Carr's Review of Tara's poem "Torn Apart"

Tara,

There are some things working well here in your poem, “Torn Apart.” This is clearly a poem about heartbreak and loss, and on initial reading I thought that it was clearly about the process of grieving the loss of a lover – and not from death but from disloyalty. But on subsequent looks I see that the poem is more ambiguous than that. In fact, there are clues that this could be about the process of grieving the death of a loved one. Interesting.

In any case, my favorite line now is “Birds can’t fly through the musty fog.” This comes, of course, right after the purple clouds and “Black covers the sky,” so I get a real concrete sense here of the scene with birds struggling, their wings wet and useless in this gloomy scene. That’s nice. My only wish is that you would keep going with the image and show us why the birds can’t fly. What is it about the fog that keeps them from soaring?

Likewise I wish you would keep going with the image of the “drop of pure water.” I wonder where that came from. Everything before has seemed so dark, putrid even. I was surprised that a drop of anything pure could appear in this scene. I would have expected the drop to burn like acid on the skin.

Finally, I think the image of the heart being stopped, which is implied by the penultimate line, “And when my heart beats again,” is interesting, and I would suggest that you move that image up to the top, so that it can be repeated at the end, to reinforce what has just happened. For I think the idea that all this takes place between two beats of the heart is very interesting. You might consider that.

OK. There are a couple of stylistic issues to work on. First, right now almost all your lines are independent clauses separated by commas. Technically these are all comma splices, which is a fancy way of saying that this is one big run-on sentence. I think you should reconsider that choice, and I also think your poem would do well with more sentence pattern variation. Make your lines more and less complex, use transitions, play with rhythm. This poem starts with a sense of breathlessness, and I’d like to see the writing match the content.

OK, Tara. This has got some real potential, so keep working on it. Good luck and see me with questions.
CK