Review for Erin Wilson 10-24

To: Erin
From: Carr

Re: “Prematurely Picked” and “The Night Life”

Erin,

In both of your poems here you have some great lines. In “Prematurely” you even open with your best shot: “I am as shy as a married hibiscus.” That’s so nice. It’s intriguing and just sounds good. You also close that poem with a nice image – the vibrating woman who hasn’t flowered. Again, intriguing.
So what I would say is that your whole poem should strive to show us what a married hibiscus is like, starting from line 2. You have a line here that I think would work very well as that second line: “My colors misrepresent me.” I like that a lot. It gives us a much more interesting example of how you are like a married hibiscus than your current line: “I am taken.” That just doesn’t measure up to the vibrancy of the first line. And after that line, your whole poem is going to have to vibrate on that same wavelength. So keep working on those images. And I would try to make them consistent. Right now you kind of switch motifs in that fourth stanza to music. I don’t see the angry trumpets in the same room with the married hibiscus. It doesn’t ring as true to me. Think about it.
In “The Night Life” you’ve also got some good lines and images, and here they are well-served by the FRAME of the poem – a night out in Barbados with the drunk white girl who struts her stuff, finally free from restraint. What’s even better, however, is that some of the feeling of freedom sticks with her the next morning, even amidst all the pangs of shame and remorse that are the natural result of the “golden rum”: “A little fun,/ would make things/ that were not so beautiful/At the very least/ seem that way.” That’s a nice way to close the poem. It really gives your piece some movement.
OK. There are also a couple of openings here I like. I think you do a nice job in stanzas 7 and 8 with “But I was in Barbados” and “I remember … Well, not really.” Those work really well.
The main thing to work on here, I think, is the transition from the star of the show to the “plump,/ white girl”. That transformation seemed sudden and unearned to me. What happened there in the lights from the bar? Why did she “come to”? I think we need another stanza or two to get that.
And there’s another line here that I think you would do well to work on. That is the line “the double doors” between stanza two and three. That’s the kind of line that is perfect for carrying weight in both of those stanzas. Try to think of a way that you can get it to belong in both, so that the reader has to pause for just a moment, deciding which direction to take. See what I mean? There is a similar moment in “Prematurely” with “turned inward.” See what you can do with that.

All right, Erin. I definitely think you’ve got some good material to work with here. See me with questions or comments. Good luck.

CK