Reading From the Outside

[mlund]

Dale, I appreciate your feedback and will work on my imagery and setting up of the story.
I also appreciate your concern over my capitalization choices. I understand that it may be outdated and not necessarily comfortable to read, but it is my personal stylistic choice to use whatever form I wish. Thank you again for the warm welcome!

mlund,

This piece is problematic for a number of reasons but the main one is how does the speaker know the couple got onto the bus to get out of the rain and not to go somewhere while it just happened to be raining? All the reader has is the speakers word that this is the case and as the speaker has not been identified as anything other than a mere human, there is no way the speaker could know. So as this is the premise on which the context of the poem resides...  

As this is mild I'll not do a line by line critique, but I must point out some areas that could use editing in the first stanza and could be used for the rest of the poem. Nothing major, just some touch up editing.

"I was riding the bus today
as I do every day;
lost in my own contemplation."  Personally, "contemplation" sounds a bit high handed, but it is a stylistic choice. Do put periods at the end of sentences. Grammar still applies, even in poetry.

Capping every line:

As a service to your reader(s), please do not cap the start of every line. That was originally a necessity related to typesetting. Capping the lines in print went out in the 1950's, primarily because it was no longer a need in typesetting, and it was less confusing to the reader. Most people coming up through the school system tend to read poetry either in text books or in anthologies. The compilers of these texts prefer not to use copyrighted material, which leaves more of the older material that is typeset in the old way, giving the impression that is how it should be done which is an unfortunate misapprehension.

Welcome to the site,


Best,


dale