trans-neptunian

mane of flares and split atoms –
whips of nuclear fission punching inadvertently,
like newborn baby fists – the sun quiet and
bright as a nun-soul. i wonder how long
it would take for blindness to follow from
looking into the sun as we stare, stare
into into the depths of void
and never look back.

planet – wanderer . . .
knowing they are being watched and
content with it, like beautiful women in public.
the gas giants purring, ferns of light
sighing from the center of the system,
and the nine eight planets turn to each other in their heavy exercises
glowing from within and talking in the shyest whispers, like
mothers expecting. all set together, they
yawn out into space, pulling and vast,
like birth pangs.

we set the telescope up on the lawn – it is especially clear
and the moon is kept secret in the pockets of the night, like the token
of a saint – waning, gibbous, ribbons of stars crashing against
atmosphere like a tide. dad says that if you're always going to be looking
up, then you might as well know what you're looking at. he says
that there are trillions of stars out there, despite the fact that we
can only see a few, and that is because the citylights silence
the stars, the same way all the crickets of a summer night
will suddenly

hush

and then return, one
by
one,
after we depart.

you have shown me pictures of supernovas and gaseous anomalies
of what the big bang might of looked like, what it probably looked like,
of all the matter in existence popping out of a single pinpoint of space,
like an overfull suitcase. you and i have traced these spreading constellations
with our fingers, like blind men reading braille,
reading our way across orion's exploits, cassanova's
overturned chair, draco's serpent-tongue.

milky way spilled,
great mammary gland, puffed sleeves
of molecular clouds, and the red, squinting
pink-eye of jove's storm regarding us
levelly as we

take turns looking through the telescope, the trees
depositing their leaves around us – ransom notes of summer. the stars
retreat from us as we prod, probe, like nightsnails retracting
their eyes. you show me the surface of the moon, the untucked
shirttails of silvery light, the canyons, calderas, valleys, the spot
where the apollo 11 might have landed in its delicate, aluminum bacteriophage.

(i am
swallowed
whole.)

i lie in bed, as starlight
drips waxily across my bedsheets, the telescope
in my corner, a peephole into the bedchamber of forever
and the meteors row across the river
of night, like tired souls across
the river styx.

he kisses me
goodnight.

Full of your usual brillance, Mr. Kylan. You had some great imagery, and this poem followed and very interesting and cohesive plot. Where did you get the idea, may I ask? It had an eerie and unique feel to it that I don't often see whenever I read poetry. Keep up the good work!

-Elinor

Attention must be paid!

Spoiler

Let me first explain how I looked at this. You're imagery is inspired and unparalleled on this site, as usual. What I consistently find myself grasping for in your poetry, Kylan, is something streamlined, something that hones and narrows itself into a point. I feel as though in any poem of yours, there is such a buffet of imagery that I can take only so much before I simply have to accept that I cannot digest any more, delicious as it is.

My recommendations are just that- there's nothing structurally imperiling your poem as I have felt before (e.g. Heart Dissection) but, like the universe, I find your reach exceeding your grasp in places.

Kylan wrote:mane of flares and split atoms –
whips of nuclear fission punching inadvertently,
like newborn baby fists – i wonder how long
it would take for blindness to follow from
looking into the sun, retinas curling and sickening, black strains
of anti-light, and the sun quiet and
bright as a nun-soul, as we stare, stare
into into the depths of void
and never look back.

The struck parts of L5 and L6 seemed excessive to me, and an awkward digression about the watcher in between segments about the sun. I'd consider movement of the italicized lines as well, to the middle of L7, before 'as we stare'. The path this stanza took was insane, sun, to earth, to sun, to earth.

planet – wanderer . . .
knowing they are being watched and
content with it, like beautiful women in public.
the gas giants purring, ferns of light
sighing from the center of the system,
and the nine eight planets turn to each other in their heavy exercises
glowing from within and talking in the shyest whispers, like
women expecting. all set together, they
become progressively larger as they yawn
out into space, pulling and vast, like birth pangs.

I question if the italics on L1 are necessary. The switch from the singular to the plural from L1 to L2 seemed a little odd as well. I struck 'like women expecting' because I liked the other use of 'women' better, and because it as I considered synonyms for 'women' I realized that the line wasn't incredibly necessary anyway. 'Progressively larger' confused me, I'm not sure what imagine you were imaging there, but it didn't ring true for me. The back end of this stanza does not do justice to the front end.

On the other hand, 'ferns of light' makes absolutely no sense, and yet I don't care, it works somehow. The strike of 'nine' was cute.

we set the telescope up on the lawn – it is an especially clear night
and the moon is kept secret in the pockets of the night, like the token
of a patron saint – waning, gibbous, ribbons of stars crashing against
atmosphere like a tide. dad says that if you're always going to be looking
up, then you might as well know what you're looking at. he says
that there are trillions of stars out there, despite the fact that we
can only see a few, and that is because the citylights silence
the stars, the same way all the crickets of a summer night
will suddenly

Struck a few words in L1 to eliminate the redundant use of 'night'. 'Patron' didn't seem incredibly important, and just hung me up a bit.

