Young Writers Society

For Rosey Unicorn's Beginnings of Magic contest. Original post under spoiler.

---

The birth of magic was like the
birth of flame, the kindling
and tinder lying complacent one
moment, consumed the next by
a hungry spark.

Like the spark, it was
born with a whisper akin
to stone upon steel, a
rasp of breath from that which
cannot breathe.

Aching with this contradiction, it
kicked and heaved, turning with-
in the womb, as it cried
with voice and tears not
yet extant. To
touch the world with light-flushed
fingers, like those of fire, and
taste of creation's sweet offerings with
tongues of red, licking, much
like a serpent's tongue as it laps
up the blood of the enemy crocodile -- that
was the magic's desire.

And how it longed
for a breath of wonder, a
scenting of awe, to hear the
sibilant bell-chime of distant
mirages, thoughts dancing like
heat waves upon whispering dunes -- longed
so much that it burst into being, flaring
like a nova before dying out

for those things it would have lasted only an instant.

Yet the pangs of its birth linger on, echoed
and renewed in spiraling dreams,
like threads of spider silk before
they are devoured to make a
paralleled replica.

---

I should probably preface this review with the fact that I don't like it, and that's not your fault at all. That's my fault. I like poems, generally speak, about concrete things. Or, if they're discussing abstractions - they make them into concretes. I've never read many poems that are pure abstraction, so it's hard for me to like and appreciate them properly. I'll still try to review this poem as is, then I'll try to give my advice on how you could make it more concrete. (Even though you don't have to write the poem for me, but you may still find it good advice? Who knows.)

I really liked how you were trying to play with the line breaks to create double entendres in places. I'm a huge fan of that:

void between non-
existence

But in some places, and I'm not sure if it's because of the line breaks or simple the words used, what you were saying didn't make complete sense to me. Specifically, here:

– the
breath of potential
given form
-less name.

I had to read over that big several times to really get what you were trying to say and even then it feels awkward.

I think the way you split articles and their nouns is probably the place where I'm getting most thrown off. It's too weird for my brain; I don't like it. I'm also not fond of the vagueness of the word "it". It's just sooo bland. And vague. And empty. If every word in poetry counts, why would you go about calling something it?

Which leads to my whole make it concrete thing. It is dumb. You want to bring it to life. I am in love with extended metaphors. What if you wrote about magic as though it was a livign thing, an animal, locked up, breathing heavy, trying to grow across the world? Or stretching it's arms for the first time, yawning heavily from such a long sleep? I can really only think of describing magic in the form of an animal, but I'm sure there are other things you can use to personify and give life to magic - weather. Wind, is cool. Uhh. *runs out* I'm really bad at this list-y thing. But I personally would think it'd be really cool if you changed this into an extended metaphor so as to kill all the "it"s and made your descriptions more concrete and imagery-like. This is my opinion.

*runs off before her opinion bites her in the but*

Hi Kyllorac,

Here's the review you requested

To begin with, there are a lot of things I like about this poem. I love "a susurrant thought," "dreams that spiral, sibilate and sigh" and some of the hyphenation (especially "non-/existence"). At the same time, though, while I was reading I kind of found myself waiting for the poem to actually start. From the title and your comments, I'm getting that this is about the birth of magic, but I wouldn't have understood that from the poem, and I feel it's important for a piece to be able to stand on its own. As it is, I grew rather bored by the third repetition of "It verbed." You might want to think about changing the format or expanding on one of those ideas a little so that the reader is more involved in the poem. Like Suzanne says, it kind of needs something concrete to balance it. At this point, it's just a collection of pretty words that ultimately leaves little impact.

I do have to say that it is a very nice collection of words, though

Hope that helps, and good luck in the contest!

Cheers,
~bubbles

Hi, Kyllorac!

I like how the poem looks like, and I like most of the line break solutions you've made. However, I wasn't very pleased with the hyphenations, since in most places, I fail to understand the way they supposedly benefit the poem itself. If their job is to make the reader pause in those very bits, they deliver, but unless there's an irreplaceable idea behind them that has just escaped me, I would suggest thinking twice about them.

Another thing that crossed my mind was whether you actually had a theory about the "birth of magic", which is apparently the contest theme? I mean, yes, you give us four stanzas about the birth of magic according to you, and you do that very beautifully too, but there's something that left me slightly suspicious. Your job is to make me believe whatever you have to say, and unfortunately I don't feel as convinced as I would like to. The whole speculation is done by using great words and sweet images, but I got the impression that you might not know the answer either. I mean, it's magic, something that overthrows almost everything, and I'm told that it started with a "whisper". Sorry, but I'm not buying it. I want something real, something concrete, as the girls said.

