The Night of the Death of His Father

I haven't reviewed poetry before, and I'm not really a poetry kind of person. But what I found from reading that interested me, I liked your poem. The first time I read it, it made no sense, I read certain parts over and over (and I blame that mainly on my tiredness right now). So I read it again, which brought it all together. Some parts made little sense, but you poets do that a lot, or so I assume.

Despite not knowing what to say, the phone rang out in quiet acclamation against
the white space, inside the margins—to defend them? They're the reason I fear poetry:

This little bit confused me a bit, some words in weird order and such. I don't know what you meant.

How to answer his crying, his heart like a star dehisces, like hibachi
oiled in rapeseed? I lift him by the shoulders to my face and kiss him—I should have known

I personally don't know what a star dehisces is, I looked up dehisces in the dictionary and the phrase with that in it means little to me. I also don't know what hibachi oiled in rapeseed would be, but I'm just thirteen.

I didn't see how the "I should have burned the building down and turned off his phone" part of the poem tied in with the actual body of the poem, but maybe I'm just inexperienced at reading poetry.

I'm sorry if this isn't how you review poetry, its just my thoughts on what you wrote. I don't mean to offend you in any way, and I personally thought it was a great poem(mostly) and you have a wonderful vocabulary.

Hmmm. Once again I'm struggling to understand your complex poetry, and once again I'm thoroughly impressed. This poem is obviously full of raw emotion, in which the speaker is trying to use words to tie in their thoughts and feelings with a traumatic event.

Structurally I can't see many problems, In fact I quite like the way the lines flow onto new stanzas. Good device. There are times whenever your poetic language and metaphores deviate from the theme in hand- which I suspect for fear of being ridiculed- is the speaker's desperation in trying to shield their lover from loss; the loss of their father and in turn the loss of their love and passion, at least for that night. The speaker tries to relate their own previous grief to their companion, but they feel, as many comforters do, worthless. Sometimes the imagery takes away from this however and leaves me as a reader feeling confused.

Some of the images are very effective though, one of my favourites is:

I should have stuffed his ears with cotton.

The regret of the speaker is heart-wrenching:

I should have known to turn his phone off.

I love the description of 'life must go on'- it's truly beautiful, and how the griever is almost inconsolable, causing weakness in the speaker's part:

just the sound of my own trembling voice.

That damned phone—that ringing to the past forced its closure. For now,

to avoid exposure, I speak only in the present tense.

Perfect ending, perfect poem. We never stop to think about how hard death and loss is for the one standing watching their loved one fall apart.

I hope I've interpreted this right,

Eimear