This is my favorite stanza of the bunch. The return to earth is wonderfully understated, I didn't really have a problem with it- although in a macro sense it bothers me, perhaps S2 should have a reference to twilight, (no, not that twilight!) so we can see that how we got from S1 where we're staring at the sun, to S3 where we've brought the telescope on the lawn to spy on the night sky.

L2 has some just excellent word usage, I love the 'waning, gibbous, ribbons...' Absolutely musical word choices. I like the Dad, he seems like exactly the kind of Dad you would want to have.

hush

and then return, one
by
one,
after we depart.

I never like this, but I'll say it's a matter of personal preference, and move on.

you have shown me pictures of supernovas and gaseous anomalies
of what the big bang might of looked like, what it probably looked (#.5)like,
of all the matter in existence popping out of a single pinpoint of space,
(#1) like an overfull suitcase and spread, spread (#2)like a cancer
across the cosmos. you and i have traced the constellations
with our fingers, (#3)like blind men reading braille, the pocks and bumps
of the eternities, reading our way across orion's exploits, cassanova's
overturned chair, draco's serpent-tongue.

Remove one of the similes/like's. I vote for #2. This stanza is just too much. The struck lines aren't important, and don't make sense to me.

milky way spilled,
great mammary gland, puffed sleeves
of molecular clouds, and the red, squinting
pink-eye of jove's storm regarding us
levelly as we

Aside from the fact that I had to wikipedia 'Jove' (Jove is another name for Jupiter/Zeus) I really have no problem's with this stanza at all. Very nice.

take turns looking through the telescope, the trees
depositing their leaves around us – ransom notes of summer. the stars
retreat from us as we prod, probe, like nightsnails retracting
their eyes. you show me the surface of the moon, the untucked
shirttails of silvery light, the canyons, calderas, valleys, the spot
where the apollo 11 landed in its delicate, aluminum bacteriophage.

It bothered me that it's really impossible to see the exact spot where Apollo 11 landed. A qualifier like 'might have' really would be fine for me.

(i am
swallowed
whole.)

Yeah okay whatever. Moving on...

i lie in bed, as starlight
drips waxily across my bedsheets, the telescope
in my corner, a peephole into the bedchamber of forever
and the meteors row across the river
of night, like tired souls across
the river styx.

Less feels like more here. Are you saying the sky is death?

you kiss me
goodnight.

Part of me wants this to be 'Dad kisses me/goodnight' but I suppose that would make the poem more about the dad. Think about it though. I can't say this last line doesn't mean something to the poem, but I feel as though I would've picked something different. It's not that it's the 'wrong' fit, but I just wish it really hit me harder than it did.

Here's what I want from this poem.
- A clearer narrative of the events that occur on earth, borne throughout each stanza.
- I want a pattern in the planets. It's impossible to look at all the planets/heavenly bodies just like that. I want to see that now we're looking at Jupiter (or Jove, if you will) because it's particularly bright in the sky this year. Why do we neglect Mercury, Mars or Venus? Neptune, Uranus and Saturn are only given passing mention among the gas planets. There's nothing wrong with this, you don't need to pull a Gustav Holst and write a stanza about every planet. But I would like to know why we mention Jupiter, the Moon, and the Sun so much more specifically.

Many thanks for your critiques.

Smorg -- I followed most of your advice...I hope the poem reads more like it should now...Thanks!

-Kylan

I hate to sound horrible, but I just was not into this poem. If you can call it that. It was too hard to follow and although I liked your subject and ideas, they were all drowned in the confusing words you used. I've read some of your other stuff though and found it much better. Anyway keep up writing, your a born writer and you have great talent judging by your other work. This just was not my cup of tea.

Hey Kylan. Here I am.

Now this is good, better then most things lurking in these forums but this isn't your best by far.

The whole thing is just long and inflated to the point of popping, so to for the sake of the pun, it's blown to astronomical proportions that the reader just can't grasp it completely.

We end up choking on the many metaphors and similes, and well what is this really about anyways?

and the nine eight planets turn to each other in their heavy exercises

The crossed out 'nine' really bothers me for some reason or another. It seems utterly useless to me, and though it's such a small thing, I find it puts into context the problem the poem has a whole. Really, what's the real point?

milky way spilled,
great mammary gland, puffed sleeves
of molecular clouds, and the red, squinting
pink-eye of jove's storm regarding us
levelly as we

In my thoughts, the weakest stanza. You take the milky way - oh! Mammary Gland! -oh! puffed!. The links are there, but the listing off of those related things just chops up any flow and makes the reader pause to think.


I do like the last stanza, the language there is softer and the adjectives you use are nice too.

i lie in bed, as starlight
drips waxily across my bedsheets, the telescope
in my corner, a peephole into the bedchamber of forever
and the meteors row across the river
of night, like tired souls across
the river styx.

A nice closing for sure.

Keep up the work.

Kamas

As usual, tremendous imagery, and an almost methodical lyrical-iness. Each image, when read as an autonomous piece of writing, sizzled into my brain.

