Carr's Comments on Brittany's poems 11/9

BJ,

Your poem “A Broken Heart” is obviously a breakup poem, and in that respect you’ve taken on a rich topic for your work here. It also becomes clear pretty early on what kind of breakup poem this is: this is the kind where one of the lovers – and in this case the poet – feels wronged. And she’s angry. That’s good. It can work very well.

All right. There are some interesting lines here. You give us some specifics with the “wine and an episode ofKing of Queens.” You have a very interesting issue in the line, “I was more than willing to let you try.” And perhaps my favrite line is at the end of the first page: “But you did teach me one thing: Never go backwards.” That’s very good.

OK. So my main comment right now is that I think your poem would benefit from some editing/tightening and some concretization. Right now the poem is too long for me. The second page seems redundant and rambling, and I think this is the kind of poem where less is more. See if you can’t get this down to 8-12 lines. In terms of making it more concrete, I think this will give you a freshness of language that your poem lacks now. Too many lines here are cliché, and this defeats your purpose. So use images from your own life and that come through your eyes. This is the kind of poem that needs to be honest, and by making it too long and too general, you lose that honesty (or even allow yourself to change your mind). Keep it short and to the point. But you might have to decide what that point is.

“It’s a Poem Because I Say So” is also a love poem – and maybe a breakup poem, too – but it’s of a slightly different kind. In this poem you are trying to come to grips with something that troubles you about yourself: you keep coming back to Ryan when you know that you shouldn’t because he is your forever. That’s a good subject for a poem.

Again, my suggestions are to be more specific – and yes, concrete – and tighter. I’ll bet you could say all this with more power if you told us one story about connecting and then disconnecting. One paragraph. Maybe two. Show us what this man can do to you instead of telling us. If you do this, try not to use the following words: heartbreak, love, feeling, resentment, complete, forever, heart, spirit. Try it and see where it takes you.

OK. Good luck working on these, BJ. Let me know if you have any questions.
CK