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Review of HEAVEN  Open in new Window.
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (2.5)
I'm not a religious person, so forgive me if I don't comment on the subject matter of this poem. As such, I will talk just about the technicalities and the wording:

This is good at its core, but the form is misconstrued.

Capitalize "Heaven" throughout.

You use end-stopped rhyme, but no punctuation to stop the lines. This is a big no no.

The lines don't scan, but the forced rhythm makes it so that we have to read for rhythm. It "sounds" awkward, jolting.

"It is truely a wonderful place
seeing Jesus's wonderful face"--> this wording indicates that "seeing" Jesus's face is a place, and it is not. "Seeing" is an action. I suggest: It is truly a wonderful place/Where you can see Jesus's wonderful face." Get rid of one wonderful, though. Two is too many.

Rhyming lines alone do not make a poem. If you use rhyme, be sure to pay attention to the rhythm. Too many of these lines end on a downbeat, you could say, taking away from the upbeat spirit of the piece. If you want to convey a sense of wonder and hope, make sure the "sound" of the poem does the same.

As I said, this is a good poem at its core. This is the rough draft, the first step. Work on it. Revise it. Add punctuation. It will shine once you do those things. Any questions, let me know.
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152
Review of ANIMAL  Open in new Window.
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (2.0)
Overall: You bring out the mood the scene well, so there is promise for this piece. However, there are just too many mechanical errors. It was like you didn't care about the clarity of what you were trying to say. I don't know, that might be a good thing if you were intending to convey the lack of clarity of the bar and its patrons...but I don't think you were trying for that effect. Clean up the grammar, and the images you are trying to convey will become much more powerful. If you want, I could not all of them for you, but I will not do that right now.

--The songs on the wall,were at the
highest card in the deck.--> comma unnecessary.

--Smothered with heavy noise,
the pulse so vibrant with it's presence
the wood actually warped outward.--> comma after presence

--Inside the smoke from various burning substances
helped carry the music into the old barns rafters.-->What was inside the smoke that helped carry the music to the rafters? very unclear.

(I've stopped noting grammar problems. There are too many)
153
153
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.5)
(sorry for the length of this. I'm too full of myself sometimes, but I wanted to share my ideas with you.)


Notes while reading:

Good, attention grabbing opening sentence, but replace semicolon with colon.

There's a lot of "like" which can be confusing--what is the effect you are trying to reach with its use? "Like" distances, metaphorizes, the despair you are trying to relate--this might be a good thing if you are trying to say that the language of despair is only available through deflection, through images. Is despair immediate or does it come through images, deflections and reflections? I am not sure. What do you think? Bring it out in this piece.

Opening paragraph is too big. I suggest paragraph break after "it lasts for a lifetime." The tone shifts then, and the paragraph would provide a less daunting read.

By the time of "raindrops slash" I'm starting to weary of the use of metaphor. The language is poetic and emotive, but very heavy (you are trying to give a sense of weight, yes, but the reader has to work through each metaphor, and that weighs down the reading-process; where's the promise of reward for all this work? the reader might be feeling) For example: "fits of ecstasy embrace the leaves that continue to cling to the branches, rusty and dry." I'm trying to work out how the two apparently conflicting emotions "ecstasy" and "dry" support each other. I want to say that it is sexual (because of ecstacy) but not sure...I spend a lot of time trying to work this out and can't continue reading the story. There should be depth in a story--you've achieved that wonderfully--but too much depth without any hope of finding shallower waters or land can keep the reader from swimming to the far shore.

Perspective shift: at first the narrator is talking to "you," the reader, in a second-person perspective, and then shifts to a first-person perspective. That could be off-putting.

"Infinite number of locations and vocations": nice alliteration, but logically fallacious: we are confined to the Earth and there is a limited number of vocations.

Another paragraph break after "odor of exhaust".

Oh god, I'm starting to fear that you work at Waldenbooks or something! (then I see the word pub and fear you're working at some British equivalent).

Paragraph break after "heavily wet clothes".

