I wrote this for my brother on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Let me tell you about this soldier I know,
Escaped his prison at just seventeen years old.
I remember that day and the blistering cold,
And when he said goodbye I could feel it his tone,
Knowing this was the time he could call his own,
And the envy I felt as he left his home.
Watching him disappear into that flying boat,
Little did we know with what the future would come.
That was the summer of 2001.
I remember that day like it was just a dream.
Woke like a baby from my deep sleep,
Came in the living room and what did I see?
Two towers on fire on our color tv screen.
My grandma said “look we’re under attack!”
But being in fourth grade I didn’t acknowledge the fact.
Didn’t know that this would pave the path
For another burden placed on an American son’s back
We still have the letters he sent from basic,
Describing how he came to be a combat medic.
Like his, everyone’s mind was hectic,
Lined up in the yard they asked who wanted to make
These bastards pay for the damage they’ve made.
He raised his hands, no time to waste,
Knowing completely what the stakes would be,
And offered his life to defend Lady Liberty.
One letter described a time he stayed
For four months straight at a single base
Mortars constantly coming, night and day,
Hearing whistling overhead, knowing well it may
Leave its mark far outside the gate,
Or blow up directly in his face.
After a while you get callous to the haste,
Accepting the fact he could set his own pace,
Just walking around from place to place,
Because at any second he could meet his fate.
What hit me the most that he told us about
Was when a mother and her daughters had to be snuffed out.
The girls came running from out of their house
AK’s in their hands, fingers on the triggers, casings spewing about.
Dropping to one knee, it came down to one thing,
“Its either them or me”, two shots and they hit the ground
It wasn’t yet over, for their mother appeared with a shout,
RPG on her shoulder, ready to be a martyr,
Two more shots and she went down.
The day he came back felt like no other,
So much emotions running, we all at least once cried.
Not yet old enough to buy a beer
He refused everyone’s attempts to sympathize
We could only imagine what he’d been through with a tear,
Yet he didn’t want to be rewarded for his time.
Father, Grandparents, and Mother
Unaware of the horrors witnessed by his eyes.
I’m proud to call him my Brother, a soldier,
Our hero of war had come back alive.
Hello aerosmitty, I think it is often difficult for people to offer critic on a poem when it has been announced that it is personal and then doubly so when it involves a sensitive subject like this one. Wow a letter to a brother, 9 /11 and oh he is a solider - no emotional attachment to the writer to be offended there then!
So I'll say the obvious, just to make sure - the crit is only concerned to the presentation of a poem to be read in the public domain and in no way reflects on personal issues and opinions. (I think that any sibling will always be touched by a offering of love and honour no matter what format it comes in).
Right that out of the way, I thought that this read more like a prose piece rather than a poem. I found it very wordy and also if I am honest i had sort of lost interest before the end. IMHO I think this one needs quite a lot of editing to make it have any life or punch.
(07-11-2015, 12:46 PM)AeroSmitty Wrote: [ -> ]I wrote this for my brother on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The title is fine but for me the interesting thing is that this is up close and personal so i think the title would have more focus if it was "I know a war hero" to be in keeping with the voice of a child telling the story. (sort of a boast)
There is a lot here and as this is only novice i don't want to stray over the line of appropriate crit. so i will just offer some thoughts on the first two stanza.
first thing is to decide on to rhyme or not and to meter or not and then try to stick with it.
Let me tell you about this soldier I know, As an opening line this is okay, but then the rest of the stanza is a focus on anything but the brother. it is all about how the writer (voice) felt. I am left with little or no backgroung images to get hold of to be able to know this man who is going to be a war hero. I know that the younger brother felt abandoned and left to suffer in the home prison alone...or at least this was my interpretation of these lines.
Escaped his prison at just seventeen years old. Try to loose some of the filler words. (His / at / years old) this line could still offer the same info by saying He escaped at seventeen.
I remember that day and the blistering cold,
And when he said goodbye I could feel it his tone, Watch your constructions... this is off. (could just be a typo it / in)
Knowing this was the time he could call his own,
And the envy I felt as he left his home. the above three lines are just rehashing the same images that was delivered in line 2...namely that the voice of the younger brother was jelous and slightly resentful that he got to escape. I think you could re- use this space to offer us something about what the big brother was like as a person to live with. fun / serious .playful / mean / strong / good looking / aloof and distant from a kid brother? - who was he when you knew him?
Watching him disappear into that flying boat,
Little did we know with what the future would come.
