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Stay With Me, Little Memory
Some memories
Can be hard to grasp
For they are so very slim,
Hard to hold onto in your mind,
Like Squirming, slippery fish
Everyone in the world-
Must wish that their memories
Were fatter,
Plumper,
A bit more meaty.
If only they had fed
Their memory more lunch that day-
It might have remembered more
If only they had given up their
Whole leg of chicken
During dinner that day
Their memories might have stayed
Those precious thoughts might not have slipped
Through the prison bars
Of their brain-
For if those memories had been larger,
They would have gotten their porky selves
Stuck-
Where that person wanted them-
In their memory forever
Great imagery!
emmthegreatscs,
Just had to say that I really liked this poem. This is quite a unique way of envisioning memories. The imagery that you use to describe them puts a picture in my head--that's what good writing is supposed to do!
It also speaks to something that I'm sure we can all identify with: mourning the loss of memories. If your reader can in some way identify with your subject matter, they will be drawn in.
Can I give a suggestion or two? Your second line "Can be fragile"; it doesn't seem to fit. You spend the rest of the stanza talking about size. "Fragile" just doesn't seem to go...
Also, all of the end lines in your stanzas are different other than the end lines in stanzas #3 and #4. This makes the poem seem repetitive--at least to my ear. Maybe you could change the line a little but still say the same thing?
I loved reading your work. (By the way, I thought "Tornado" was awesome. I think it would make a great kids' picture book.)
Keep on writing. Practice makes you even better!
AaronS
Aaron S., UVM Writing Center
Thanks
Thank you! I tried to change it, but I'm not sure it worked...
-Emily
"Memory" revision
emmthegreatscs,
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you--school is pretty intense right now!
I think the revision works. The language in the first stanza really makes me see those squirming little memories trying to get away.
Can I offer another critique? The word "memory" is used in two different senses in this poem: most of the time to denote a thought but in the last line of the poem to denote the brain. I can tell what you mean from the context but it sounds a little confusing.
Also, in the last line in the third stanza: did you mean for it to be "It might have been remembered more"? I don't know if you're talking about a thought or the brain in that stanza.
I hope you don't mind the nitpicking...sometimes the little things make a big difference. I pick my own work to death sometimes! :)
Good to work with you again.
AaronS
Aaron S., UVM Writing Center