Young Writers Society

Hey Ego! I've seen you critiquing on YWS, so I figured I would drop by!

I didn't like the first two stanzas at all. They were really boring. It's like, you were so intent on making us understand the metaphor that you forgot that poetry should be first and foremost about conflict. That is, yes, poetry can and should use pretty language and yes, metaphor is a good way to express your meaning using description. But without conflict, it gives us no feeling of importance or emotional weight. Just as you shouldn't use a prologue in fiction to describe what the character looks like before you start the story, you shouldn't explain your metaphors before you begin the conflict part of your poem. That simply shows that your metaphor is wrong and that you need to revise to make the metaphor more fitting.

I would rather you just start with the third stanza. See?

We have all forgotten God; in His place
we have cracked concrete of city streets that
lead to intersections and streetlights and stop signs
and rusted cars. We have apple blossoms
in our eyes to blind us. We have a sun
like a bruised orange in a still life.

And we have nothing left to hold on to,
because the atmosphere has claimed all of our balloons.
Was that moment worth it, I wonder,
was inhaling sunspots and flirting with apple blossoms
and watching balloons slip and shiver away from us,
worth everything it cost,

now that we have forgotten even the God of Elijah?

Now, that flows! That has conflict--that has weight. And yes, it's kind of strange because you don't quite describe the connection between apple blossoms and balloons, but at least the poem doesn't stall at the beginning.

Just...

"...We have a sun
like a bruised orange in a still life."

Not quite sure what that means there... the image isn't forming well in my head. The problem is, I've seen bruised oranges, and they look nothing like the sun. So I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Good luck with the poem! And remember... conflict, conflict, conflict!

EgoSumNovus wrote:I release balloons into the sky and stare until
the atmosphere has swallowed them and
they are drowning in the sun.

I very much like this opening, but the 'until' bothers me for some reason, I think because it implies that the speaker is going to move on now that the atmosphere has swallowed them, which they then don't. I'd rather it were two sentences. Also, having read the rest of the poem, I think you should keep it to the first person plural, that the I makes the poem lopsided, since it begins rooted in the concrete experience of an individual and becomes self-consciously universal almost immediately after and stays that way. This also applies to the 'they' of the passers-by in the first half of the next stanza. We is the way to go.

Apple blossoms in the eyes of passer-bys
make them forget about God,

If you are comparing the balloons to apple blossoms, which is a very nice comparison, you can make that more explicit by changing 'Apple blossoms in the eyes of the passers-by (which is the correct pluralization of passer-by, incidentally) make them forget about God' to 'Apple blossoms in the eyes of passers-by, they make them forget about God', or else just using the words balloons again, the ambiguity not being that awesome here. You might want to remove the 'about'; it's unnecessary.

make them follow the balloons ascend
like dancers, like ghosts, like shivering flowers,

'Make them follow the balloons ascend like dancers, like ghosts, like shivering flowers' doesn't quite work; are the passers-by the ones who are like dancers, like ghosts, like shivering flowers? I'm thinking not, what with the whole apple blossom thing, but if so you want 'ascent', not 'ascend'. And if not, you should put an 'as' between 'follow' and 'the', or else change it to 'make them follow the balloons that ascend'. I am also hard-perssed to really see dancers rising up into the sky; I like the simplicity of ghosts and shivering flowers floating up much more.

until we all lose sight together and
we are left, blinking out sunspots.

Because elsewhere in the poem we have inhaling sunspots and drowning in sun, I think you can do better than 'blinking out'; I'd much prefer something interesting and incongruous and modeled after that idea of sun and sunpots as a liquid and specifically liquid being imbibed. Coughing up sunspots, maybe.

We have all forgotten God; in His place

I don't like the 'all'. I think 'We have forgotten God' is a much stronger statement that conveys the same meaning.

we have cracked concrete of city streets that

The cracked concrete.

lead to intersections and streetlights and stop signs
and rusted cars.

I don't see a lot of rusted cars in the city, and that last item on the list feels like filler. Use a different adjective. Maybe something about them being unmoving. In a traffic jam or parked.

We have apple blossoms
in our eyes to blind us. We have a sun
like a bruised orange in a still life.

I have trouble here because earlier the sun is something to drown in and now it's a fruit. On the other hand, it is a lovely phrase. Hm. I'm not positive that you need to alter it, but it's something to consider, at least, the continuity or lack thereof of the figurative language.

And we have nothing left to hold on to,
because the atmosphere has claimed all of our balloons.
Was that moment worth it, I wonder,
was inhaling sunspots and flirting with apple blossoms
and watching balloons slip and shiver away from us,
worth everything it cost,

now that we have forgotten even the God of Elijah?

An excellent close. Maybe change inhaling to a more specifically liquid-related word. Drinking would do nicely, simple though it is.

I enjoyed this poem a great deal, I have to say. Your imagery is strong and fresh, and the juxtaposition of sweetness and cold with the small deaths of the modern era and our failings, the darkness implicit to the idea that we have forgotten what we once worshipped is remarkably compelling.