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?