That was the summer of 2001. ...but I like the bluntnes of this last statement, but think you are missing the opportunity to give us images -That summer, he took off and the towers came down.
I remember that day like it was just a dream.
Woke like a baby from my deep sleep,
Came in the living room and what did I see?
Two towers on fire on our color tv screen.
My grandma said “look we’re under attack!”
But being in fourth grade I didn’t acknowledge the fact.
Didn’t know that this would pave the path
For another burden placed on an American son’s back As it is currently presented, I feel like this whole stanza is not really connected to the poem about a hero. Unless he was caught up in it why mention it? It is just a distraction to how he became a hero in the writers eyes. Perhaps, less details about what was happening at home and more perception (maybe overheard conversations if this is a younger brother's voice) of the pressure cooker emotions at the training camp. (How did this event change the hero to be is what I feel is missing was he now serious when he visited home?)
We still have the letters he sent from basic,
Describing how he came to be a combat medic.
Like his, everyone’s mind was hectic,
Lined up in the yard they asked who wanted to make
These bastards pay for the damage they’ve made.
He raised his hands, no time to waste,
Knowing completely what the stakes would be,
And offered his life to defend Lady Liberty.
One letter described a time he stayed
For four months straight at a single base
Mortars constantly coming, night and day,
Hearing whistling overhead, knowing well it may
Leave its mark far outside the gate,
Or blow up directly in his face.
After a while you get callous to the haste,
Accepting the fact he could set his own pace,
Just walking around from place to place,
Because at any second he could meet his fate.
What hit me the most that he told us about
Was when a mother and her daughters had to be snuffed out.
The girls came running from out of their house
AK’s in their hands, fingers on the triggers, casings spewing about.
Dropping to one knee, it came down to one thing,
“Its either them or me”, two shots and they hit the ground
It wasn’t yet over, for their mother appeared with a shout,
RPG on her shoulder, ready to be a martyr,
Two more shots and she went down.
The day he came back felt like no other,
So much emotions running, we all at least once cried.
Not yet old enough to buy a beer
He refused everyone’s attempts to sympathize
We could only imagine what he’d been through with a tear,
Yet he didn’t want to be rewarded for his time.
Father, Grandparents, and Mother
Unaware of the horrors witnessed by his eyes.
I’m proud to call him my Brother, a soldier,
Our hero of war had come back alive.
There is such a lot in this poem, that could, with just a little work have a sharper focus and carry more interest.
On a personal level : Not many people know a war hero it is a good boast and makes for a worthy poem subject. Not every hero gets a medal but this does not diminish a story that needs to be told. So i for one will come back and see what you do with this one AJ.
(07-11-2015, 12:46 PM)AeroSmitty Wrote: [ -> ]I wrote this for my brother on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Let me tell you about this soldier I know,
Escaped his prison at just seventeen years old.
I remember that day and the blistering cold,
And when he said goodbye I could feel it his tone,
Knowing this was the time he could call his own,
And the envy I felt as he left his home.
Watching him disappear into that flying boat,
Little did we know with what the future would come.
That was the summer of 2001.
I love how this starts, though the second line threw me off a little bit with the prison (small town life?) reference. I like how the "flying boat" seems to convey a youthful narrator and a sense of grim wonder. The last line here is brief but so hard-hitting and almost ominous, I love it. It's like the calm before the storm.
I remember that day like it was just a dream.
Woke like a baby from my deep sleep,
Came in the living room and what did I see?
Two towers on fire on our color tv screen.
My grandma said “look we’re under attack!”
But being in fourth grade I didn’t acknowledge the fact.
Didn’t know that this would pave the path
For another burden placed on an American son’s back
You did a good job of subtly conveying the age of the narrator here, with "woke like a baby" I see that you were much younger than your brother. The nostalgia also comes across in the specification of the color TV. The line "My grandma said “look we’re under attack!” But being in fourth grade I didn’t acknowledge the fact." seems a little forced, and I think it could benefit by emphasizing that the narrator wasn't denying the fact, they simply didn't understand. I was in fifth grade that day, and when I got to school my friends ran up to me, hysterically repeating that people were jumping out of buildings. I had no idea what was going on until my mom explained it to me...
We still have the letters he sent from basic,
Describing how he came to be a combat medic.
Like his, everyone’s mind was hectic,
Lined up in the yard they asked who wanted to make
These bastards pay for the damage they’ve made.
