First Poem Posted

[suzu]

I wrote this after taking a friend shopping.

Attachments:

[mfwilkie]

Suzu

Welcome to the neighborhood, officially,

A first reading has left me with some questions:

• Does the title works as a doorway into the poem?
• What is the exact nature/meaning of ‘TY toys’, the ‘Thing’?
• Do the ‘turns’, switching from one train of thought to another, work?
• Are the images strong and clear?
• Are the tone of the narrator’s voice and emotional level of the poem compelling?
• Does the end of the poem resolve intent/is it a fitting end to ideas the writer first presented to the reader in its opening stanzas and where the poem ‘turns’?
• Is there a better starting point for this poem?

First, ‘fickle and fad are pretty close in meaning, the commoner denominators being
‘change’, and ‘temporary’ which makes ‘Fickle Fad’ somewhat redundant. Consider a new title, but wait until you revise.

‘TY” is totally unfamiliar to me as a reader. Even connecting it to toys brings nothing to mind. It’s okay to be vague or use uncommon words because an interested reader will take time to learn meanings if the poem makes an impression and they want to understand it better.

Regarding images: ‘piles of tiny TY toys’; ‘That silly made up contract’; the movement of you and your friends; ‘the lonely’; these are the poems images, ‘the solids’ the reader can grasp hold of. The rest is the N’s (Narrator) personal feelings injected into the poem.

You said you wrote this after shopping with a friend.

Tell me about the weather, describe your friend/friendship, what were you wearing, did you have lunch, what caused the subject of used toys to be brought up, how does that
relate, in a more concrete way, to what you are trying to say in this draft about the relationship of man and his things/toys? Why is there a ‘contract’ ‘between man and his things’? If you are defining change or no change between adult and child, the reader needs to be able to ‘see’ it in his mind’s eye as well as hearing the emotions and tone of the N’s voice.

One other thought, and an important one: if you are going to rhyme, then rhyme needs to carry on throughout the poem whether you use perfect rhymes, near rhymes or slant rhymes.

You need to decide what this poem is about and pick a metaphor that carries your intent.

Maggie