Tommy's review of Alana's Poem

Workshop Review 1: Alana Roach

            In her poem, Dark Spots, Alana describes how she copes with her troubled past. In the first line, she compares her memories to “medieval torture devices” and then describes how they keep her up at night. The poem is pretty explicit. In the middle of it she declares that she’s come a long way from being “the girl at that bar”, indicating that maybe she was an alcoholic or just a party animal. The poem takes on a more triumphant tone by the second to last line, “I’ve been in hell, and I’ve walked through to heaven’s door.” But Alana reminds us that she is still vulnerable to her “demons” when she is weak and perhaps alone.

            I think that Alana did a great job luring the audience into her haunting nightmares using the “medieval torture devices” simile, which I thought was brilliant. I also think the third line about not being able to scream, when she wakes up gasping for air really gives the poem a lot of power.  It gives this first section, a very isolated helpless tone which gives the poem an enhanced intensity. This tone is also reinforced by the quotes of gossip and trash talk she uses. I really like the one about stealing from her mother because it’s so morally outrageous. This type of writing deeply connects the reader to the poet because it’s such an embarrassing and ethically controversial disclosure.  I really like that image of “the girl at that bar” and everything it could possibly imply about her past. The following line about falling down outside is really awesome because it gives you a point of perspective with its colloquial tone that puts you right inside the bar like your hearing someone tell you about some crazy girl falling down and making a spectacle of herself.

            The poet should do what she wants but I think the poem would be more powerful if it kept a more constant tone. For me the best parts of the poem are the bleaker and painful images so I think that the poet should probably take that tone and run with it or maybe a more organized transition from a miserable tone to a triumphant tone. I also think that the poet might benefit from exploring further metaphors to articulate her emotions, like maybe exchange the image of hell for some other awful place, or exchange demons for some other villain that could hurt you.  I think the poet also might want to make her poem more balanced in regards to where feeling because its great beginning deserves an equally great ending.