He raised his hands, no time to waste,
Knowing completely what the stakes would be,
And offered his life to defend Lady Liberty.
I'm really not fond of strict rules as far as rhyme and cadence, and you're making rules work for you really well here. I like how the second-to-last line offered a rhyme for the previous line before a rhyme to connect the following line. Waste/stakes, be/liberty. Nicely done!
One letter described a time he stayed
For four months straight at a single base
Mortars constantly coming, night and day,
Hearing whistling overhead, knowing well it may
Leave its mark far outside the gate,
Or blow up directly in his face.
After a while you get callous to the haste,
Accepting the fact he could set his own pace,
Just walking around from place to place,
Because at any second he could meet his fate.
Reading it the second time, I'm realizing you've rhymed entire stanzas without seeming very forced. Well done! The line "Or blow up directly in his face." seems a little jostled. Also, who is the "you" referring to in the 7th line? Just confused because the 8th line refers to your brother.
What hit me the most that he told us about
Was when a mother and her daughters had to be snuffed out.
The girls came running from out of their house
AK’s in their hands, fingers on the triggers, casings spewing about.
Dropping to one knee, it came down to one thing,
“Its either them or me”, two shots and they hit the ground
It wasn’t yet over, for their mother appeared with a shout,
RPG on her shoulder, ready to be a martyr,
Two more shots and she went down.
The fact that you've dropped the strict rhyme scheme here, seems to me to reflect the sheer desperation of the content. To me it says "We don't have time for rhyming, our lives are on the line here!"
The day he came back felt like no other,
So much emotions running, we all at least once cried.
Not yet old enough to buy a beer
He refused everyone’s attempts to sympathize
We could only imagine what he’d been through with a tear,
Yet he didn’t want to be rewarded for his time.
Father, Grandparents, and Mother
Unaware of the horrors witnessed by his eyes.
I’m proud to call him my Brother, a soldier,
Our hero of war had come back alive.
"We all at least once cried"
Seems a little awkward, rhythm-wise, but I know you were gearing up for the "sympathize" two lines later. I think you might be able to get away with using "eyes" as a rhyme there, if you want to. "so much emotion running, tears streaming from out eyes"? Just a thought.
I've been getting waves and waves of chills reading this. It's not only heartfelt and powerful, but the composition is straightforward and deliberate. I can't think of anything I'd change about it overall. I'm just... really impressed. Beautiful work. I'm so glad this Hero got back safely.
I like this poem. I was intending to give you some feedback earlier, but didn't remember where it was posted.
I don't think a line by line critique is warranted. I'll just give you some of my summary observations:
1. I like it because it is an honest, straightforward story. Why do I get the sense that it is honest? It's the 'four months he stayed' - that is a little bit of detail that would have been unlikely to have been thought of by someone using their imagination alone. I like the little detail about "refused offers to sympathise". You don't say what happened, but the reader can guess and it's more powerful that way. Whether accidental or not, it works well.
2. I like it because it is simple and its simplicity gives it a neutral voice.
3. In another post, you mentioned that your brother was an Iraq war vet. Therefore, I found it odd that you began the poem with 9/11. However, there is nothing in this poem to suggest that you are not talking about Afghanistan, so that's fine. For the poem's sake, the ambiguity of 'which war' is good.
4. Technically, the rhymes and sentence structure are pretty basic, but that's something you can work on over time.
Thanks for the read.
Introducing extraneous material about a poem prejudices the poem against the reader so that it might as well not be read. As I am unable to deal with the content, I will try and offer some help with the mechanics.
Instead of opening in a pseudo-melodramatic way, I would suggest a more direct approach by taking the narrator as a character out of it. So instead of:
"Let me tell you about this soldier I know,
Escaped his prison at just seventeen years old."
A soldier escaped his prison at just seventeen years old.
One might respond but what about the rhyme and meter. My response is that the rhyme is inconsistent and often forced, In terms of meter, there is none to be had, although there are hints of accentual verse, but that is not.
I don't mean this in a mean way, we all have to learn, what we learn. It's obviously you have not yet to master the complexities of the meter and rhyme you were attempting here. Instead of trying to do what you cannot, try to be genuine in what you know, the other stuff can be learned over time. You have some good material here, use to the advantage of the skills you have at hand. Do not try to write over your head to make it into some idea of poetry. Great poetry can be written without embellishment. This is not to say to forgo improving your poetry skills. By all means, do so. It is what we are here for.
Best,
Dale