Letting Go

It
swallowed me whole –
are you listening?
It swallowed me whole,
like Jonah's whale,
and made me feel
so guilty
for not letting it
do so sooner.

It was supposed to be
fulfilling,
but it ate away at me
like burning sulfur.
I burned all over
for so long
that it became
almost
comforting.

But we grow up,
don't we?
I did.
And you can't drag around
a comforter
like Linus from Peanuts
forever, can you?
Not even I could.
Not even I
who took my doll to parties
when I was eleven.

Then again, perhaps it didn't
(Eat away at me, that is).
The doubt is what did that –
I never had faith the size
of a mustard seed –
so perhaps the blame is
to share; It must be,
since there is no one righteous,
not even one.

It seemed so big
and all-encompassing, and
I suppose it was, really.
But it was also so petty.

Even now it has a hold
on me
with such
reassuring promises
of hope
and a future
which make me
almost want to stay and -
Yes, I know it's all in my head.
I was trying to tell you that.
Weren't you listening?

Spoiler

Any thoughts and advice would be very much appreciated. I have infamously terrible punctuation in my poetry, so feel free to comment on that, and just generally rip it to shreds. It's not a style I'm used to writing in so it's probably awful.

Hi there.. So I was a bit intrigued because I have also written a poem called 'Letting Go' ( not put on YWS yet).. I think the concept was good. But I love the depth and its captivating.. It's flowing smoothly, generally, but the flow gets disrupted at certain points.. Here are some things which I feel can be improved.. Others may like it as it is but I feel these things ought to be told..

1) In Line 2 You've Written- 'Are you listening?'
Though it is good but it's sounding a bit abrupt.

2) Stanza 3 'Not even I could,
not even I'
Though this repetition is good I think the poem could do without it.. Also I noticed you've done once more at a later stage.. I do not object to the repetition, But I feel it will be better to remove it..

That's all for the nitpicks.. Don't mind what I have mentioned.. I just thought these might help you..
If this is the first time you're writing something Like this (You mentioned in the spoiler) I think you did an excellent job..
Harshita:)

'Allo there! Let's jump in, and I'll tell you what I really think at the end.

First stanza - I like it. I like it, I like it. It's a good beginning. In the second line, I like that you interrupted with a question, like the speaker's telling a story. The poem itself sounds very verbal, so it's a nice addition. All I might say is that after "Are you listening?" you might want to put another dash to close off the parenthetical, as you have an ongoing sentence that continues afterwards. At least, that's how I read it. Maybe "It swallowed me whole -/Are you listening? -/Yes, it swallowed me whole..." to emphasize your point.

Second stanza - From "Sweetly perfumed acid" on, I kind of lost the message in this stanza. It's so distracting; for one, I can't think of a sweetly perfumed acid, and though I'm sure the imagery is there for a reason, it's kind of... weird. Also, "acid" evokes images of stomach acid, especially considering the first stanza where "it swallowed me whole". I don't really like the last two lines; they're too verbal to fit in with the beginning of the stanza. "Are you listening?" serves a purpose. "Well... to be honest" serves little such, in my opinion. P'raps you could edit that out and just say "cloying and comforting", or find a different phrase to use?

Third stanza - Okay. I get the Peanuts reference, but it seems a little superfluous, especially with the surrounding commas. It makes the words go a bit funny in my head; they start dancing a random little jig instead of going on about their waltz as they were before. Maybe get rid of the commas and integrate it more into the stanza instead of holding it out at arm's length for the reader to inspect, and then it will read more easily. I like the repetition in the ending bit of the stanza; though perhaps "a doll" could be "my doll", instead. That's just me thinking here.

Fourth stanza - Your punctuation goes a little funny in the first two lines. Grammatically speaking - and you've been grammatical so far! - there ought to be a full stop after the end parenthesis, to close off the sentence and prevent it from running aimlessly into the next. If you read it like a full sentence, void of all parentheticals, as it is now it would read, "Then again, perhaps it didn't the indecision is what did that..." And, you must admit, that looks like a bit of a strange sentence. I wouldn't even mention this if it weren't for the fact that you've been using punctuation all through the poem. Then again after "Perhaps the blame is to share", shouldn't there be a semicolon or a dash or something to separate "is to share" and "I know"? This might be personal preference, though; I couldn't know.

