there's certainly nothing to criticise!

Hello jaspercat, I hope I can offer a constructive critique.

"he smelled of sweat and sawdust and lumber"
-an evocative and sensory first line

"large, muscled arms that would engulf me in
warm hugs I desperately clung to."
-an intimate and visual image. I question the reasoning behind the period at the end of this phrase It's inconsistent with the first line.

"when I kissed his cheek I could feel the prickle
of his stubble brush against my face and it tickled."
-another sensory line. Some of the descriptions are repetitive, i.e. "prickle, stubble, brush, tickle." I suggest parsing down the description to something like: "when I kissed his cheek, his stubble prickled my skin and it tickled"

"he wore the color of freedom, of gunpowder and
honor --eighteen months too long."
-i don't know what these colors are. i'm not too fond of this line, but that's just me being skeptical about these terms being associated with the u.s. military (i'm guessing)

"he is cold nights spent inside, fresh popped
popcorn in large paper bags and old horror movies,
black and white, on the television screen."
-interesting way to end the poem. the trajectory doesn't flow organically from the previous images, but I like that. the previous lines were too gung-ho for me. i like these final lines better.

This is a good visual poem. I'd reconsider some of the periods and how consistent they are with the formatting overall. Thanks for sharing!