Carr's Review of Sophie's Poems

Sophie,
These two poems share a certain aesthetic, what might be called asylum angst. In both poems the poet or narrator is expressing a crazy quality, an insane tendency or instinct, and wants the world to recognize her sensitivity, her uniqueness. It works, at times really well. “Breaking mirrors” starts with a a compelling stanza: “There’s this room/ in the attic where I go/ to break mirrors.” Very nice. It’s unusual enough that the reader is drawn in. We ask, What does she mean, “to break mirrors”? What’s that all about? Similarly, in “Weirdo” you have some very vivid imagery about the poet’s heart: “I swallowed my heart again” and “we had been shoving our hearts so far upward/ through our throats/ onto the mattress.” These also have the power to draw us in, because you’ve taken some standard talk of hearts as the center of love and twisted it just a bit to make the heart now the literal organ. That’s good. And it works for “Weirdo” because that is essentially a love poem. “Breaking mirrors” might be called a self-reflection poem.
OK. So what kinds of things to think about for revision? In both poems I would suggest essentially the same thing. In both poems you have created these powerful, vivid images – breaking mirrors and the heart organ – and yet I don’t think you are willing to take them all the way or to bring them to the front where they belong. So I suggest that you keep going with those, show us more of what it means to break the mirrors, both physically and psychically (maybe the one mirrors the other, so we only need to see the physical). Play with the imagery that seems so inherent in the picture of a broken mirror, all the splits and fragmented lines. In “Weirdo” I think your heart image/metaphor is almost buried beneath some material that seems almost unrelated – the “Creep” allusions are sometimes well played (particularly the “what the hell am I doing here” stanza), but in the end I don’t think they are necessary or even relevant. This poem doesn’t really take off until “Where we had been shoving/ our hearts so far upward” on the second page. That’s where I sat up and started to pay real attention. Thus I think you would do well to think about what you really want to say in this poem and then focus on that. You might even consider starting with the line, “I swallowed my heart again.”
All right. Your poems contain a certain amount of power, Sophie. I think that’s one of your strengths as a writer. Now I’d like to see some of that power directed into sharply focused images so that they cut the reader the same way these emotions and experiences cut you. See me with questions.
Good luck.
CK