Review for Erin Wilson

I don’t have much experience with Cento’s, but the context of the poem "A Song for Small Souls" remains very solid through out. I never once felt like I was jumping around drastically between thoughts. In particular I love the second pair of lines Williams and the two lines from Poe, they put a very tangible tone of sorrow in the poem. I would have liked to see your own punctuation to appear in the poem, just commas and periods.
I enjoyed the stance of "Abortion" and it’s ‘pull-no-punches style. I also like the fact that it was very straight forward which I think worked well in its favor because of the subject matter. When covering something as volatile as abortion and also taking a non leftist or rightist stance towards the issue metaphor and symbolism would have worked against its intended point. There are also lines in the poem that stand very well on their own. I like the way Erin covers many of the views on abortion, as the only student in the class with a ‘Y’ chromosome and someone who has no real experience with the subject matter I found it to be very well worded and easy to understand with out being pretentious. My only critique is the fragmented style of the poem I think it takes some of the importance from the subject matter, for example...
DON’T THEY
DESERVE
A CHOICE
TWELVE YEAR OLD
VICTIMS
OF INCEST
THEY TOO
NEED
A VOICE
could have been written,
DON’T THEY DESERVE,
A CHOICE
TWELVE YEAR OLD
VICTIMS OF INCEST
THEY TOO
NEED A VOICE
I only say this because I feel that it would improve the rhythm of the work, bring the rhyme scheme into better view for the reader and accentuate some lines like ‘a choice’. But again this is your own poetic work and the line ‘victims’ in the example above stands very well on its own.