I hope I've not just rambled something impossible to understand. I wish you the best of luck in the contest!


Demeter
x

OK, let me first say that I'm not a huge fan of weird format just for the sake of weird format. And now that I've said THAT, let me say that I thought that only parts of this poem were weird format for the sake of weird format.

If I read this poem as if there were no abrupt line breaks and without the hyphens in the middle of non-hyphenated words, the actual language is absolutely beautiful. Having pointed that out, I have to ask, what effect were you trying to achieve with the seemingly random hyphens? I'm thinking there's probably something I'm not getting, so that question was out of honest curiosity and not cloaked rudeness, just so you know.

"It
fluttered in-
to fragile
existence..."
I really love the use of the word "fluttered" in these lines. It's perfect. It connotes a softness that most people don't think of when pondering the creation of something. It's all about the big bangs, loud noises, explosions. I love that something so fantastic as magic is portrayed as having been birthed in almost complete silence.

"...in
dreams that spiral,
sibilate,
sigh..."
I love those three 'S' words used in conjunction here. The alliteration really adds to this poems ethereal feeling.

I'm not sure if this is the one you wanted me to pick at, but either way I'm really sorry I'm so late >.<

Let's see:

The biggest problem in here is the fact that it isn't tangible. At all. If you are going to take something purely abstract you can't give it movement like that. Think about it, what magic is to you may not be the same for me. Sure it can border along the cliches of fantasy, but it could just be a simple wonder that can be considered magical.

the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces (New Oxford American Dictionary)

That's really vague right?

Now let's look at your first stanza:

It
started with a
whisper, a
susurrant thought, that
echoed
in the
emptiness
that was the
void between non-
existence and
sub-
stantiality.

...what? What you're doing here is the equivalent on taking a jar on a windy day and closing the lids after a big gust. Have you "caught" the wind? Maybe a few particles, but most likely not. You're taking something purely abstract and trying to give it movement. You can't do that so the poem it kind of sitting there in a pretty format with some pretty words.

You're got form and structure down pat, definitely better then I can do. But what you're lacking is imagery. You have metaphors, but absolutely no images for your reader to grasp on.

Magic is something very vague, very ambiguous. Honestly Google gives you a good idea of that, google "Magic" and see how many different images you'll get. So what magic is for you can be very different for your reader. The thing about poetry is that your taking your reader and getting them to understand and maybe be empathic with what you're trying to get across. Whether it be your point of view or one of a created persona.

You can only do that if they can relate to it. You can be as bias as you want in your poetry, you want your reader to see things the way you want them too. So if magic looks like pink and purple sparkly fairy dust to you, then work with that. It's already a lot less vague. People usually see fairy dust as maybe little stars or sparkles. (But please don't use this example too seriously, or I'll have to come get you with a pitchfork) But in this case you're giving them something they can see, something substantial that they can imagine and you can manipulate.

Also, a void is another example of the vagueness of this all. What is a void exactly? Emptiness. What does emptiness look like? ...Nothing. So, your first stanza is basically about an invisible supernatural force that we can't see or imagine all too well was made in the nothingness between the two states of nothing and something? Hm. Okay then, that's totally something I've seen before and have a clear understanding of? Not really.

Start with what things look like. Even if you aren't sure yourself create something that you can work with as a poet. What does magic look like? Nothing? A baby? Stars? Create that image and really you can bend it to your will. What does a void look like? The space between two stars? The space between the nucleus and the electrons? Whatever. It really doesn't matter. Make it something, because you can't build a poem up on nothing.

Good luck, and if you have any questions you know where to find me ;D

Kamas

Hi Kyllorac,

The beginning few lines are okay, and the rest send this poem to hell in a handbasket.

Other reviewers have mentioned flaws that I agree with, but I'm going to skip to one that I don't believe has been covered with enough depth.

You're cramming here. "one moment...the next", "Like the", "from that which", "with this", "not yet". I haven't even dissected half of your poem but I can already see where you've tried to put a band-aid on a sore that doesn't exist. These words may seem small and unimposing by themselves, but together they create an potholed road. Every time you begin to create something that resembles a good image, you ruin it by talking about "that which was not unlike the previous act of etc etc etc". Obviously, that example is an exaggeration, but you understand.

First, prune all of these junk phrases out, then try to remake what's left of the poem with a minimal amount of the above-mentioned phrases.

