Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Notes on Student Poems

  • Streamline. How to say something more clearly. 
  • More humor. Jazzy titles
  • How can the reader know what you know? Readers respond to image, narrative, the unexpected, a different point of view.
  • Abandon centering. Think about using stanzas/space to create clearer meaning.
  • Rhyme is doing you no favor.
  • OK. I like all this where the familiar tale is being mixed with other things and given new particulars. But then in last two lines back to usual--why?
  • Too pretty sounding?
  • I like this incremental repetition but I want more. Push harder.
  • Combination of two things can increase interest, effectiveness.
  • Read aloud for rhythm, clarity, necessity.
  • What I want most is for you to experiment with not centering--will change feeling of lines.
  • Cutting always good.
  • Language--what is the ratio of complexity to clarity. Think about necessity. Deliberately making it more difficult and I can be fine with that if it has a purpose--re-seeing?
  • Maybe un-sentencing would help.
  • This sounds funny.
  • A little falling off towards the end where earlier there's all this great, various stuff. Think about order.
  • Think about line breaks to shake up usual way of reading and emphasizing words.
  • Doesn't hang together in interesting or directive way like what follows.
  • Not clear to me why this enters the poem.
  • This is a great quote but it seems sassier than the poem itself.
  • Think about order--clusters of idea/messages.
  • Why so many commas?

1 comment:

  1. I love "too pretty sounding." But you know how I feel about commas!

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