MixedEmotions {item:1914350}
by A*FALLing*Faith! 1955910,
posted January 19, 2013
latest revision January 21, 2013
reviewed October 6, 2013


Good morning (WDC time), A*Monaing*Faith

This is a reply to your post on {item:819237 where you wrote, “Another come across while perusing my own port. Poetry isn't my strong suit but I like it....what do you think?”

First Impression - atypical verse topography; personal experience; an exceptional talent with a future in writing

Abstract - the poet imagines a one-way conversation with a co-worker to whom she tacitly expresses her push-pull feelings

Significance of the Title - the title tells readers to expect to learn which emotions are mixed and how they got that way; (the reason for conjoining the title’s two words is lost on this reviewer)

Poet’s sub-title - “Winner!A-Z Poetic Contest Entry: Due 01/19/13 - ‘Why do I feel this way?’ in Goethe Stanza”

Subject - uncertainty about a workplace romance.

Message - “I love you and it scares me.”

Poet’s target audience - the secret, unidentified second person, “you”, of I'm by your side; readers will wonder why she is a secret; or he

Secondary audience - assumed to be the eavesdropping rest of us

Class - reverie

Style - expressive; casual; lets readers watch the poet's mind work

-voice - the poet's, active

-tone - bewildered

-mood - lyrical

-point of view - first person, I want to stop

Structure - eight rhymed Goethe stanzas (single line, distich {rhymeless couplet}, single line); centered text; single-hued font; short lines; syntactical line breaks; end-punctuation, all lines; first words randomly capitalized

-pace - varies by line length; overall average line length of one and a half seconds

-rhythm - irregular with a few metrical lines, e.g., Inside my head (iambic dimeter) and flirtation is a deadly art (amphibrach, anapest, iamb) and I feel like such a buffoon (iamb, iamb, anapest)

Poetic devices - structure; rhyme; metaphors, heart* and picturing (imagining) and whelped (formed) and hang on (listen intently); hyperbole, If only you really had hung the moon
(*NOTE on heart: To the ancients, the beating heart must have seemed to be where all human functions existed because when the beat stopped so did the functions. Modern writers, especially poets, unthinkingly use “heart” to mean variously thought, emotions, reason, psyche, courage, or compassion, and they hope the context will convey their meaning.)

Rhyme - rhyme scheme: a,b,a,b  c,d,c,d, etc.; perfect masculine end rhymes with several exceptions: “serious, delirious” form a perfect feminine end rhyme; “connected, wedded” form only an imperfect eye rhyme on the final two letters; “temerity, alacrity” form an imperfect eye rhyme; “myself, health” form an assonant end rhyme; “justified, side” join a feminine to a masculine end syllable; “swooned, groomed” form an assonant end rhyme; “attachment, un-pent” form an imperfect eye rhyme

Imagery - flustered poet

Flow - For me, a helpful exercise is to have someone cold-read the piece aloud while I listen to the sound, the energy, and the rhythm. That will also make any stumbles and awkward places in the flow leap out. By cold-read I mean, don't let the reader go over the piece first. Just offer it to them and say, "Please, start reading aloud from the top." I can assure you, A*FALLing*Faith! 1955910, your ears won't let you down.

Believability - readers will readily sense the poet’s fluster

Diction - appropriate for the subject, class, and audience

Favorite wording - If only you really had hung the moon, / then I would be justified, / if when you smiled I swooned.

Summary - Enamored with a co-worker, the writer fears the result of expressing that directly, Possibilities fill me with dread, so she denies herself a possibly wonderful, fulfilling relationship.

Impact - Strong-minded readers will likely think, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Friends’ Comments on “MixedEmotions”
- Nancy Ann, a WDC friend wrote, “I want to read a follow-up where she gently and subtly explores the feelings of the secret ‘you’. But in a romantic form, like an English sonnet.”
- Edna, a poet said, “Short lines do not fold prose into poetry. Without a cadence that pleases the right brain, without some rhythm that gives a piece the 'feel' of verse, it gets only the left-brain reaction like spoken English prose. It’s just prose in short lines that could have been typed out margin to margin across the page.”
- A third friend, Arlene, emailed, “Still another starting-out poet who guesses what a rhyme is. I laughed right out loud when I read ‘whelped’; that’s what a lady dog does when she has puppies.”

Reflection - After reading "MixedEmotions" , A*FALLing*Faith! 1955910, what emotion or image should arise without effort for readers?

Bucolica's lecture on the value of a well-crafted title - A beckoning title is vital. We won’t reach readers if we don’t grab their interest. Too many titles appear to be easy afterthoughts. A great title either distills the crux of the whole into very few words, or it poses unwritten questions that hurry the reader into the poem looking for answers. Too many poets spend too little time sculpting a vital title. Good enough never is.

Challenge - create a robust, fetching title that pulls readers into the piece, a title that matches the thrust of the poem.

Recommendation - take a poetry course; get active in some poetry workshops.

Good work. Three and a half stars! !             

These are only our reactions (mine and my friends') to "MixedEmotions" , perhaps different from what you had in mind, A*FALLing*Faith! 1955910, when you composed it. Keep what you like and ignore the rest.

Question - A*FALLing*Faith! 1955910, typically, who is your target audience? That is, whom do you write for? Whom do you want to connect with? (“My readers” is the obvious, effortless answer. I’m sure you can go beyond it.)

If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to answer them; please feel free to ask. Answered questions are great teachers.

In the meanwhile, keep your talent busy and study all the poetry you can.

Strive on!

B


"Great poetry looks so easy to first-timers
because the skilled poet has put so much effort
into hiding the effort."
                        Judson Jerome


On writing and re-writing, great American poet Mary Oliver
has said that it takes about 70 hours of work before a poem
should be brought out into the daylight.