Week 3 - Just Write (1-0) vs. Mike Wrecka (1-1) - JUST WRITE WINS 6-0

[Certain]

Just Write: You nailed this. The first stanza was really, really great. The bits about watching your father smoke and poundcake tasting like cinnamon and the metaphor of the sailboats flying added a degree of vivid specificity that earned my emotional attachment very quickly. Then you delved into the story and created the conflict necessary to keep this verse interesting. I would have liked more specific details throughout the second stanza like those I mentioned earlier, but the emotions were written well, and the imagery was clear if not as finely detailed. What really landed this verse was the consistency in mechanics. You never allowed yourself to slack off on rhymes in favor of content, but you also never noticeably forced a rhyme. I thought it was wise to leave the country and the war unnamed. You avoided bogging down anything with a history lesson and avoided the semantical issue of inaccuracies that often plagues writers in these leagues when they attempt to tackle historical events. You made it feel personal and real. That's important.

Mike Wrecka: You did what you did well. But I was a bit underwhelmed. You had this scene with dozens of people to choose from, and you went with the grass. The idea of writing from the perspective of a blade of grass sounds more interesting than it really could be in practice. Certainly, this was a very original take on the topic. I think the verse would have been helped a bit by giving the grass something to do, like winter or pesticides or getting paved over or even having a dog poop on it or dig it up. There were a lot of good quotes, and I liked the double misdirection, as you first had me thinking you were writing about the guy in the tank top in the front of the frame, then about a small tree before I finally put together that you were writing about grass. But when I realized that, I didn't have that "Oh, snap" moment that the best of these types of verses elicit. Again, you wrote it well. And the take on the topic was creative. But it wasn't ambitious or particularly interesting.

Vote: Just Write