Category: Issue 3

For “hands,” I completely reworked the stanzas leading up to the last stanza. I made the purpose of the “September’s moonlight” stanza clearer, capturing the narrator’s initial uncertainty about the connection, which I then made sure to juxtapose with the rest of the poem. I also made the “enchanted” reference clearer by explicitly stating it as a song reference and adding a reason for that song reference as well. Lastly, I made the cold vs. warmth theme throughout the poem much more noticeable at the beginning to keep the poem consistent throughout.

The biggest change I made was in the second to last stanza where I added lines that connected to the first few stanzas. I brought back the voices and quarrels from the start, making it clear that they represent humans. I also tweaked the “And I watch,” stanza to make it flow better, changing envisionments to just visions, changing “radiating” to glimmering for an alliteration effect, and shortening the last line to keep it succinct. Lastly, I steered away from cliche at the end of the “Cut from the same cloth” line by changing what I originally had to a pause and then bringing in “But I’m afraid, you were too late” to bring back the pace of the poem.

I received a lot of feedback on the clarity and comprehension of my piece. The feedback mostly revolved around long sentences that could be confusing or murky in meaning. Bringing this piece in, I was very insecure that it was contrived and was also concerned because it is a style of poetry I am unfamiliar with. I got a lot of great feedback on the effectiveness of the piece, the ambiguity of the central meaning, and how its themes could be brought to the surface more.

People pointed out patterns and made connections around the idea of 2’s that I had not even considered, so getting outsiders’ perspectives like that was very valuable to my own understanding of the piece.

This was a self-assigned prompt, and since I had no idea of how it was/wasn’t working, getting a sense of that from the lovely folks at WG gave me helpful feedback on how to tweak my punctuation, wording, and get a sense of what flowed and what I could make more clear.

Since surrealism is a style I don’t dabble in too often, getting a read on what parts were confusing in the right ways, vs. confusing in the wrong ways, was very beneficial.

I received a lot of helpful feedback on the images that were working and felt vividly described. Readers also told me what they felt the central theme to the poem was, and which sections were confusing or could be written clearer.

I received feedback on the title, which I changed from Ode to Ohio to Ode to Cleveland. I also received feedback on certain lines and their wording. Additionally, I was encouraged to play around with stanza breaks, which I tried but didn’t like.