To Israel

From Heather

I like these two poems. The second one was a bit long for my personal taste and kind of confused me, but I felt I could relate to the feelings they expressed. The first one creates very strong visuals towards the end of the poem when it mentions the haunting eyes of the child. It evokes an image of those children from the third world countries with the deep stares and their eyes. The second poem, “Life,” was moderately creepy in the beginning with the images of death, and the violent actions of fighting. The line “the faces in the night haunt me” brought to my mind the images of 1000 souls, like the faces of the souls trapped in Purgatory, or the million haunted souls from the first poem. I like how these two poems kind of seem to run together with a common thread, like two poems in a series. The two lines “Am I running in place / slowly slipping backwards?” spoke to me because those two lines put into words how I feel during times in my life, a feeling I’m sure we’ve all felt at one time. I think your use of imagery works well in your pieces and allows the reader to relate to your work. Your stanzas are all basically the same length, and it would work nicely if they were all about the same length with one long stanza at the beginning and end.