njandl's comments

Rachael,

There are a number of things that work well in this poem. The first is the way it repeats itself: your speaker goes through this back-and-forth about resisting versus enjoying the sensation of the butterflies, and in this way you mimic both the speaker's thought process and the fluttering, up and down movement of butterflies. You also have a nice sense of sound, as with such rhymes as "This feeling you bring/ These butterflies that sing/ That constant ring," but you avoid making the rhyme overwhelming by using it throughout the entire poem. Finally, one can really feel the sweetness in the speaker's voice and the earnest feelings towards the poem's subject.

My main issue with this piece is the lack of punctuation. (I've written this comment to a number of people, so do not feel it is somehow limited to your poem.) I think that poems need to maintain a consistency when it comes to punctuation. For example, you begin by using a comma and period in your first sentence, but then resort only to ellipses ("...") after that. I think there is certainly a flow you get by not imposing any pauses in your writing, and that flow contributes to the butterfly movement of the entire piece. But I also think that this poem could be made even stronger with some well-chosen punctuation to break it into "proper" sentences. In addition to providing slightly more formality, you'll be giving your readers some valuable breathing space as they read through this piece.

Great work - keep writing!

Nathan Jandl, Mentor

Elena,

It might be cheesy of me to quote this, but all I can think of after reading your essay are the words of Juliet, "Parting is such sweet sorrow."

I would actually categorize this piece as a kind of journal entry: it has that sense of talking to oneself as much as it is a story that you are telling to others, and it works well that way. I would also put forth that NMH is a great place...my brother went there for his junior and senior years and loved it, despite similar reservations about leaving friends and home behind.

I actually don't have much in the way of criticisms - again, this piece feels a bit more informal, but purposefully so. I think the most interesting possibility would be to continue this piece as the days and weeks progress, keeping track of all the changes and the feelings your having about those changes. If nothing else, it would a wonderful record of your experience!

Nathan Jandl, Mentor

Normally two mentors don't comment on the same piece, but I too was struck by the heartfelt simplicity and the nicely crafted French in this poem.

Just a quick note to add to Logan's entry above - how about using "tu" instead of "vous" when addressing the object of this poem? I have a friend who is a French major, and whenever we speak French to each other (his perfect, mine very much broken) he is always telling me to use "tu" with him - and again, he's simply my friend. So I would think that given this is a love poem, the personal "tu" would be the most appropriate.

That's it! Wonderful work.

Nathan Jandl, Mentor

Matthew,

This is a prime example of writing with great potential, but in need of revision. At this point you have some solid imagery and an interesting conceit (an extended metaphor that runs through the whole piece - i.e. the bubbles), and your depiction of the Iraqi children is touching and accurate. But there are a number of errors in spelling and grammar that keep this piece from really flowing. Some of the errors, such as "strait" (should be straight) will not be picked up in spell-check either, which makes it particularly important that you read you work carefully. Reading out loud is best, as it helps you notice problems much more easily than if you read in your head.

Keep writing! Again, this is a very good little vignette about Iraq; it just needs some polishing.

Nathan

Rachel,

Having obviously been a high schooler myself, and having written and worked with other writers in high school, I think I am justified in saying that unhappiness with life is a common subject during one's teenage years. And usually, it is treated with very dark, convoluted imagery and overblown language about pain and suffering and doom. It's not bad writing per se, but it is writing that is limited by the extremity of feeling and the lack of perspective gained later in life.

You have just redefined this type of writing.

This is a scathingly effective piece, one that makes us absolutely cringe at the insults hurled at the emotionally destroyed girl in the hoodie. I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what the catch was, what was provoking this diatribe by the narrator. And then that ending - which, I have to admit, took me a second to fully comprehend - simply shattered any misconceptions and brought the message heartbreakingly home.

I really don't have much to criticize here. I find that the second line is a little bit wordy. Also, I think you mean "you must have been born a cow," rather than "a born cow." That's it.

Great, great work.

Nathan

Greg,

This poem has the feeling of a journal entry, or perhaps of notes jotted down quickly - but it works in that stream-of-consciousness kind of way. The short, sometimes explosive sentences mirror the movements of your characters and you provide us with just enough visual information to flesh out the storyline. I think my one suggestion would be to add a few more linking details, such as how the woods looked/felt or a sentence about bringing the deer back home. You have made much out of sparse language here; just a little more would make this poem even better.

Nathan

OK, I feel compelled to chime in again - I wasn't saying that YOU are ridiculous to travel 3 hours (your friends are right, it shows a lot of dedication!), I was saying the NEED to travel 3 hours to a practice is ridiculous.

That's all :)

I completely agree with your other commenters - I love this poem. It is so clean and uncluttered...the words simply float off the page (screen, I guess) and drop us directly into that kitchen with you. Wonderful.

Jay,

I was glad to see you take on this issue in an essay. I certainly agree that it's a major problem, and the more young people like you who can talk about it and realize its importance, the better. Hopefully we can galvanize this country (and the world) to do something significant before it's too late.

You use strong, decisive language here, and it works well. And you cover two of the truly important sources of CO2 in the atmosphere, cars and power plants. I have a couple suggestions for you, however. The first has to do with the tone of your first paragraph: while I heartily agree that people who do not believe in global warming are flat wrong, in a piece like this you are trying to be persuasive - and that means taking a slightly more understanding approach. The way to convince people in this case is to provide hard evidence, and more importantly, evidence that matters to your audience. So in this case, talking about HOW global warming will effect people's lives might be the most effective approach. When your Vermont audience hears that their maple trees will die and they won't be able to ski any more due to a lack of snow, they might actually feel like global warming is a problem after all.

