Young Writers Society

Hey, this is really cool! I have always had these thoughts about the Jacob, Rachel, and Leah story, Leah's side always made me so sad, and especially the fact that her father thought he had to trick Jacob into marrying her otherwise no one ever would... so sad.

Anyway, about your poem, I think it's really good!
Firstly, you were able to subtly explain what's going on in the story to those who may not know it while still keeping it poetic. I know, like you said in your author's note at the end, that it could still be kind of confusing, but I thought you did really well. Second, (as far as I can tell) you kept your facts right. That is really important in a poem like this because you included so many historical details of the story, like the fact that Jacob wanted to be buried beside Leah, and that Leah was described as having "tender eyes" and other things like that. If one of those facts had been wrong, it would've off-set the whole thing but all of those facts that you added in seemed to be accurate as far as I can remember so good job. I also like the fact that you did add so many details about the story. That's hard to do without making it sound boring or like it's from a history textbook rather than poetry, but you did a really good job.


There are only a few negatives here that I can see.
(I won't be correcting grammar or punctuation since I am so terrible at those things myself, but I will mention that there were mistakes in those areas just a couple of times.)
I found it a little lacking in the visual aspect, I couldn't really get a clear picture in my head. I would've liked a few more descriptive terms when asking Leah about the way things looked. I liked your description of things in general through-out the duration of the poem, it was only lacking in the appearance department. However, this is just my personal opinion.

In answer to your question in the author's note;
I didn't mind the pacing too much, I'll admit I got tripped up on rhythm a couple of times, but for the most part, it was fine. I agree with the fact that it could sound "prose-ish" at times, but that wasn't a big deal to me while I was reading it.

Overall I really liked this poem, I've always been fascinated with her story and I've asked some of these questions my self. You executed this very well, I thought this was very creative.
I hope this was helpful as opposed to offensive, I don't really know what I'm talking about XD so you don't have to listen to me.
- Anne

Ah rosette! I like your take on the Leah/Rachel/Jacob story. I don't know if you've ever read the book "The Red Tent" -- wouldn't recommend since it's somewhat mature, but it also imagines what Leah's side of the story would be, so I enjoyed that you put those questions to poetry.

Phrasing Suggestions/Comments

I caught a few simple phrasing issues that I'll drop here, but none of them were "make or break" just things I noticed while reading. -- Some of these are grammar things, some of them are flow things by the way.

First in the forth stanza there's a line that stands out sort of long, "instead of you, that your father had to smuggle you" -- it's also is a bit awkward to use the word "you" twice in this line and it feels a bit too long in comparison. You could try changing "your father" to just "Laban" again to take down one syllable. You could also probably take out "of you" without sacrificing any of the meaning. I also love the strong repetition of the "s" sound in this stanza, so I'd try to preserve that.

Another line that shouldn't have tripped me up, but did, was "to your lonesome breast" I think that using the word "heart" or "bosom" in this case would be a little less distracting but still get at the same point with the dual meaning (of both nursing and love). That or replace the word "lonesome" with something that doesn't make readers question for a moment whether maybe she just has one breast.

In the 2nd to last stanza (starting with "I wish...") I thought it was a bit of an awkward place to end and I'm not entirely sure which phrase is being referred to as the phrase that's often said.

Other than that, and a few places where there were some extra long lines, I thought the flow and rhythm of the poem was fairly good actually. To improve the flow any more you could look into making the stanza lengths the same number of lines (or having them follow a pattern like 5, 6, 5, 6, 5 or 5, 2, 5, 2, 5) but it wasn't too distracting as is.

Emotion
A small critique or suggestion would be that there were a few times that I wanted you to be more direct in the poem. You sometimes use phrases like " was there *insert random emotion* in their *eyes/face*" rather than asking about what they looked like, I wanted you to directly delve into what their emotions were. As the poem goes on, it gets more and more into the inner emotions that Leah (and Jacob) may have been hiding, but I would just encourage you to be as direct as possible in the poem throughout in regards to the emotion of the two characters.

Throughout though, on of the poem's real strengths was delving into the emotional side of a story that sometimes just gets skimmed for genealogy rather than the human-story behind it. You ask interesting questions while still remaining true to the integrity of the facts presented in the Bible (something that I admire a lot in this poem).

A few stanzas that really stood out to me, where I think the flow and the emotion is just spot on, is the stanza about Jacob being buried by Leah's side, and the stanza about Rachel's death - both are emotionally heavy and really shed beautiful insight into the conflict and relationships between the characters.

Clarity in Message
One last aspect I wanted to mention, is I'm having a little difficulty understanding the true message of the piece. I can appreciate it as beautiful and intriguing on its own, but as a fellow poet, I'm also always looking for that underlying theme or story that the author wants readers to step away with that. I look for clues in the bookends (the beginning and ending stanzas to find some ideas) and it looks like in the first stanza you present this poem as a musing -- "I wonder what Leah thinks" or maybe more clearly "I wonder what Leah feels".... and that fits with the reading of a good portion of the poem as we walk through her life and relationship to her sister and husband, but in the final two stanzas, the narrator says "I wish, Leah, that you were alive / to say that familiar phrase"...."this time, with complete confidence" -- so here it looks like the narrator no longer wonders about Leah, but is confident about how she would feel and what she thinks. For me, this isn't quite a contradiction to the rest of the piece, but it does seem like like the narrator has evolved or transitioned in their thinking although we as readers haven't had the chance to quite see it. -- I hope that all makes sense, there's a little bit of rambling in there.

Basically what I am suggesting is that the message isn't 100% clear when I'm done reading the poem, and you might want to think about writing the last stanza in light of the first stanza - and make sure to include the process that gets to that last revelation at the end so the reader can follow the narrator's line of thinking.

Overall
Overall, this was a lovely poem to read, and I enjoyed the insights you brought to the story. You had lovely poetic word choice throughout and importantly you illustrated these characters in a way that made me as a reader want to understand and know them better.

Let me know if you had any questions about my review,

best,

alliyah

I've always liked this bible story since my name is Rachel, but I never really thought much about Leah and how she felt. This was really interesting.