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  • on Write me by Windhover, on July 24
    Windhover thanks for engaging my thoughts and for examining the possibility of a redraft - it is a graciously received compliment indeed. I really like the new direction this takes on now.

    The English teacher stanza throws me a bit, the content repeats a little from the previous stanza, but more of a concern is how, by referencing the teacher and schooling, it almost applies an age to the protagonists (schooling teens) which is a touch unsettling in context of the poem. I understand the message is ‘break the rules’ and wonder if this could be achieved in the theme of the poem but avoiding this possible interpretation?

    There is a term I have only recently come to know (what an educational marvel DVD’s are!) - it may be well known and therefore clichéd and unusable, but, I think it would fit well with this piece particularly in the penultimate couplet: “sleeping dictionary”: ‘write me a lover, you a sleeping dictionary’. As I understand it, it was a term coined by the British when they were colonizing Malaysia. As new British males arrived they needed to learn the local language, Bahasa, so they took a local girl as a ‘partner’ who became their ‘sleeping dictionary’

    In the pen and inkbottle stanza perhaps something like ‘quill’ or ‘nib’ may present an opportunity to subtly add to the double entendre.

    Lastly, to create a little enjambment and offer two meanings to the final line you could consider a break:
    don’t let me know
    the end

    Again I thank you for considering my comments, as always they are offered in good faith. They are only my thoughts (which in re-reading I seem to splash an erratic disordered manner and with terrible spelling and grammar!) it is never my intent to try to direct a writer, and I know you don’t view it as such, that is why I enjoy reading and commenting on your (and a few other poets here) work.

    Great work,
    Rgds
    hobby

  • on Write me by Windhover, on July 22
    Hi there,

    This seems to have been written at two different times, there is a distinct difference in the opening stanza (up to S6) from those thereafter. Each are please in their own way, with the first six holding a little more appeal to me.

    For me the connotations are stronger. The fact they don't rhyme keeps an edge to them.
    The content and construction of lines such as: “make the words colorful but keep the sentences short” is close to masterful (and that’s just about as good as it gets!).

    Then the flow, the construction of the stanzas and the content seem to take on a more jovial feel, as if you had come to stop and were trying to keep break the inertia. I think there is so much more possibility to the later half of this piece than what has been developed so far.

    The later stanzas would work as part of a separate piece following the is the same lighter versed nature, entertaining but perhaps less engaging.

    I don’t know what plans you have for this but I do hope you revisit ‘that place’ which inspired the opening lines and develop the close from there.

    All the best
    hobby