review 2: Erin Wilson

"A Song for Small Souls" is a wonderful titile for the piece. I've always found Centos difficult and I applaud your patience. You've been able to construct a clear narrative here which is not easy to do with other peoples' words. Punctuaton would really help to unite the lines and guide the reader through the new message you're writing. Putting periods at the ends of the second, third, and fifth line, a comma after the sixth and seventh....etc. would make your message clearer. Also, you run into a typical Cento problem, shifts in tense. You did avoid those shifts in voice by sticking to lines in a similar style, which was very good, and overall, achieved a sense of unity in the poem which is the major challenge of Cento writing. Writing the second poem in all caps was a nice touch. It's not the kind of issue you can tiptoe around and I think that's what you were trying to say. You made some good points. Again, punctuation would help, especially since we can't rely on capitalization cues, and especially when the last word of one thought is the same as the first word of the next as in "IF YOU/HAVEN'T THOUGHT/ABOUT THIS/ LATELY/ MAYBE YOU/ SHOULD/ SHOULD/ THERE BE/EXCEPTIONS..." Also, since this is an issue everyone has an opinion about, I think we need to know what makes it important to you. Why should we listen to your opinion? What new light can you shed on the issue? Do you know anyone who has had an abortion? What makes the issue personal? This would also take the poem out of the totally abstract and make it real. Setting up abstract moral generalizations against particular life situations gets right to the crux of the issue. You began to do this by mentioning rape and incest but I think describing a real case in detail would have more of that "stomach" effect we talked about in class.