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To Bily No Poem Summary

Decent Essays

TO BILLY: No. The author portrays the tensions between adoptive and biological mother-daughter relationships quite realistically in this piece, capturing various sentiments quite concisely. However, there are a large number of grammatical, mechanical, and development-related errors that interfere with the reading of this piece, and would require remediation before the piece should be taken further into consideration.

First Reader’s Comments:

Specific Comments:

Pg1, P1, L2 - The word “meet” implies that the action is for the first time; thus, “for the first time” comes across as repetitive in this line. I would recommend removing the “for the first time” in this line as a result.

Pg1, P1, L1-2 - The ideas in these two lines seem to …show more content…

Moreover, they seem to be implied from the use of the word “meet”, as “meeting” only occurs “in person” (for the most part). Thus, I would recommend removing the words “in person” for brevity’s sake.

Pg1, P2, L3-4 - It would be necessary to restructure this sentence to avoid using a misplaced modifier. One possible restructuring could read as follows: “on a business trip in New York City, only a forty five-minute drive from Chris’ upstate home”.

Pg1, P2, L4 - Because you are introducing her birth mother in this paragraph as well as her adoptive/foster mother, I feel as though it would aid your piece if you clarified Laurie’s relation to Chris sooner rather than later. This could be done in this line by adding an adjective such as “foster” before “mom” in this line.

Pg1, P2, L5 - I wonder if you should set off Chris’ thoughts in a new paragraph, or perhaps differentiate them from the rest of the paragraph with the use of italics/quotation marks, as they seem to be a separated …show more content…

I feel as though the appositive phrase is largely unnecessary in this line and could be removed without interfering with the meaning or with the flow of the piece.

Pg1, P3, L4 - I feel as though a stronger conjunction than “and” could be utilized in this sentence, in order to emphasize the anxious state that Chris is currently in. One possible replacement could be “worse yet” or “moreover”.

Pg1, P3, L6-7 - The phrase “It was completely up to her” seems largely unnecessary in this paragraph, as the same idea is conveyed in the sentence before it as well as the sentence after it. Thus, I would recommend removing it-but it’s all up to you!

Pg2, P1, L5 - Because you are recounting past events in an already past-tense narrative, the past perfect tense should be utilized here. As a result, the phrase would read “had told” rather than “told”.

Pg2, P1, L5 - In order to be grammatically correct, a comma alone is not enough to suffice to separate a description and somebody else’s words; instead, a semi-colon could appropriately be used here so that it would read “many times: don’t

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