Young Writers Society

You say you frequent a place
where cannonballs bounce off angels' breasts
and explode on your tongue.
So take a moment
and lick between my shoulderblades.
Tell me,
is the taste close enough to gunpowder
to let you
drive me home?

Or maybe I taste like dust
caught between treads
as a family rolls off
to somewhere between anonymity
and contentment.
They know what they're leaving behind,
I hope, because I don't.
I just can't be left alone
in an empty lot.

"You're almost there, darling,"
you say, your foot twitching
against the accelerator.
You continue, "You taste
of marble and saltpeter.
You worry me sometimes,
always constructing and deconstructing
like that.
Don't you ever want to know who you are?"

My finger traces the outline of the airbag.
"I think the family has found their home.
It's a little suburb tucked under my collarbone."
You laugh and kiss my cheek,
letting a cannonball slip between your lips
and down to the base of my neck.

"You'll figure it out someday, dear."

I was really hoping to have something constructive or at least coherent to say because I'm one of those people that hates to gush BUT
all I have is this stupid simile
your poetry is like Joseph Fiennes; so beautiful it hurts
and just so we're clear:http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2009/7/27/1248695910785/Joseph-Fiennes-in-Shakesp-001.jpg
because I don't want you thinking I mean the Joseph Fiennes that played Martin Luther and had that dorky monk haircut.

Nightshade wrote:You say you frequent a place
where cannonballs bounce off angels' breasts

At first I didn't like the cannonball line, but when you brought it back in the last stanza I was like "Ok it's perfect."
Also usually the use of the second person really irritates me but not in this masterpiece.
Hopefully someone else will come along and have something more helpful to say.

Thats intence! you dont have any grammer problems so thumbs up on that perspective.
I try to help writers inprove but there is no constructive critisisam needed here you poem is fantastic.
Keep up the exelant work.
Your poetry is breathtaking you have talent to touch peoples hearts with words and bring your poems alive.

I'm not sure what to say about this. At first it kind of struck me as one of those peoms where people will just throw together analogies and metaphors hoping that someone could decipher what they were trying to say even though that had no idea themselves. But as I read through it once more, it started to grow on me. It is...metaphorically ingenious. However, the way that you affix with your audience with this particular use of imagery and symbolism is overwhelming. It is something that you have to read through once, sit back, take a deep breath, and start over. It's not that it's confusing exactly...more that it's perplexing. I found myself reading it multiple times to try and make sense of it all. Still not completely knowing what every word meant, I have come to terms with my own definition of it. It's one of those things that is so ambiguous and obscure that one almost has to form their own definition. You truely have to think about this one.
I am a fan of your work. You are genuinely very very talented. I look foward to reading more. I know this wasn't a very constructive review. But, even though this poem was quite bewildering, I wouldn't ask you to change it because it gives it a sense of mystery. It's a poem that must be misunderstood to be understood, if you will. Please feel free to PM me with any questions or comments, I'd be happy to further discuss the topic if you wish. If not, keep up the astonishing work. You really blew me away. Keep it up.
With love,
-Lexi

So... I liked it, but it was weird? It was confusing to me, and there are so many analogies and so much symbolism that it's hard to take it all in at once. And it's hard to comprehend. It's just a very odd poem.

And what you said about this is what "Urbanization" should have been, I actually liked "Urbanization" better than this poem. I thought that other poem did a whole more for the subject matter and made a lot more sense. It was also really pretty and not confusing and I enjoyed it. This one, however, I couldn't see how it related to the topic completely. Only in parts, and even then they were small parts. I dunno, maybe I'm not reading into it enough. It's a good poem, and I liked it, but if we're comparing it to "Urbanization" then I have to say that one was a whole lot better. In my opinion.

Late, but my thread's called (Un)Timely Reviews for a reason. XD

Before I tackle the content, there are a couple of technical things that need pointing out, namely punctuation and the placement line breaks. While the punctuation is not incorrect, there are places where it breaks the flow (usually of ideas) instead of enhancing it, especially when paired with a line break.

