MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentorship Recipient: "Midnight Bike Ride"

Recipient Reflection: 
Ben von Jagow

On "Midnight Bike Ride" by Ben von Jagow

by ​​Ali Black

Ben von Jagow’s “Midnight Bike Ride” poignantly reflects the intimate relationship between a cyclist and his bike. The non-traditional sonnet is packed tight with clear and concise couplets. I was immediately attracted to the poet’s use of sound and rhyme. The first line opens with beautiful ‘c’ and ‘s’ sounds with words such as “coast,” “seasoned” and “cruiser.” These same sounds stay with us throughout the poem (“spin,” “cadence,” “smooth,” and “current”), creating a pleasing musical tone. In stanzas five and six, von Jagow gives us four beautiful rhyming words: “time,” “lies,” “lights,” and “tonight.” “Midnight Bike Ride” also stuns us with its rich imagery (the “smooth pavement,” the “bobbing branches,” and the “insects [dancing] around concrete candles”).
 
I enjoyed working on this poem with von Jagow through the editorial mentorship. The poem began with strong bones and together Ben and I simply gave it more meat.  We specifically worked on fine-tuning lines for clarity. We paid special attention to the opening line by replacing confusing and wordy descriptors. For example, the first line was originally comprised of nine words, but we trimmed it down to six in the final version. I appreciated Ben’s openness to my suggestions and it was a pleasure working with him.
 
Any poet who can draft a first version as strong as Ben’s “Midnight Bike Ride” has true promise—and it is without hesitation that Ben has just that as a poet—true promise.

Ali Black
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Ali Black is a poet, educator, consultant and youth advocate.  She directs one of the city's most successful after school and summer program for girls ages 10-18 at West Side Community House. Ali has been writing and performing poetry for over 15 years. She has taught and performed at Playhouse Square, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Juvenile Detention Center, various schools throughout Cuyahoga County and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of acerbic, which is an arts collective dedicated to providing a safe and resourceful home to artists of color. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry and is a current graduate student for poetry at Cleveland State University's NEOMFA program. Her work has appeared in A Race Anthology: Dispatches and Artifacts From a Segregated City and she is the recipient of the 2016 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize for her poem “Kinsman.”