Paragraph break after "air above me". ( I will make no more comments about paragraph breaks after this: you should consider the effect of the long paragraph: a single idea worked through from opening sentence to finalization. Is this what the opening paragraph does?)

There is some high quality prose at work here. Nicely done.

"Suddenly, a man sat in the row before me turns"--> a man sitting



Notes after reading:

Tone: You've got the ear for prose and a great vocabulary. The heaviness of this piece fits the brooding nature of the narrator.

Theme: I'm confused, a bit. Here's this guy just depressed by his mundane, unchanging existence; we follow him as he takes a chance to change his life; he is shot, killed supposedly. It's like you are warning us that change is not only dangerous but also fruitless (fruitless because we don't get a chance to see this guy's life change positively).

Grammar: There's only a couple of typing mistakes with periods and semicolons; otherwise this is a very clean piece.

Style: Unsure if I can get into it. Thankfully, not a genre piece. Still, I found the language over-bloated at times and the paragraphs (I know I said it before, sorry) too long. Give the reader a little breathing space; make it easier and rewarding at the first read and maybe they'll come back for a second, deeper reading?


Overall:
Thank you very much for sharing this. I definitely want to come back for a second reading, but I am accustomed to reading demanding fiction. Most people are not. But even the most demanding fiction (and I'm thinking Borges, for example) offers some ease of reading. Let me know if you edit this piece and I will read it again. Thanks again.

(I'm sending you some points as a thank for the high level vocabulary and tone exhibited here).
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154
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: ASR | (3.0)
--are will --> our will
--I will survive, I will survive --> (I am sorry but this reminds me too much of that old disco lyric.)
--But I am faster, I will not give up. --> But I am faster. I will not give up.
--But I am whole, I didn’t give up. --> But I am whole. I didn't give up. (Also consider changing the "didn't" to "did not" as it would strengthen to finality of the last line.

There is a good sense of defiance conveyed here. The lines are taut and short, and that does give a sense of the will of the speaker. There is no sense of rhythm or lyricism, though, and that may or may not be what you're striving for (you decide). I got kind of distracted when you started talking about the river having an intelligence--this ran contrary to the (i think better) idea of Life as a natural, unstoppable power dragging the narrator down.

All in all, a nice piece, but could use some work.
155
155
Review of 52 Candles  Open in new Window.
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (3.5)
Nice rhythm and tone. I like the tone. I like the repetition giving weight to the words and to the final feeling of helplessness. It's a bit hopeless, yes, but there's a sense of life passing, of holding on to the moments of life, like memories, like poems can recall and/or trigger memories. That's nice and nicely sad. Li Young Lee said the purpose of poetry is memory, and I would agree with that. There's such a hopeless tone at the end of your poem, though, that I'm not sure what to walk away with. Should I feel that living is senseless, that love is senseless, that we can never know someone? There's so much weight on that word "know": I feel we can know little bits with "knowing" the whole, but your poem seems to disregard knowing the little bits and falls into apathy that we can't know the whole of someone. Is that the tone you are trying for?
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156
Review of More Lysol!  Open in new Window.
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Kudos! I detect a whiff of Poe in there, somewhere around the hair--it is a compliment. Nice and fun. My kind of humor. You keep the rhyme scheme tight and the rhythm works quite well with the subject matter. The only reason I don't give it a 5-star rating is that the last line fell kind of flat--I was hoping for a more resonating, echoing image. It's a good ending, though. Thanks for sharing.
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Review of Walk The Road  Open in new Window.
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.5)
Good points: This is clear, and the lines, for the most part, flow nicely.

Less than good points (points I felt needed critiquing):
--The lines don't scan, so I'm not sure if you intended this piece to be poetical or lyrics--either way, the final line falls very far outside of the predominate rhythm, and it falls heavy on the ear. It is kind of distracting, to me.
--Logistics: You say "This path was meant for you," but in the preceding line "No one knows for sure." The verb "meant" indicates a creator of the road/path (which I assume you meant to be God), and so I feel that this creator would know if you will find your way or not. This is not really a theological or philosophical issue so much as a phrasing issue. If you could find some way to rephrase this so that it isn't "no one," it would be less distracting.