In the first stanza:

and explode on your tongue.
So take a moment
and lick between my shoulderblades.
Tell me,

"So take a moment / and lick between my shoulderblades." is surrounded by periods, which, combined with how the periods end lines, gives these two lines a sense of isolation, as if they don't quite belong with the lines before and after. In trying to set them apart so that they would be noticed, you set them too far apart.

Another example caused by line breaks can be found in the second stanza:

They know what they're leaving behind,
I hope, because I don't.
I just can't be left alone
in an empty lot.

In the first two lines, the "I hope" reads awkwardly, as if it were an afterthought inserted haphazardly, as if it weren't as important to the meaning of those lines as it truly is. The commas offsetting it do not help mesh the "I hope" into the flow of ideas or reading either, and I keep tripping over it every time I read this stanza.

You could fix this by rearranging the sentence structure or by playing with the line breaks so that "I hope" doesn't feel so isolated, surrounded by commas and white space at the beginning of its own line.

In the case of the other two lines, the line break places too much emphasis on "alone", which makes the "in an empty lot" more redundant than complementary. If you were to break at "left" instead, more emphasis would be placed on the leaving itself, which would naturally lead to a wanting to know how and where, which would be revealed in the next line.

As far as imagery goes, you're teetering on the brink between beautifully poetic and trying too hard. Part of this has to do with how you tie together some, but not all, images; the rest has to do with lackluster word choice in the majority of the poem.

Each word must be irreplaceable in a poem, there because it must be, there because if that specific word and all its denotations and connotations were removed, the poem would no longer be the same. Right now, there's a lot of generic words that, what with being generic, have lost power in their meanings. They read more like filler that could have been refined further, pared down so that they were more a recognizable feature of a sculpture rather than a general form that looks alright from a distance, but is far too rough-hewn upon closer inspection to be called complete.

Then there is the haphazard linking of ideas. On the one hand, you have a definite theme underlying all the stanzas, but at the same time, each stanza consists of rather separate ideas, and these ideas don't quite connect as well as they could and need to, even within a stanza. This is particularly noticeable in the third stanza where the speaker jumps from "You're almost there" to what the narrator tastes like, then worrying. The first leap in particular leaves your reader wondering "Where did that come from? And why is it relevant?"

This wouldn't be such an issue if the rest of the poem revealed the answers to these questions, but it doesn't, and all I can conclude is that those lines were there in an attempt to characterize the narrator (which they don't really do due to lack of connection to and build up within the rest of the poem) and incorporate unique imagery into an otherwise bland stanza.

You've got the foundations here for a pretty good poem with how you have the recurring theme of driving running throughout and the focus on the narrator, but when it comes to fleshing out and further elaborating on these elements, the poem doesn't quite make it. Try focusing your images more. What is it you want to convey exactly? That should form the core of all the other elements, and your reader should be able to go read through a poem and feel the connections to this core. Right now, that feeling of connection, of cohesion, is weak.

Lad,

I had half a review written up from like a week or so ago in a word doc for you and I stumbled upon it. It's only fair to you to finish it c: A lot stronger then Urbanization. And it's got a nice stride to it.

My issue with it is that some of the construction of the imagery is on shaky ground. I'm not sure where it comes from and how it ties in. It makes sense, but at the same time it doesn't come together neatly. You've got the emotional appeal and your tone down, but the imagery is a patchwork quilt you never quite finished but started using because you needed it. Those few missing connections are obvious. For example:

1.

You say you frequent a place
where cannonballs bounce off angels' breasts
and explode on your tongue.

2.

as a family rolls off
to somewhere between anonymity
and contentment.

3.

You worry me sometimes,
always constructing and deconstructing
like that.

4.

You laugh and kiss my cheek,
letting a cannonball slip between your lips
and down to the base of my neck.

We see 1 and 4 come together, but 2 and 3 are so incredibly vague that they lack any context with the poem or without it. 2 and 3. Vagueness may be acceptable in places like indie rock lyrics, but not in poetry. I want everything to bring meaning to the table, so that by the end I feel like I've had a full meal and the only questions I may have would be, how did you make that?

Not, "what's next?"

Kamas