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.
Several writing tutors told me what they liked about the piece, including the physical movement of it, and the personification of Western. I used this feedback to lean into those elements and fully realize them as the core of the piece.
Some of my feedback focused on the last line: “I would’ve not longed for her to meet.” When the tutor read this out loud, they read it as “I would not have longed for her to meet” instead. When I pointed it out, we discussed a few options, but the concept of making something tough to read makes the reader take it slow and use more cognitive processing. That might be frustrating in long paragraphs but in these short lines I think it actually helps the reader to be cautious of what they are reading.
There were several small spelling mistakes that had gone unnoticed to me, but they were very clear to another person. Coming back to it through another person’s eyes allowed me to revise and ensure that someone else would not misconstrue the poem due to small errors. I went back and made a few edits to ensure it came out in a more satisfying manner.
The reviewer at the writing center said she would like to see another line in my poetry referencing a mythical beast. I decided not to insert a side story of what I only intended to be a singular comparison of a mythical, multifaceted being in dramatic contrast to the two sidedness of being disabled. I also want readers to understand it’s a passing thought of comparison and not a direct analogy.
I got some suggestions relating to word choice so that the syllables of my rhymes sounded better and more concise. I was informed that my poem does not tell a very complex story but it’s a complete one. I was suggested to introduce a conflict into the story to keep the reader’s attention and make the happy ending all that much more joyous, but I did not go that route. I wanted to keep it very simple.
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.