Poetry Exercises for Daily Practice

This is a review I got today for this poem. I wanted to put it here to show something I had not thought of as much as I should: Word choice and how something more simple and to the point could be preferable to an ambiguous word that others may not really get or may get another meaning entirely.

Here it is: Feel free to comment on the poems or the review. He has some good points and I will be looking over this and making some minor changes.

The form you've chosen for these poems is very interesting. You use it well in the four examples you offer the reader.

In "Redemption", I wonder who the "they" is in the second line. You use "commune" as a verb, which can be justified, but in my opinion you don't use it in such a way that the reader is not forced to guess at its meaning and come up with "communicates" instead. I had to look this word up, which is no problem, but in reading its definition, I remain uncertain as to is proper use in this context. In my opinion, rich vocabulary is great for poetry, but there has to be a reason a more erudite word is used in the place of a more easily understood one. This poem ends with a question - I would use the question mark to finish the poem.

"Stillness" has, in my opinion, the same shortcoming with "short" used as a verb. Any theatre goer is always in admiration of a great actor capable of delivering a monologue, so the definition I find for "to short" as either short-circuit or cheat, doesn't seem to fit the situation. I'm forced, because of your use of uncommon words in strange ituations, to wonder whether I understand everything and why you want to be vague at the beginning of a poem. The rest of this poem fits well the model you have chosen.

"Envy" is by far the best of the four. It is clear, concise and very upbeat. You take no chances with strange words, and it reads easily.

In "Determination", I read that it is the yellow flowers of the desert which are "dismissed" and "restricted." That is because you have abbreviated too much the opening lines. IN my opinion, they need a bit more information so that the reader does not come to this erroneous conclusion.

All in all, a very interesting series of poems based on a very original model that I myself will try soon.

Keep up the creative writing.

alfred

Short : 1 : short-circuit 2 : shortchange, cheat






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