Week 4, Response 2: Ben's Free Write 1, Week 3

Ben, I like this-really like this. I think that you had an awesome 'attempt' at cataloging. Your first stanza is by far the strongest in terms of imagery and "showing", but I find myself wanting to know more-which is a great thing because poems are never finished :) I want to know more about Ryan, the slogans on his fitted hats or are they all the same? That would be cool to play around with, having fitted hats that are all the exact same. Or maybe more about Calvin. I think that you have good ideas flowing in the second stanza, but provide more detail, describe what "bottles and bottles of / Courage" look like. Maybe you could play off the way Calvin is rarely matching and his room is cluttered, how could those correlate and parallel with those bottles and what is inside of them (what does that 'courage' really look like?), and the same for Austin-which, by the way, is a nice touch in relation to cataloging boy name's & adding she's a girl. It appears that as the poem begins to close, so does the concrete images and the specifics-especially in the final stanza. I think you did an awesome job with "It’s a suit that fits my weary bones as I sleep in peace" but don't stop there! I want to know more about this underground that the narrator lives with, and why its like a suit-wearable, why the bones are weary, but the narrator can still sleep in peace... show what peace is, what does it look like? I think this draft has a lot of potential, and I would like to read a revision, if you don't mind! Great job!!