Classmate Response 2, Week 5

Response to Daniel's Improv. 1 Week 4

The piece im imitating is Ben Grimm in Retirement. Its located on pg 27 of the Writing Poetry textbook. I'm going to recreate the 4th stanza which goes like this:

Pillbugs and night crawlers keep me soft and arable.
Beetles,ants,always scurrying through the capillaries
they've rebuilt. Lately, a mole
cricket riddles a network
of bores in my right forearm,
the ache in my wrist.
Earthworms will repair me in time. They always have.

My part:
Coughing spurts of ink sustaining me.
Compositions, Pens light patchwork that covers the scars
always open. Wondering, do lights pierce
Translucent skin that's distant. Losing feeling
from these blood tipped pencils.
Writing will reconstruct me again. As it always has.


My response:

"Coughing spurts of ink sustaining me."
[coughing spurts of ink, like blood, providing sustenance. Strong first line.]

"Compositions, Pens light patchwork that covers the scars"
[In the first piece beetles and ants are connected - they are both bugs. In the second piece, compositions and pens are connected but not really the same thing, and pens might not work as bandages as well as, say, "manuscripts" would. Also, "scars" are by definition, healed wounds. They are closed, not open,even though they are marks. Perhaps you can play with the word here, Maybe its a wound, gash, cut, trauma??]

"always open. Wondering, do lights pierce
Translucent skin that's distant.[? Sorry, I have this thing about punctuation!] Losing feeling
from these blood tipped pencils."
[Here I think an ink "pen" would tie the piece back to the beginning and reinforce the blood/ink reference, but i like the "loosing feeling," like the pencil is a finger that's losing blood form writing so much]

"Writing will reconstruct me again. As it always has."
[So true, isn't it?]

As always, I love your style. Thanks for sharing. I'm finding more and more that improving is really fun to do, and it's fun to read how other people reinterpret things.