Readers of the poem found the climax intriguing, but felt it lacked the right amount of imagery to convey the shock and intensity of the moment fully. Hence, I used visual notes and emotional traits to evoke more of an embodied experience. The distinction between lust and love was depicted as the contrast between the colors black and red. The protagonist starts to realize that they are clouded by the antagonist’s strong desires.
My feedback included a lot of great suggestions for line edits. While I’m used to receiving thematic feedback in this genre, sentence-level suggestions can really change the entire essence of a poem. The macro and the micro often become one in the same when it comes to poetry. As a poet, it’s really helpful when others give their insight on even the “smallest” of decisions—like verb tense, word choice, the decision to include or omit punctuation, etc.
Most of the feedback I received was aimed toward greater specificity, in wording and vocabulary. Lines like “we desire your love” turning instead into “we covet your conditional love”—covet having more biblical connotations, and the conditional aspect being important to the current situation of the narrator. Some of the feedback I received but did not agree with, was about the formatting and expanding the poem into more of a story. I thought separating the confessional text from the lines of the poem would create too much of a divide between the words I am trying to weave into conversation with each other. As for expanding the poem into more of a story, that felt too much like straying into prose.
I received feedback on clarifying the poem’s meaning, specifically the interpretation of the speaker’s thoughts. The poem focuses on a speaker observing a rainy day; my original draft focused heavily on the imagery of the poem, but was more “show” than “tell” as the speaker described the changing of the clouds from soft, lamb-like forms to lion-esque creatures. The writing center tutor recognized this idea, but was not sure if the speaker was in awe or fear. After looking at the poem again, I agreed with this feedback.
Since this poem was my first attempt at an abecedarian, I asked my peers at Writers Guild for their assessment of image and cadence–did the content of the poem clash with its form? Since each line had to start with the subsequent letter of the alphabet, I was worried that certain word choices and line breaks, if read aloud, would sound unnatural. With Guild as a sounding board, however, each image flowed so well together that folks didn’t notice the form at all!
I think the feedback that was helpful to me was “this line feels a bit clunky!” or something similar to “maybe try moving this word here?” I really appreciate the line to line breakdown, as it felt more constructive and nudged me in a direction rather than simply commenting on the “feel” or emotion of the piece! I loved getting to play with syntax and word choices thanks to the feedback!
One specific suggestion I was given was to perhaps add roman numerals since my poem was split into two. I really liked the idea of more explicitly splitting the poem, for although it is one poem, it was written about two very different moments. I think this idea is captured and more obviously showcased when the poem is numbered and split.
The things I needed to change had a lot to do with how the piece reads out loud vs. on the page. I had to slow down some parts in structural ways, since I wouldn’t be able to control the speed of the reader. This meant adding more single sentence breaks in between longer paragraphs, a suggestion that I really appreciated and ended up enhancing the piece a lot.
I was given the advice to include more concrete imagery or metaphors early in my poem, so as to help ground it more. The ending is strong, but the beginning can seem abstract. One suggestion was to include a chant or slogan from the George Floyd protests, which is what inspired my poem. I decided to make one of the chants my title, which also serves as a sort of foreword too.
I made a Writing Center appointment and I received great feedback on ways to heighten the imagery of the piece. For instance, the line about “steel towers” was the suggestion of a peer tutor, which helped me in other areas of the poem to find exciting and creative ways to describe everyday objects.