Fifth stanza - I would normally say put commas after the "oh"s, but that's only if you want to. Grammatically, of course, since they're interjections... might just be me, though. And I love love love how you stated things in this stanza. It makes the reader - at least, me as the reader - think of the world so clearly without you even stating "the world" anywhere in there.

Sixth stanza - I'm not sure how I feel about the end. I like that it's cut off, like the speaker was interrupted, like the reader was somehow being rude for wondering about the wanderings of insanity. Also, like a wise man once said, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" Yes, I quoted Albus Dumbledore. I am not ashamed.

Overall, this poem gives me a sense of... something. Confusion and longing and wanting and bereavement and everything at once. I like it.

so i feel like i'm reading this straight out of a poetry book and i want to gongratualte you on your own deep and insightful thought however on the line letting it do so sooner it seemes like if you say it outloud you would get toungetied saying it, i got toungetied in my mind and i had to read it 3 times before i got it cause iat first i skimmed and it didn't make much sense but then i got it, so congratualtions you confused me then unconfused me and i really enjoyed your poem!

Consider this a courtesy of Zombies! ;P

And ancientforever has given you quite the thorough review there. I agree with everything she has already pointed out, though I still have some things to point out of my own:

The "Oh" interjections in stanza five felt completely out of place. I can't really describe just how off they feel, but they really threw off the tone and flow of the poem for me.

It is never made clear what "it" is. This annoyed me. You dance around what "it" is so much, "it" is lost by the end of the poem. A bit more focus would help, in this regard, as would a bit more concreteness in the images. Right now, things are very vague, and the closest you come to a concrete image is that of Linus' blanket, but it's an image that is wholly reliant upon a familiarity with Peanuts. Descriptions and images are rather minimal, and your word choice is rather ordinary, which make for not very memorable or particularly meaningful reading.

The nice thing about poetry is that you can tie down the abstract with concrete imagery that would seem outlandish and impossible in more standardized forms, like prose. Rather than require paragraphs of building up idiosyncrasies, you can start with an idiosyncrasy and build up from there. The best way to do so is by employing precise word choice, making sure that each word you use in a poem is absolutely essential and the best word for the situation. Because poetry is so condensed a form, each word really does count, and when a lot of common (and therefore non-specific) words are used in favor of more precise ones, the poem suffers from vagueness as a result.

Try and see if you can use more vivid, precise words throughout this poem. Each word has specific meanings, and by understanding and using those meanings to their fullest, your poem will become more vivid, memorable, and relevant.

Now, the major issue with this poem is the placement of line breaks. They seem haphazard, as if you went "Hm. I need line breaks. I'll just break it here and here. And this doesn't look like it's broken up enough so... there we go!" Every time you break a line, a minute pause is added. This pause, though not as long as a comma's pause, is still present, and just as misplacing commas ruins the flow of a poem, so do misplaced line breaks. In addition, having the first letter of each line only adds to the pause between the end of one line and beginning of another as capitalization usually indicates the beginning of a new sentence (i.e. a new idea).

With how your line breaks are currently placed, they break up the flow of the poem, making it feel choppy and haphazard, especially the first stanza.

Where a line ends and begins can be used to add subtle but natural emphasis to ideas within a poem without the use of italics or other forms of formatting. We naturally put different levels of emphasis on certain words within a sentence, and it's a matter of tuning into those emphases and placing the line breaks accordingly.

Compare this with your current first stanza:

It
swallowed me whole -
are you listening?
It swallowed me whole
and made me feel
so guilty
for not letting it
do so sooner.

The words at the beginning and end of each line are emphasized a bit more, but in places that make sense within the natural flow of speech, and the repetition looks less visually obvious.

Play around a bit more with the line breaks until you find something that flows smoothly and reinforces the meaning of the line, stanza, and poem as a whole. Something I find that helps me is to write out the poem as prose, without line breaks, and then go back to add them in. It's interesting to see how breaking a line at a different location only a word away can so subtly, but drastically, change the meaning and reception of a single line, and by extension the entire poem.