In the future, start your poem with an image. Just an image. It can be, like you implied, the igniting of flame by striking steel against a stone. Anything works. Take that image, and build around it, constructing legs of the plot and storyline (which you fortunately do have) on which to hold and admire your nucleus - that is, the singular description. The images should leap from one another as effortlessly as is possible, not have to hobble along with walking canes of useless language and cluttered word bridges.

Also, take a look at this stanza again:

Kyllorac wrote:And how it longed
for a breath of wonder, a
scenting of awe, to hear the
sibilant bell-chime of distant
mirages, thoughts dancing like
heat waves upon whispering dunes -- longed
so much that it burst into being, flaring
like a nova before dying out

for those things it would have lasted only an instant.

It might have been good had you not ended it so pathetically - "before dying out". Right. You have powerful images breathing into one another and igniting each other's eyes throughout these lines, and then instead of plunging the exhilarated reader off the edge of this roller coaster, you stop the ride and ask him to get out and be on his way. "Before dying out" doesn't show the reader anything. It lectures him, albeit with a very short lecture.

To add to the problem, the one-liner after that is equally boring and preachy. Now, it may have worked had you ended that previous stanza with some kind of a bang, but as it stands, it looks like a continuation of bad writing, as if you suddenly ran out of ideas and let it peter out for a few lines. Now, I must include a caveat here, and that is that I foresaw a possible response being "But I meant for my words to flicker out like a flame! Having these lines suddenly stop without an excitement is giving them a more fiery, extinguishing feel!". This isn't a good case to make, for even the act of flickering out unceremoniously can be made into a powerful experience. If you want loneliness, take that feeling of empty to the maximum, using - you guessed it - a relatable description. Don't just have the words stop.

In general, a mediocre poem, but hopefully one that can be ironed out. I don't know how the rest of the entries are, though, so this may have a chance in that contest.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Here comes bad review! But it's a review nonetheless...


So I really like that you did try to make it less abstract. In fact, I love the nonabstractness of the first two stanzas. But I felt like, as it went on, that kind of faded. Not that you failed at making it more lively/less abstract, but rather it didn't relate well enough. I can see relation between fire and a spark under a hammer, it makes sense, I think of an iron smith. But then... baby? And then I wasn't sure where you went. I was expect the iron smith metaphor to continue and grow, and what better way to explain magic than by explaining it in the terms of making a tool? It sounds like such a cool, beautiful idea. And I do like the first few lines of the baby stanza, but at the same time I was thrown off, and it doesn't all fit well enough together to make it worth while. I feel like the things you're relating it to should have more purpose. They're all burning things, creating things, living things - but what do those things say about magic? Do they relate? Do they have greater purpose/meaning behind giving magic a tangible existence?

Sorry I don't have anything else to say on the poem, but that really stood out to me, not as a huge error, but it was the only thing I really noticed? I hope it helped either way!

Hey Ky. Here is your (very late) review for entering my contest. I was judging poetry on four criteria: Concept, flow, plot and writing quality (grammar, understandability ect).

Concept: I found it alright for the beginning, but once you get to stanza three you lose me. Mostly, because you alter the whole concept of magic as only lasting a moment. By the time I reach the end of this poem I think magic has been born and died just as quickly, which left me unsatisfied with the poem overall. I felt like the full-circle was completed too quickly and without any real resolution (For example, I was wondering if the magic was growing yet all of a sudden it dies at the end, which left me wondering what was up). You had a nice take on the prompt, but the concept didn't feel complete.

Flow: This poem certainly had your style of flow. Just a bit choppy to make sure we're paying attention, but each line and idea was connected well. The breaks for emphasis weren't all that distracting. However, I found the pace of the poem quickened too much in stanzas 3, 4 and 6. That's the I started to get lost in the concept and got confused.

Plot: It got... really confusing. Your timeline followed a circle, but as I said you really lost the plot in stanzas 4, 5 and 6. I'm beginning to see your more full-circle plot now, but there are just so many images and metaphors and similes thrown at us, it took me a few too many reads while judging to understand the poem. You also don't full explore the concept of rebirth, which doesn't help.

Writing quality: For the most part this was clean grammatically. If I was very picky I'd point out how the dashes aren't the correct one-piece long dashes, but that's being a designer. My only thing is the sentences are a bit too full of interrupter commas in certain places, which makes the words flow together a bit too much in the key points of the poem (which I believe is what leads to your confusion in stanza 4, which is the most confusing/thinnest).

Overall: I think you tried too hard to capture magic as something concrete. By doing this, you trapped something constantly flowing into images that don't completely fit together and are murky. The original was better in that respect. This would have needed another draft or two in order to completely cement it.

Congrats on the honourable mention! Don't forget to claim your prize.

~Rosey