Jeff Scott's comments

Hey there-- I'm Jeff, I'm a UVM mentor.

I think this piece demonstrates a pretty good understanding of how theme functions in a piece, as well as some really striking images (I especially like the image of "little bits of cut up light"-- original and accurate, takes my right back to the dance floor). It's interesting that you chose to include a clarification below your piece about your reference to a slow dance, as this image of cut up light and the suggestion of the DJ seem to make that clear to me. I understand your impulse to clarify (and it's certainly your right to do so), but I'd encourage you to think about the things you like to watch, read, and listen to: isn't one of the most rewarding parts of watching a show or listening to a song trying to figure out the puzzle? Have confidence in your ability to convey your meaning-- you did a good job of conveying that image in this piece, and in the future readers will appreciate your intuitive ability to show rather than tell!

I'm looking for places where you might be able to push the piece, and a few possibilities come to mind. To some, it may seem like the piece rambles a bit toward the middle, though I like the way that all of the "ands" rhythmically capture the breathless feeling associated with the poem. I guess my biggest question is about the hands themselves. What do they look like? So much is made of the hands in this piece, and yet I know little about them-- calloused, dirty, small, large, hairy, sweaty? I don't think it's necessarily "necessary" to add such images if that's against your instinct, but it could bring the piece into sharper focus. Specific images (like the image of the cut up light) can really pull a reader in!

Good luck as you keep writing!

Hey-- I'm Jeff, I'm a UVM mentor.

This is an interesting piece-- I'm assuming that it's about the conflict that Geoff referenced in his message on the front page? I have no idea what happened-- I haven't been following the community lately-- but this piece seems to give a good sense of what happened just by its sheer rawness.

On a craft level-- and this poem like all inspired writing is more than the way its words are put together-- uses some very interesting devices. The "shut up, shut down" duality is brilliant-- pairing opposites is a great way to really make a reader stop and think for a moment. The poem continues to darken in the middle and yet it's held up again by these same dualities: the image of "pretty white" against the suggestions of red blood is one that, to me, seems particularly poignant. You've written a powerful and venemous piece that suggests a great deal-- in a disturbing way.

As someone who loves to write myself, I understand the creative impulse that's at work here-- writing can do a lot of things. In this poem, you have taken words and turned them into knives. You've done this very well, and indeed sincere writing comes directly from emotion. The dark tone of the poem worries me, and I don't know quite how to say anything beyond that because I'm not really in a position to do so. You are a skilled writer, and I hope that time turns your knives into flowers.

Try this:

Think of a time when you have been searching for belonging in your own life. Write that phrase on top of a piece of paper or in a word document or something like that.

Now, thinking about the word belonging-- and all that goes with it-- make a list of pictures that come to mind. It doesn't matter how absurd or ridiculous they might be-- if for some reason belonging to you means that in the center of Mars there's one single teacup, then just write it down. Times when you've either felt like you've belonged or haven't belonged-- times when you've seen other people belonging or not belonging and how their faces looked-- places, smells, sensory stuff. Fill at least a page with images that it makes you think of, and see if anything emerges for you.

Lists are your friend! Haha.

-Jeff

Some brilliant images and ideas here. I really like your metaphors: the image of tap dancing suggests a flurry of fingers flying, and your flexible use of words is a great asset to the poem (I don't think many people would think of words as twisting into leaves, and yet there's some great emotion there-- a suggestion that that's what people are trying to do as they write anyway, that maybe the emotion behind writing is a lot more important than the words that actually come out on the page.

If there's one part of the poem that, for some reason, took me out of this beautiful moment you're creating-- it was your closing image. It's a good instinct to try to close the poem by bringing it back around to the beginning, and that's a fine technique that many great writers use-- but for some reason subjectively it doesn't fit in this poem for me. It seems to shift the focus of the poem from emotion (which seems to be what you want to address in this piece) back to the tool, and somehow that's not quite satisfying for the reader. I like the idea of the tear on the typewriter-- I don't think you should lose that because it kind of grafts the raw emotion and the tool together. I just think that you can really close and put the bow on this one better with a line that moves the poem forward another step or two, instead of bringing it back around in a circle. In fact, reading it again, it might not even be the image of the typewriter that puts it just a little off balance-- it might be the image of the missing key, which could be more powerful if you only use it once? Hmm...