Grammatical:
--"It is sometimes in shadow" should be followed either by a period or a semicolon.
--"Maybe you will not" should be followed by either a period or a semicolon.

If these are lyrics, then you've written some nice, inspirational lyrics again. Have you considered writing a longer thematic piece on these issues?
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158
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.0)
I'm only going to comment on a portion of this essay because I would like you to edit it after reading my comments and send it back to me for review again. Okay?

First, I like the topic. I have been a teacher in America and Japan for 12 years, and while I (luckily) missed the No Child Left Behind policies, I have witnessed the testing system of Japan (which would make most American students crumple from stress).

You do a good job of approaching the topic, and you keep a fairly moderate, even tone throughout. It is a good short essay, with just a few small, but distracting, points.

Grammar:
1) feel our schools face ; Many are just too lazy--> feel our schools face: Many are just too lazy
2) all time-->all-time
3)time after time after time--> unnecessary repetition. Rely on content, not words, to get the point across

Wordiness:
1)Over the years in which I have been a student--> "in which I have been a student" is unnecessary given the context of the essay and what we know about your age.
2) Right now I am hoping to someday --> someday is redundant; it refers to the future, which the sentence already does
3) I have gained an ever increasing amount of respect --> doesn't have to be ever increasing. Increasing, alone, should do. However, gained implies increasing. How about just "gained respect"?

Content:
1) At the end of paragraph 1, you mention changes we must implement but do not, actually, detail the changes. You have mentioned problems, but not changes. Detail the problems, first, and then the changes you want to see implemented.
2) In paragraph 3, You say, on one hand, that teachers are making enough to live off of, and then you say it is barely enough and too little to support a family. Also, watch the comparison: Professional athletes are expected to compete for only a few years, and receive high salaries as compensation for that; teachers often work past retirement age. People will notice this logical inconsistency.

As I said, this is a good start. Make some changes and send it back to me. I will finish reviewing it then. Great writing for a high school senior, by the way. I taught university freshman composition for four years, and most of them couldn't write this well at first. You've got a head-start on them, it seems.

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159
Review by Dis-Ease Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (2.0)
I like the rhythms and the rhyme scheme, both of which, when they are working, follow the theme fairly well. The biggest problem occurs when the rhythm and rhyme become irregular without any (seemingly) recognizable connection to the story. Sometimes the rhymes border on sing-song, and that seems odd in a story about the death of a father. A dirge is not necessary, of course, but watch out for lines like "It was ash from the sky! It was raining from a nearby volcano"--I want to rewrite it to read sing-songy "volcano nearby"--which seems to be the tendency of the line. "Dad had suffered cardiac arrest ... / ... Mt. St. Helens had blew her crest "--the line just seems too playful for the topic.

Awkward line: "The sky fell on black Sunday of May, spreading darkness so stark, / A mysterious, dismal, gloomy black sky, completely devoid of light."-- 1) I don't easily understand "The sky fell on black Sunday": Is this Sunday black? 2) The rhythm, excellent up to this point, falters without any sense of ending of thematic tie-in to the action. 3) Too many adjectives.

"How could this be?" seems to strained. No one was able to guess what was happening? I was 600 miles or so away, and we got covered in ash, and didn't know what was up until the news--but your characters here seem pretty close to the volcano, so it's hard to believe the narrator can't guess.

You used the work "cake" to end two lines in the final stanza: sounds repetitious and places way too much emphasis on that image.

"natal surprise" is too contrived. Try a simpler word like "birthday surprise".

Let me end on some good notes, because you do have a good start here. The poem's topic intrigues, and we get the foreshadowing of the father's death effectively in the first stanza. That worked really well. I liked the emphasis on religion, and how it gets interrupted/tested by the natural world. You could do a lot with this theme in the poem, especially given the death of the father by the end, and having your characters standing in a bleak landscape. Nice imagery.
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