Category: Poetry

Brady [Writing Center tutor] helped me cement the ambiguity of this piece into concrete, sensory imagery. His interpretations and comments on the meaning of my poem helped me to understand where to keep ambiguity and where to aid the reader with more obvious, concrete images. In the original draft, the “eddying winds” were not specifically autumn winds, and the “fronds” were not specifically sere. I added these details to signify that the poem, fundamentally, is about the season of fall and the death that it presages. The added details aid in the atmosphere of the poem, and these suggestions helped me ground the reader with images and sensory experiences.

Brady [Writing Center tutor] and I discussed a lot of things regarding the second stanza of this piece. The poem naturally trails into a more philosophical realm during this stanza, and I received help in how to effectively convey what the point of the poem is. Sometimes this, as in prior pieces, included the bolstering of ambiguity that works but more often in the addition of concrete non-abstract imagery to ground the reader. What inspired me philosophically to write this poem is my belief in the interconnectedness of nature; that every living thing is kindred on some fundamental level.

I received such great feedback on how to keep the integrity of the syntax in the poem by letting go of some more florid phrases in the original draft. Since this poem is a terza rima, any editing and word changes at the end of a line can mean having to reverse engineer the poem to clean it up. The feedback as a whole never changed the narrative of the poem, but many words were changed. In the first stanza instead of “lanes,” I originally used “streets.” Changing this singular word meant altering the whole poem sonically (the rhymes and sounds would now have to be different), but the narrative functions the same as it would have stayed as “streets.”

I found that for “forever summer,” feedback regarding the “how to wind me / back down to me” line was useful as it was initially “how to wind me / back to me.” The latter line made it slightly confusing to read as the next line mentions “summer’s wind,” which uses a different meaning and pronunciation of “wind.” Thus, I included “back down to me” as it makes the meaning and pronunciation of the first “wind” clear. All in all, my feedback for “forever summer” has helped me approach punctuation and flow differently, providing me with new means to improve both.

I found the feedback regarding the perceived meaning of the poem very helpful as not only did I struggle to find the right way to communicate what I was trying to, but it is also hard to gauge whether or not someone else will see it that way. One stanza that prompted a different meaning than what I intended was “as I gave this a try.” I hadn’t made it clear that the “try” this one is about hadn’t been one of the “past plights,” which made it seem like it was. Ultimately, knowing which certain lines made my message unclear was very useful and allowed me to focus specifically on sections that needed rewording.

One suggestion that was made was to add more metaphors to the piece. I liked the idea but not the actual conception. When I added on, it made the main idea of the piece vaguer by drawing away from the hammering of the nail that I wanted present in the piece. Instead, I added questions to the end of each numbered paragraph to use the desired figurative language within my piece while still keeping a clear idea of the characterization and story of “you.”

The poem had a beginning that focused on the action but had a weird switch to second person at the end, but luckily my tutor had a really nice suggestion to add a section at the beginning that references said second person; it felt more cohesive and less abrupt making that switch to “but then you look up.” The specificity of her [the tutor’s] ideas and questions for “oh, could you find a word for this” really helped me focus in on the lines in the piece that I felt could be altered to strengthen the central message rather than take away from it. Going forward, I think taking into consideration the impact spacing can have is something useful.

I had a teacher once tell me “kill your darlings”—what she meant is that sometimes the parts of a piece I loved most needed to be cut altogether. The original title of this piece was “eyes like the weather” which has personal, sentimental value but as the piece grew, it didn’t hold the same weight. When the editors asked me to change the title, I thought about where the bulk of the inspiration from the piece came from, which was a conversation at a gas pump. After changing the title, I went through the different images and similes in the piece and recentered them around ~car~ things. I feel like it added theme, cohesion, and made the piece more clear.

I received feedback that the clarity of the piece fell off when I started to introduce new “characters.” The language surprised me because in the piece I talk about my Dad and my Grandma, but it’s true, to the reader they are characters. I realized I needed to expand on the “where” and “who” in the second half of the piece to make the images and experience more clear. I added a line about “unfamiliar rooms” and tied in “corners” to the musical event to give a stronger sense of space. The new capitalization of “We” signifies the royal, familial “We,” as we hold cautious hope for the future of our family, even though it looks different than we expected.

The most helpful piece of feedback for this particular piece was [the comment] that each stanza evoked images. This piece was inspired by an image I had of my mother when I was an infant. I wanted to shape a picture with as few words as I could. The tone from the beginning is somber, melancholic. “Broken Whistle” [and]”Empty Vessel” were phrases [that] sprung to mind when I imagined someone who is emotionally shattered. I felt that deep unspoken sadness a mother carries and decided to reflect on that. I personally liked the last stanza; I thought it captured what I wanted to express in the poem about a woman looking back on her life choices and regrets.