The feedback helped me see my work from the perspective of readers and see where some word choices might be less clear or where excessive wordiness might detract from the piece.
Category: Poetry
I had a lot of positive feedback for my piece with most of the suggestions falling into the category of how to lightly tinker with the piece to bring out the best poem. I think the more general comments that I got helped me know how my poem would generally be received.
I was told it was tight and the rhythm flowed well. There was one stanza where my syllables were inconsistent, and a few places where there was confusion on word choice such as “ones” for money and beginning the poem during a job search not in the scene most discussed. I was told that there was a lot said in a short amount of time and that my puns were effective.
Concision and organization were big in this piece. I knew what idea I wanted to share and the tone I wanted to use, but Angie really helped me with the overall structure and how to cut down in order to make the biggest impact.
I worked with Angie a lot on structure and punctuation. I had never written poetry before so we also worked on genre conventions and general style.
We focused a lot on voice and perspective in the piece. Since it is me talking to myself, we discussed how to make that more clear. I also wanted to play with imagery and physical description which was tough for me but very fun.
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.