Submissions and Feedback: the Might of G-Docs

Mike Zhai just submitted a poignant work for feedback; here's a full transcription:

Jacaleena 

I'm used to the smell of your enchanted perfume,
That famous perfume I first saw on a midnight
Infomercial, on a night as predictable as its soundtrack
Sung by a singer who couldn't speak the language,
Bringing tears to a million eyes, and proving
You and I are not so different after all.

We're only different symptoms of the same world;
In a year you spent jogging on the treadmill,
Eating raw vegan Chinese and watching the tide roll in,
In a year somewhat before this world ended—
I've been a minor glitch in the weather, another frightnik
Round the corner, an uninvited guest. 

I'm used to your curls hanging down like vines
Blackened by the heat of a shadeless summer
Your arm with the barbed-wire rose tattoo,
Your eyes as blue as the deepest lakes—
As if bathing in them might have saved me
Like baptism might have saved the Jews, 

I chased these sounds that enticed and ravished
Even as they cried out in utter strangeness—
The music of people long ago extinct,
Or of those dedicated to my extinction:
As if they held the key to the secret code of life,
They prod me to dance at my execution. 

You who were born on this remorseless earth,
Mother's milk gone sour in cactus breasts;
This coldness is older than we can imagine,
Like the screams we don’t hear through the scream of the metro
In the desolate rites the earth at evening
Burying the mobs of unhappy people... 

"It's the kind of love you only read about,
The only yogurt you'll want to have day after day!"
So slowly we'll get used to knowing each other
A little less each time we happen to meet
Till finally we turn to strangers, waiting
To meet for the first time over again 

From this city you are leaving; in another
You arrive, a new face bringing new hope,
New heartbreak, already long in the making.
We'll meet again as a thousand other people
Reacquainted with the wind that's always speaking
Neither of expectation, nor of loss...

The story of Gatsby and Daisy keeps repeating itself over and over; will we ever stop disappointing each other? I couldn't help but think of Jack White's cover of Love is Blindness while reading this...

Okay, okay, on second thought, it might not be as topical as I first thought; Mike's poem has an altogether different tone; more accepting and contemplative. You folks are welcome to suggest something, in person or in the comments section—you do know that this blog has a comment section, yes? It's at the bottom of every post.

Now, I'll take this opportunity to introduce my favourite tool for collaborative work of any sort: Google Docs. This Youtube tutorial explores what we can do with a google file in great and excellent detail (and covers other tools such as Google Presentations and Google Sheets), but this level of mastery is not necessary for what I would like to do here. Nevertheless, here it is;

Now,  here's a link to a Google Docs version of Mike's poem. Here's the first thing we're gonna do with those;  highlight a piece of text with your mouse, and summon the menu (right click, cmnd key, whatever works on your platform).

Among the many options, you'll have the option to "comment", which has a little speech bubble in front of it. Clicking on it will allow you to add your own little comment, things like "I loved this verse! Such wording, much metric, wow!" or "I notice that I am confused" or "This reminded me of...".

This is especially useful when the work being submitted is a work in progress, looking for feedback and corrections and improvements. And the best part is that you can answer each other's comments, thus allowing for multiple commenters and editors to work with the author interactively and in real time in improving the concerned piece. Or, you know, just gush to each other on how wonderful a particular piece is.

Next time, we'll expand on this, and tackle something more advanced; actual collaborative writing. There is an epic to be wrought!