However, this poem is just that--a collection of autonomous expressions and images. You're just a collector fixing all of your treasures in a row. You never seem to have a point, except to basically drench your beautiful words with like a scientifically-inclined, otherworldy oil.

Some technical stuff you added was almost egotistical. The whole nine/eight thing, the periods after wanderer, the constant shifting of perspectives and structure... it's glib.

If I were you, I'd try to shorten it and make the stanzas consistent with each other.

I'm here, Kylan! I told you I would be here, and I'm tired of not doing what I say I will do. D:

I. First Impressions

The overarching thoughts that stay with me even after this poem is finished, is that some of the similes just don't stick. They don't sound right or they don't make sense, and some of them would be better as metaphors, because it gets to the point where the word 'like' seems to make up half of the poem. What I've learned from this is that similes are necessary but they can also be damning.

I think the problem with them in this poem is that rather than having a dreamier, imagery/emotion-based poem, you have a rather solid plot in this work, and similes just keep pulling us away from it rather than keeping us close to it.

Let's go see if we can find some examples. xD

II. A Closer Look

whips of nuclear fission punching inadvertently,

For some reason, I just don't think that inadvertently is the word that works here. Would 'randomly' not work for you? I guess when I think of newborn punches, I feel like they would be aware of what they're doing, just unable to control it, whereas 'inadvertently' gives me the feeling that they're just like 'whatever, i'mma punch'. xD I don't know if that really makes sense, but the word doesn't feel like it fits.

i wonder how long
it would take for blindness to follow from
looking into the sun as we stare, stare
into into the depths of void
and never look back.

planet – wanderer . . .

I REALLY like the last line here, but I don't know if it's just because it follows the passage that it does. When I read 'stare into the depths of void and never look back', I just get this over-dramatic narrator reading in my head with a deep, booming voice telling me this phrase has been over done and sticks out like a sore thumb.

talking in the shyest whispers, like
mothers expecting.

all set together, they
yawn out into space, pulling and vast,
like birth pangs.

These are two examples of similes that I feel don't fit. OH! One way in which to make these possibly better would be to switch up the syntax, actually. I think the reason they got so burdensome was because it's always "blah blah blah, like this", rather than "like this, blah blah blah". That would be something to experiment with, if you're not up to taking them out completely. These two, however, need modifying. For the first one, I should think that mothers would speak in the happiest whispers. Or, for a different taste, in the most fearful or saddest or something. But shyest reaches at a character, and it's not easily understood, which, as I said before, pulls us away from following the main poem.

The second, I think, is just an excuse to put in another birthing simile. I can't see the point of it, unless you're pointing us back to the birth of the universe, which is much more effectively done when you speak of star dust and explosions, or even naming it (like you did). I'm not saying that these types of similes can't work. It works perfectly later in the poem with the reference to the milky way, but here it just seems contrived.

like the token
of a saint – waning, gibbous, ribbons of stars crashing against
atmosphere like a tide.

I don't catch the first one and the second one loses impact when paired with one so closely.

dad says that if you're always going to be looking
up, then you might as well know what you're looking at. he says
that there are trillions of stars out there, despite the fact that we
can only see a few, and that is because the citylights silence
the stars, the same way all the crickets of a summer night
will suddenly

hush

and then return, one
by
one,
after we depart.

The second half, starting with the citylights, is gorgeous, but the first contains too much rough exposition. Is that what you intended? If so, then who am I to say anything, but I feel like the reference to the father, again, pulls us away from getting into the poem and the feeling.

Is THIS your intent? D:

reading our way across orion's exploits, cassanova's
overturned chair, draco's serpent-tongue.

Cassanova is cassiopeia?
Also, why do those two get nouns, and poor Orion has to show you something abstract? How is that read in the stars? I would look for a constellation with another noun, just to keep the parallel between the three.

milky way spilled,
great mammary gland, puffed sleeves
of molecular clouds, and the red, squinting
pink-eye of jove's storm regarding us
levelly as we

This is my favorite stanza. This is beautifully written. It's perfect, the way it brings out colors and billowing shapes and brings us RIGHT IN to the poem. The eye is looking at the READER, too, which is great.

prod, probe, like nightsnails retracting
their eyes.

If they are prodding and probing, why are they compared to retracting?

and the meteors row across the river
of night, like tired souls across
the river styx.

I would take out 'like', altogether, which would add the image of a river in the sky. Keeping the 'like' in separates the two images, but I think they would be more effective if combined.

he kisses me
goodnight.

Going along with the exposition before, I think this would be stronger if you took it out, because along with all the other vaguer references, it would perhaps get the reader go back and look through the poem to see the thread of the father in the experience. :3

III. Overall Again

Hey! So. Clean up the simile pile, consider the kind of exposition you want in relation to the father, and also decide if you want the reader distanced from the experience. I just don't think it would be necessarily effective.

PM me if you have any questions, and I'd be glad to come back and take another look at whatever changes you make. :3

-Hannah-