[Critique Group 2] my comments for three of you/Feb. 21 session

[Alice Massa]

Dear Abbie, Brad, Leonard, and Valerie (in alphabetical order!),

Since I already sent to our Group my comments for Abbie's February 
submission, you will find below only three critiques from our February 
21 critique session.

2.Leonard--"First Catch"

What a wonderful, "disguised" memoir!The opening of this story is 
especially descriptive and attention-grabbing.I would not hesitate to 
use this opening as an example for a writing class.

For clarity and sentence variety, I suggest flipping the independent 
clause and the participial phrase so that the sentence reads as follows:

Allowing ... Gulf of Mexico waters, I counted to 30.

In the above sentence, the participial phrase is now nearer the pronoun 
("I") which the participle modifies.A couple of sentences later in your 
story, you did construct a sentence of this type.

In what I believe is paragraph three, I suggest you consider some 
revision by using sentence combining to avoid so many uses of the word 
"it's."

Here is something picky for you!You missed the closing quotation mark in 
the following:

"They good to eat!"

This good, solid fish story is also a coming-of-age memoir that is 
gently, subtly didactic.I am glad you shared this youthful snapshot with us.

2.Brad--"The Midwife's Cat"

What a unique tale you have woven in verse!You successfully reach to the 
far corners of topic choices to gather together a diverse set of topics 
for your writings.Your regular readers must be in a constant state of 
wondering about what you will write next.

The good title is intriguing and draws the reader into this particular 
piece, and the poem does not disappoint.

I always recommend considering the revision of "and" at the onset of a 
poetic line and at the beginning of a sentence.Most often, eliminating 
the "and" is the better choice; then, if one is maintaining a certain 
number of syllables per line, one can add easily another word midst the 
line.In the line below, I will give you an example of eliminating the 
initial "and," adding another one-syllable word to the line, and 
inserting a needed comma after the introductory prepositional phrase.

Even with her fine skills, she feared

I suggest changing the phrase "but unlooked for" to "unexpectedly."You 
may need to cut a syllable elsewhere to use "unexpectedly" which has one 
additional syllable.

Add a comma after each of the following introductory prepositional phrases:

for many years,

in quiet happiness,

though only a cat, she understood

After the dependent (adverbial) clause, change the semicolon to a comma, 
as follows:

While others said it wasn't so,

In the following line, you need to insert a comma due to the number of 
items in the series and also a comma at the end of the introductory 
prepositional phrase:

In their fear, outrage, and sorrow,

Either place a comma after the following introductory prepositional 
phrase or change the phrase for content and punctuation as the two 
following examples show:

And out of nowhere,

Without just cause,

Revise to avoid a fragment in the area of the following line:

exhorted by the evil parson

In the line "she did flee," change "she" to "the cat" for emphasis and 
clarity.

End the next-to-last line with a comma.

Bringing forth at the end of the poem the comparison between the cat and 
the poet is very interesting and certainly is a noteworthy touch.

Being a big fan of WICKED, the Broadway musical (not as much the book), 
I will add that I found a mark of Elfaba in this poem although I know 
you did not have this resemblance in mind.

You have an ability to have the cadence and sentence structure to 
reflect the era in which a piece is set.I think this could only be 
achieved by your having read a great number of old writings.Good job!

4. Valerie--"Sisters"

While multitudes of pieces of literature have reflected the loneliness 
of writing and the creative arts, this remarkable poem of Valerie's 
creation focuses on the sharing of creativity.How refreshing!One of the 
outstanding lines and thoughts of this poem is:

"Drawn together by creativity, we spoke of dreams with colors"

Although I realize that some punctuation may have been more due to the 
Net-by-Phone which Valerie uses, I will generally state that a comma and 
period always are placed prior to the closing quotation mark (unless one 
is dealing with MLA-Style parenthetical citations).Two examples from 
Val's poem follow:

Thomas Edgar."

author,"

NOTE:Since Val mentioned that this name is from the other student's 
fondness of Edgar Alan Poe, I will suggest the amazing historical 
fiction book MRS. POE, by Kristin Hannah.The interplay among authors and 
other historical figures of Poe's era, in NYC and Massachusetts makes 
for a wonderful read.(I downloaded this book from BARD.)

Revise the placement of the participial phrase "pouring over my stories" 
so that the participle will be nearer the noun or pronoun which it modifies.

Thank you for sharing this lovely portrait of two creative high school 
students who were able to share creativity.While I appreciate March 
Madness, realizing that high school students can be not only 
sports-minded, but creative through the arts is heart-warming.

My thanks to the four of you for your comments about my poem.I am 
already thinking of what to post by one week from today; then, 
amazingly, two weeks from tonight, our small group will gather together 
again.

Here's to a creative March!

Take care--Alice

ajm321kh at wi.rr.com

March 7, 2017, Tuesday

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