Saturday, January 10, 2015

Response to Megan Fogg's Junkyard Week One

Link to original post.

My response: 

Megan, I keep coming back to this post out of all your others partially because of the repetition you have in the second stanza and partially because of the line “as if I hadn’t stabbed a nurse with her rhinestoned pen.” The line offers a distinct bit of tension that I think would have been missing without the word "rhinestoned." She, besides the narrator, is the most intriguing character and I would love to see her developed or brought back in again. The rhinestone pen gives her a more humanizing feel that, again, we wouldn't have gotten without that little detail so compliments to you on that! And the repetition, like I said before, utilizes itself without being overbearing or too much. I like the fact that you broke up the monotony of the “as if i hadn’t" clipped lines with the longer lines. One other suggestion might be to take a look at the line breaks towards the end of the piece, specifically the two word line “to surrender.” Two word lines are always kind of iffy for me, as they never seem to pack the right amount of punch. I think that at this point in the game, you can combine the two last lines together to make one line. But the word embrace seems to be one of those words that you might expect in poetry…so maybe think of something more unexpected like “to surrender to a sudden tomorrow” or “to surrender, to forgive sudden respite,” or something like that. It offers something surprising in such a traumatic situation. I do like the distinct coolness of the language, like we discussed in class. It allows the emotion to not overtake the piece, but to simmer just under the surface, thereby making it interesting and tense. Hat's off to you, girl!

No comments:

Post a Comment