The Man in the Mirror

Love the ending:

'...I am
the action man.'

But why punctuate so sporadically? Are you using line breaks as punctuation and, if so, why only do it half the time?

This is a great poem but the odd punctuation makes it so hard to read and interferes with my enjoyment of the poem, sadly.

J x

J x, thank you for your encouraging and helpful comments. How is it now with a few comma breaks, since I did want too much comma-clutter.

Hi there Richard,

Generally I enjoyed this piece. The subject matter felt well handled and it had an interest that drew me in. I do confess that I too had some trouble with the punctuation and pauses particularly in areas such as

and bagel with jam

shirt and jeans after a

inspite of the stanza break this still gave me visions of a bagel stuck to shirt and jeans by jam particularly as you have used commas elsewhere. It may be nitpickety but how about getting a friend to read the poem and tell you how they break the lines up then tell them how you want thelines/ideas broken up and punctuate accordingly.

As with anything I offer on this site, please feel free to ignore me completely if you disagree.

Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer one line really did throw me

pr a priority,

It took me a long time to work out that this was P.R. as an abbreviation for Public Relations

Many thanks for sharing

All best wishes

Dave

Aim for the stars then if you fail you might still land on the moon, and that's not a bad second best.

Hi there Richard,

Generally I enjoyed this piece. The subject matter felt well handled and it had an interest that drew me in. I do confess that I too had some trouble with the punctuation and pauses particularly in areas such as

and bagel with jam

shirt and jeans after a

inspite of the stanza break this still gave me visions of a bagel stuck to shirt and jeans by jam particularly as you have used commas elsewhere. It may be nitpickety but how about getting a friend to read the poem and tell you how they break the lines up then tell them how you want thelines/ideas broken up and punctuate accordingly.

As with anything I offer on this site, please feel free to ignore me completely if you disagree.

Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer one line really did throw me

pr a priority,

It took me a long time to work out that this was P.R. as an abbreviation for Public Relations

Many thanks for sharing

All best wishes

Dave

Aim for the stars then if you fail you might still land on the moon, and that's not a bad second best.

Dave, I always appreciate honest suggestions and hope you review the changes made. Writing is subjective, but then if you wish to enlarge your audience, one must be comfortable with critiquing. Thanks again. Richard LP

Hi Richard,

I am afraid I am still of the same mind regarding this piece - you should always punctuate poetry as you would prose, so that it makes sense grammatically. Do you see what I mean?

J x

p.s. still a great poem, punctuation notwithstanding!

Hi Richard,

Having reviewed those changes I would comment that I think there is a marked improvement in the flow of the piece as a whole. I also agree with what you say about needing to be comfortable with critiquing and would extend that to rejection too. Personally I have such a large collection of rejection letters that I am now a black belt in Origami.

Cheers

dave

Aim for the stars then if you fail you might still land on the moon, and that's not a bad second best.

action man, like that, but what about the non action men, nicely done.