Write on! You're talented.

-Jeff (UVM mentor)

Hey there!

Interesting poem here-- I think you have a good theme going. My favorite part is "When you gently pushed back the hair from my eyes and said, 'Darling, what's the rush?'". That's an image that I can really see in my mind's eye, and the texture/rhythm of those words sounds very 'sweet' and maybe a little sad to me.

A place you could push this poem is through turning some of the statements in the poem into images. In writing-- poetry especially-- it's really important to try to 'show' as much of what you mean as you can through images, instead of 'tell'ing what you mean. For example, I might be walking down the street at night. I could say "I was walking down the street and I felt lonely," which tells the reader how you want him/her to feel. However, a more powerful way to express this idea of loneliness is to create images/pictures with your words that suggest loneliness-- "The only sound on the midnight street was the cold wind scraping the stiff leaves across the pavement." The adjectives and images in that line suggest loneliness because midnight is a time when most people would be sleeping; the sentence also has an undertone of pain because the leaves are being 'scraped' across the pavement-- 'scraped' is kind of a harsh verb. Do you see what I mean?

You're in a good place with the poem because you know what you want to say-- and you've already used this technique of 'showing' to suggest a kind of sad calmness in the opening of the poem. Your challenge is to take those other ideas that you also want to express-- the idea of sameness, the idea of belonging-- and turning those ideas into images.

Good luck, and write on!

-Jeff (UVM mentor)

It's totally fine to not know. Developing as a writer is really exciting because it means becoming aware of what you're doing with words. Writers always start out just writing-- and that's the most important thing at first, to produce a lot of words, to get comfortable with the task itself. That next level is becoming hyper aware of what words can do-- syntactically (which is just a fancy umbrella term for sentence construction, verb tenses, all that "grammar stuff") and aesthetically (the images-- the "pretty stuff"). A great book on craft (if you feel like you want some more in depth guidance on what words can do and how to use them) is "Imaginative Writing," I think by Janet Burroway. It's not easy stuff-- it's a college level text-- and it's a bit expensive, I think it prices for about 40 bucks on Amazon. Still, even if now you're more comfortable with the idea of just producing and not really studying "writing craft" (which is a big, intense, sometimes scary path to take), the next most important thing is to pay close attention to the words an author picks when you're reading something you like. You can kind of turn it into a game almost-- when you come across a paragraph or sentence in a story that moves you or makes you feel a certain way, try to think about why. It won't always be easy or obvious to figure out why a piece of writing evokes a certain emotion for you, but the more you try to "read like a writer", the more aware you'll become of craft in your own writing without necessarily having to buy a book on craft.

As far as that specific line goes-- I liked your initial instinct on the image of "friend", because it sort of implies a line between how she sees him and what he might want. I guess that's the best guidance I can try to give-- see if you can work the phrase around that instinct, but more clearly.

Sorry if I got carried away on that comment! Haha, have a good night.

Jeff

Hey there!

Excellent list here. And you've touched on a technique a lot of very good writers use to get started on pieces-- making lists around a theme then working from there. The list itself is a great expression of things that are/could be important to you, and that's where good writing really starts-- you seem very in touch with what you like and what you feel (or could feel). And some items on the list are walking toward cliche maybe-- as in, you always see perfect kisses in movies while fireworks are happening-- but for some reason (maybe it's the hopeless romantic in me) I can still relate to most of these images as really genuine. And I really, really like the idea of poet's snow-- that could perhaps lend itself to an entire poem in and of itself-- but it's a great phrase and you describe what it means to you beautifully at the bottom.

I'd challenge you to take some of these images and see if you can turn them into a poem somehow. How many of them can you connect? Can you take these ideas, these images you imagine as perfect moments, and use them to show something about what love or romance means to you? Play around with them. This kind of list could go in many different directions-- for example, if you didn't want to try to connect the images, you could take one item off the list and describe it in as much detail as you possibly can. Sometimes these exercizes will end up being what a lot of people would call "poems" and sometimes you'll play with them and they'll just give you more images-- images you can draw on in future writing.

