All These Rooms

2 responses so far ↓

• 1 Natalie // Apr 14, 2008 at 10:05 am

  is this a revision? i don’t remember reading this before, but that could be because i’m only operating with half a brain right now (hungover.)

  and because i only have half a brain i’m gonna start w/ the short one.

  the first line is good. i like lines that are clear and direct and don’t make me feel stupid. i know what you’re saying. wait, do you mean hit a curb? like on a sidewalk? now i’m confused.

  the word “flip” is jarring to me. i feel like you’re trying to avoid “fly” because everyone says that the “fly” off a bike. but i can’t even picture what flipping off of a bike means. maybe reconsider word choice?

  definitley reconsider “animal grace.” i like the idea behind the line but everyone and their mother has used that phrase. however, i like the idea that it is natural to fail in life, that it’s part of being human, that’s it’s part of how we’re beautiful. so keep that thought, but maybe change the way you deliver it.

  i really like the image of a person w/ feathers as fingers reaching for willow tips. that image is like a painting. you should try to paint it, i bet you’d come up with something cool.

  i think that it might be a good idea to cut the last line in two so that you can get the repetition of ” hit a curve” and “hit the slope.” also, “ready to be earth again” is a strong statement, and i think that letting it stand by itself would give it the added emphasis the reader needs to stop and think about what it means “to be earth again,” what it means to rejoin the world after a traumatic event or just simply being lost for a long ass time.

  i love where you take me in your poems. you have a way of showing internal struggles through stories and images that’s just awesome and i really wish i could get out of my adolesense as a writer and start looking at the outside world, and not just my pathetic insulated feelings. but, i guess that’s the price i pay for stopping for so long, so for now, i will be a teenager and revel in my angst.

• 2 mackenzie // Apr 23, 2008 at 6:43 am

  Nah, not a revision, I posted those back as comments on the original poems.

  haha, you’re so right about animal grace. I don’t know why but I’ve been attached to that phrase in this poem. it’s gone.

  ha, ye you do write some angsty poems but they’re still beautiful, not teenagerish.

  I feel like every time you give me comments I understand my poem so much better.

  I hoared over at thecraigslist forum for writers to get some comments on some other poems, just to see if they’d be useful or not and they just didn’t compare. so thanks!

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