The other suggestion I have is to keep researching your facts, because global warming research is continuing to evolve. Ethanol, for example - while certainly better than staying with gasoline alone - is now considered problematic due to the amount of resources that it takes to produce corn, and the resulting problems with food supply to poorer parts of the world that rely on corn for their daily meals. And nuclear power may not use fossil fuels, but the cost and pollution that goes into building a plant is huge, and we still don't have a good way to dispose of the spent fuel.

So I guess my message is, keep it up, keep learning, and keep writing! The more you know, the more you'll be able to share. You're already on the right track. (Oh, and don't forget to check your work carefully for typos.)

Nathan

Patrick,

What a great series of images you've given us here. As Burton_Rocker said, it's "exactly like us kids when we were young." I also like how you bracket the poem with the word "winter." The issue, as I see it, is that this isn't quite a poem yet - it's just a list of images. Somehow you need to connect everything (beyond the title), to create some kind of narrative or story or larger point flowing through. I actually think this could be an opportunity to make this piece into an essay instead of a poem - you certainly have the material; you just need to flesh it out. Each image could be its own paragraph. Give it a try!

Thanks for submitting, and keep writing!
Nathan

This is definitely an improvement. There is still a pretty open-ended aspect to the poem, but it's also clear that you were trying to elicit more of a feeling than a specific story here, and I like that.

You're working with a wonderful metaphor, Blaise, and a great take on the "Losing Weight" prompt. What I find most interesting is that you are not so much talking about being washed clean, but rather that you are being watered like a plant, so that the scars may still be there but they are being covered up by new growth.

Your writing is very good, and it is quite musical thanks to your use of sibilance (a type of alliteration characterized by the repetition of "s" sounds"), shown words like "slide," "salt," "streams" and "scars" in your first three lines. My main suggestion would be to examine your punctuation, which is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes you have complete sentences running through your lines; other times the syntax falls apart. Poetry can be liberal with regards to punctuation, but whatever approach you choose should remain the same throughout a given poem.

Nice work!

Erica,

First and foremost, congratulations on completing such a significant piece of writing - this is one of the longer pieces I've read for YWP, and I was struck by the deft way in which you developed your two main characters and brought the threads of their lives together. I particularly enjoyed your sense of humor, which comes out in bright flashes and contributes to the intriguing and unusual storyline.

Your writing is mature and eloquent, though I did detect some shifting within your style, from playfully conversational to a more formal, Jane Austen-like approach. You also shift - obviously - between two perspectives, which is a tricky thing, and which might be something to work on here. While I find the first few paragraphs work as a way of introducing Garland, I think that as an overall piece it would be more effective (and less confusing) to have an omniscient narrator. This would change things, as you would be telling the story rather than relating it through the minds of two characters, but just consider the option.

My other main suggestion is to examine exactly what happens in this story. There is certainly some action - Garland falls, lands in the purse, is discovered and eventually gets rescued - but there is also a relatively significant amount of time spent describing the shopping habits of Trice-Lynn and her trips to the mall, as well as the somewhat confusing opening about Garland's school in the clouds. With that in mind, I would read this story to yourself carefully to make sure that your audience is able to follow your descriptions/transitions (not that you have to be explicitly clear all the time, but implications must be carefully crafted). And I would posit that you could expand this story further by extending the interaction/conversation/action between Garland and Trice-Lynn. Here is a girl meeting a fairy, and their interaction and friendship (aside from some fashion-police work and grumpiness) is fairly easy - perhaps too much so.

Again, though, you have a lively, imaginative story here, and I think you have a clear talent for writing prose. Keep up the good work, and I do hope you end up submitting it for publication somewhere!

Nathan

You are very welcome. I think it is easy to write poetry that is in a purely reactionary or impulsive or stream-of-consciousness style; and none of these are bad attributes. But poetry can also suffer from those approaches, because they can lead to a lack of clarity and depth. The key is to infuse your work with a sense of spontaneity and freshness but to ultimately be a purposeful, focused writer. Revision is often the best way to achieve this: you begin with a raw piece, then go back and think hard about what you are trying to accomplish and how you can achieve it.

This is, indeed, the challenge of all creative writing. Good luck, and keep at it! You're well on your way.

You take on some major issues here, Bryce, and do a truly admirable job of 1) trying to make sense of them in your life, and 2) doing so using a strong metaphorical conceit (extended metaphor). I, too, am alarmed at the state of our country and the direction we have been strong-armed into taking by our government. The fact that young people like you are aware of the problem and have strong opinions about it is comforting, though clearly the push to actually change things will be long and difficult.

There are a few places where you might be able to improve this piece; the main issue is that you go back and forth about the military and education too frequently. This makes the writing feel slightly jumbled. Really honing your points and arguments, providing a little more in-depth detail, and then separating the education/military points a bit more would benefit the flow here.

Also, just to spur some additional thinking, what solutions can you think of for some of these issues? How do we control spending in this country and still provide equal opportunities in education? What IS the answer to Iraq (that's one that even the world's experts on insurgency, nation-building, religion and war can't figure out...)? What should our new president, whoever he or she turns out to be, do to help the country out?

Again, thanks for submitting and for being so informed.