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2/4/2019 7:22:21 PM Alex Monteith Posts: 1	She told me of her family Apparently, her parents were divorced Her mother had remarried and divorced again Her father remained alone She told me her mother had been married once before she met her father A grand total of three failed marriages I felt bad for her mother She then went on to tell me why she hates her mother She told me every time her mother meets a new man, She pretends to be happy for a while, Then it's over She told me her mother lies to herself and her children suffer because of it I reminded her that some people just want to be happy, But don't know what happiness is or how to find it She told me her mother is a fake And she hates fake people more than anything in the world I drove her home I kissed her I said goodbye Three dates later she told me: "We can't see each other anymore. I'm sorry, I just can't have anyone in my life right now." I later discovered that she'd found another man Best of luck to him, edited by Monteith on 2/4/2019
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2/5/2019 7:51:52 PM Jack Webster Posts: 255	This is not a poem, nor a prose poem. You are proficient in conversational voice, this is good. You are proficient in making sensible divisions of space, such as line breaks and organizing stanzas in a way that makes sense. This is good. You are mindful of reserving the last word of each line and stanza for the most important word of each line. This is good. (If you like, you could also work on finding stronger words to begin the lines with as well). You are not afraid to move away from fixed forms or rhyme schemes. This is very good. You do not make overt statements of emotion in the poem, and rely on the concrete details rather than attempt to manipulate the reader with phrases like "I took her home and sobbed/wept." This restraint is very good. The reasons I say this is a not poem is for several reasons. The first reason is that there is no real take away for the reader. The reader is basically reading an account of something that happened to the persona. It does not elevate the consciousness of the reader or allow them to see the ordinary in an extraordinary way, or offer them a literary experience where they can experience an emotional reality they might otherwise might not have access to, etc... This piece runs into the rather harsh and politically incorrect "so what?" factor. You have chosen a universal situation, however, you have expressed it in the most mundane way possible. The golden opportunity that universal themes offer both the author and the reader is for something to be written that takes the reader out of their ordinary reality and allows them to connect their individual experience of reality to something expansive, that transcends the ordinary and connects them with every person that has ever lived, something that leads them back to their own humanness, an aspect of humanness that is immortal even though the mortal individuals that express it and live it fall away. The way you've written your work comes across more as a rant poem. There are no metaphors or similes or use of rhetorical devices in your work elevate it. You have not created a work that can be entered by the reader. It is read much the same way a newspaper article might be read. This happened, this happened, this happened. etc... It is not a bad place to start at all. In fact it is a good place to start, but you must open it so there is somewhere to go as a reader. The universal humanness of the persona in your work is loneliness, reaching out, investing in something perceived to be safe, then finding it was not safe at all, then not only being lonely but also having one's hope and the joy of having been found, darkened by wounded trust. Telling us the family history of people we not only will never meet, but have to names or faces to put with is not nearly as powerful as being able to capture the emotional truth of the persona's love and lose. In this work, the power lies with the persona, not reading about how her mother is fake, she hates fake people, but she's really a fake person too --- none of that has any emotional power. The only take away for the reader there is judging anonymous people and that there is no poetic power in that. Let your love and pain be a jacket the reader can wear. let us in. The wonder will be in finding the jacket is just the right size.
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