Twins

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)

Thanks for the input!
I often have this problem: writing with feelings instead of imagery that readers can understand. I don't exactly know where I was going with this poem, so I'm having a hard time getting the wording right.

Thanks for the help :)
I like comments that help me write better.

ML

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

I'm going to try that tonight..
Check back later in the week for (hopefully) some better writing :)