review 5: Christen Chorba

These are some very nice pieces, first of all. In each, you conjure a scene with specfic images we can visualize; images in This is Manhatan like "Where cabs line the sidewalks at/ Bistros and/ Boutiques", "Chanel suits/ And sleek black town cars", and in A Diminishing Season, "orange flashing lights on oversized trucks...dumping chemical concoctions", "massive blackened heaps", "icicles hanging from car bumpers". These are good details and you use them well, with purpose. Alliteration can be very nice but I ask myself when I'm tempted to do that- are they the right words in meaning? And, do they deserve emphasis? In This is Manhattan, I think Bistros and Boutiques is nice but I'm not sure about Cold and Callous. I like "severely selective" but not as a broad statement. You've done such a good job describing the scene here, I think you could let the reader draw these conclusions without giving the meaning outright. For instance, if you took out
"importance and significance", "busy", "reality", "repulsive", "exhausted and underpaid", "life", "cold, callous", "severely selective", and expanded your descriptions to communicate these ideas, we would feel them more strongly.
In A Diminishing Season, some of the phrasing can be streamlined a bit more, the intro lines for example. Again, by deepening the descriptions, you could create the contrast of snow against plow without saying "unsightly", "harsh", "serenity", or "purity". Since you're good at creating atmosphere, it should be easy for you to imply everything you want to say in your images.