I really enjoyed this piece. It kept my attention. ^w^ Good JOB!

Hello I'll review this one eventually. Can't do it right this second, but I will - perhaps later this evening.

Okay, okay, okay, so Kyllorac has a point about the line breaks. Actually this occurred to me almost as stream of consciousness, it is quite immersive, the line breaks make it feel kind of thin, as a prose poem it would actually feel quite intuitive, it wouldn't be BIG BAD WALL OF POLYSYLLABLES COMPENSATING FOR FEAR OF INADEQUACY AND SILENCE it already has breath in it. But that is just a thought, always good to play around with it like this. If you choose to write it in verses, yes, I would rethink many of the breaks, keep reading it aloud to find the structure that way. To be honest, you don't need the line breaks to draw attention to the important bits, they will speak for themselves if you let them.

I think this is a very earnest (or Algernon) piece. I think that it is easy to write about people and places that are removed from you, I'm speaking in the universal you of writers, that creating detail, honesty, emotional complexity is easy to do when you make them very fictional, but when it is something close to you, it is nearly impossible not to pull your punches. I think that (hope that, for the sake of my own writing), it is this part of your writing that ends up becoming the most complex and convincing, but it is not where you develop technique initially. (And yes, I do think that you are still developing your technique. I really love that about your work, because you do not have a set, predeveloped tone, it's still growing, still stretching, still evolving. Calvino did it his whole life, he was constantly changing, I think the best musicians are the same, they never have a solid idea of what they can and cannot do. My lecturer, who you know I idolise, this makes her the best harpist in the world, and so when I say you are developing, know it is a mark of utmost respect and admiration, and not me being a condescending so-and-so just because I am old and have nothing better to do than tear down young brilliant poets of whose talent I am bitterly jealous of). I think it is terrifying to write any specifics about something you're going througb, there is always the fear that someone will recognise it, will recognise you, and will judge you for it. Even putting it on paper, never intending anyone else to read it, still seems to create some kind of ticking clock. I promise you, though, that 1) most of us are a lot more oblivious than one would think, you can say a lot more than you think before they see you, in fact, sometimes the more you say, the more alien it will be to them. 2) They are more likely to see themselves before they see you. Writing makes people feel a lot quicker than think, and believe it or not, they will feel more acutely than you will, though it will not feel so at first. I used the cliche "pull your punches", and in general, I feel that this poem is ginger in that regard, would benefit from further pugnacity. Make us feel it first. You have all the weapons.

like Jonah's whale,

like Linus from Peanuts

There's a simple way of doing it. Pure metaphor over simile, simile distances you from the object, straight metaphor has more immediacy. I was actually pondering how to approach these similes, and even sort of visually have these tangents, like the narrator is so consumed in the subject that Jonah and Linus run off to the side, but it draws them back in.

It was supposed to be
fulfilling,
but it ate away at me
like burning sulfur.
I burned all over
for so long
that it became
almost
comforting.

I suppose making a Catholic joke about now would be out of line. Ate is good. Burning on the other hand, I would beware of, you have to have a very deliberate reason to reuse a word in a poem so short, i believe, particularly when we are talking sense imagery, you want it to be fresh, you want it be instantaneous and is difficult to make a repetition more acute rather than deadening the last. So, we're talking synonyms and supporting poetic devices, make the rhythm like throbbing maybe if that's the kind of burning, or 's's, 'ch's, 'th's, make it sear, searing. Stabbing first then, perhaps you could use repetition to make it more of a lull, or just soften consants and use rounder assonance. Make the stanza do it. I like the image, I like the idea, I think it is very acute, just give it a little more support as you edit.

I would like the dialogue more established, creating the unseen listener in a more distinct way, established in the way the narrator speaks to them? How personal is it? What is the state of the listener? Do the references play into shared experiences? I know I've told you Dorothy Parker was a genius, but her short stories, whole conversations with only one voice, it's amazingly convincing, you can still see the other person the whole time, just from the dialogue of the one. I think that establishing this other, unheard voice will do a lot to balance the narrator and gel the tone.

Yes, I know it's all in my head.
I was trying to tell you that.
Weren't you listening?

I love this. Love love love.

You are brilliant, missy, keep writing.