Willows curve over the streets
Humming
With flies from the open air markets.
T-shirts on the kids and plastic tricycles in the crumbling courtyard
Are symptoms of the West
Leaking into the East.
The old farmers with their decayed teeth
Sit on the steps outside their doors
And guard the village from the skyscrapers
Bursting
Out of Beijing.
The teens who trudged down aisles of grain
Now study in musty classrooms with cracked walls.
Accents thick in their English, they leave for the capital
Seeking
Blinking lights and shopping malls
Instead of the gravel roads of home.
The advice on form and imagery stood out to me in the “Voice and Style” chapter. I never really know when to start a new line when writing poems, so in the first poem that I published on my blog, I experimented with isolating some words in their own line. In future poems I hope to keep in mind the discussion of abstract statements versus images, since I feel that I can describe an image pretty well but lack the depth in using statements to connect those images back to a general concept. Highlighted ideas from the reading included the perspective twist utilized in “Skinhead” by Patricia Smith. I will probably look back at the list of possible questions to ask during revision in “The Energy of Revision” whenever writer’s block hits me.
Update: So when I was little they hadn't gotten a newfangled plastic trike for me... :(
The advice on form and imagery stood out to me in the “Voice and Style” chapter. I never really know when to start a new line when writing poems, so in the first poem that I published on my blog, I experimented with isolating some words in their own line. In future poems I hope to keep in mind the discussion of abstract statements versus images, since I feel that I can describe an image pretty well but lack the depth in using statements to connect those images back to a general concept. Highlighted ideas from the reading included the perspective twist utilized in “Skinhead” by Patricia Smith. I will probably look back at the list of possible questions to ask during revision in “The Energy of Revision” whenever writer’s block hits me.
Update: So when I was little they hadn't gotten a newfangled plastic trike for me... :(
Lucy- You take on a HUGE topic here- the transformation of China, but represent it in plastic trike, which echoes the Williams wheelbarrow idea. So much depends.... Isolating the verbs 'seeking' and 'bursting' suggest cause and effect of urban migration in China. The ending doesn't quite land right for me yet, though I have no particular suggestion.
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