Whatever you decide to do with these ideas-- do something! Experiment, play around, rearrange things. Writing is a giant jigsaw puzzle, but the beauty is that there are always a million ways to put the pieces together.

Good luck!

-Jeff (UVM Mentor)

Hey, sorry to take so long getting back to you on your question on my comment.

I think that's a very fine refrain, and it fits really well with the duality of light and darkness that's present throughout the entire piece.

-Jeff

Hey, I'm Jeff-- I'm a UVM mentor and your poem caught my eye!

I like what you did with the back and forth on the perspectives here. It gives the poem an interesting rhythm and kind of shows two sides to a story that most people would only see one side to. I also like what you did with your verb tenses-- you started everything in present tense (which keeps the reader in the moment) but then ended it in the past tense-- definitively closing the piece, ending the story. How did you make this decision-- when you wrote the last line, were you concious of that effect? I'm just curious, but the way you handled that (whether it was intentional or intuitive) works well for the poem.

A place you could push this piece: one aspect of the poem that jumps out at me as a bit clunky is the line "she wants just to know how he's such a good friend." It looks like that line could maybe be reworked, just because it's an awkward construction that might distract the reader. Did you have something that you wanted to convey by using the words that you did? It's possible I may have missed something; if there was a certain intent behind it I'd be curious to hear what it was and tell you what I think.

Interesting piece-- keep writing!

"In this life that we call home, the years go fast and the days go so slow."

-Modest Mouse, "Heart Cooks Brain"

:)

Well done! Terrific turns of phrase ("doing nothing and making do"; "endless end") that make the poem rich and interesting to read. The texture of your writing reminds me of The Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse; based on your themes if you have not yet heard them I would suggest hunting down the album "Funeral" (by The Arcade Fire, themes of light and darkness are especially prevalent on that album) and the song "The Stars are Projectors" (by Modest Mouse). It's also a theme I can really relate to. Have you ever read the poem "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost? That's another one your poem brings to mind.

Places you can push the piece: watch out for cliches. You have the material here for a terrific poem, but it's not quite tight yet-- lines like "the point of no return" and "scream into the night" ring just a bit tinny. As you edit, look for lines or images that you think you've heard before in other places-- and see how you can amend them or turn them (for example, the phrase "making do" is kind of a cliche, but you turned that around and made it a really strong line by coupling it with something unexpected). You seem to have a fairly intuitive grasp for great lines, so just go through and see what you can purge.

Tremendous work! Write on!

-Jeff

Wow- you have a lot of possibilities here. There's something very sinister about your terseness- you use so few words to suggest so much, and the piece as it is definitely leaves the reader wondering. I would encourage you to develop it more (it seems, based on your own comments, that you want to do this anyway).

There are a lot of ways you could go with it, and I would encourage you to try more than one so that you can investigate your writing style more-- for example, you could keep writing in the manner that you have written to see what emerges randomly, or you could try to write character sketches about the people in this phantom family and use these for ideas about how to move on.

Try both! One of the nice things about writing is that you have no obligations to any of the words you put down-- you can keep re-brainstorming and re-shaping words until you find what you really wanted to write all along. It might be fun for you to use this beginning, brainstorm, and then go off in three or four different directions based on where you're pulled. You might be astounded in the differences in your final products if you try this!

Clever poem here! I like the way you play with the reader's expectations with the title and use personification-- the reader expects it to be some sort of very serious love poem, and yet there's a sort of tongue in cheek tone that makes the poem humorous. Also, as someone who enjoys playing guitar myself, I can really relate to the way a relationship with your guitar can get this serious.

One area you could push this poem is the ending. It seems like line by line the poem evolves and we find out more about your relationship with the guitar, but the last section doesn't show us anything new. Can you think of a way to use the ending to develop the metaphor more or maybe to tie the images you already have together?

Thanks for an enjoyable read-- write on!

-Jeff