My Flotsam Love, Part I

Be still, heart of taken, pulsing sin –
No more do tears of blood atone.
That dreary toast! as hellish haunts do
Raise to sneering lips their cups of fire,
So do you, sorrow-soul, taste blood upon the threshold,
The maw of the conflagration.


An eerie mist of sleep resides
Within the breast of flushed malaise.
The dawning sun revokes its meaning
And leaves me cold upon my bed.


At long last, I awaken,
Like a river stone beneath churning ice –
My unlidded eyes ablaze with dull reflections
Of bright unflinching stars above the water’s film.
And among the orbs he sits, he stares:
My flotsam love.

Just a quick heads up, no one will read your work if you flood a forum with your stuff, ESPECIALLY if your other poems prior to this have no comments.

Wait until you get some comments on your first part of a poem/other poems, have made the changes suggested by the reviewers, corrected the formatting to suit YWS, edited it yourself with your own ideas and have read over it out loud before you post your next piece of work. If you still get no reviews for your work, consider "hiding" it from the public and resubmitting it with a whole lot of changes and under a different name.

On to the review.

S.S. Rose wrote:Be still, heart of taken, pulsing sin –
No more do tears of blood atone.
That dreary toast! as hellish haunts do
Raise to sneering lips their cups of fire,
So do you, sorrow-soul, taste blood upon the threshold,
The maw of the conflagration.

It may be just me, but I got absolutely nothing from this stanza. I didn't know what any of it meant. The first line: Stop moving, pulsing heart of sin. Or, "Be still my beating heart." Either way,the first line meant murder to me. No more tears of blood on my toast? That is indeed a problem - I guess I'll have to use strawberry jam. Back tracking a little - "dreary toast"? What?

What in the world is a maw of conflagration? And why would your soul of sorrow taste blood upon that threshold? Did this stanza even have an actual meaning behind it?

Was the meaning: Cause heart attack --> no longer cry tears of blood --> hellish haunts make "dreary toasts" and burn their sneering lips on cups of fire --> so that your soul full of sorrow can taste the blood at the edge of the mouth of "an uncontrolled burning that threatens human life, health, property or ecology"?

Because, yes, of course, I see it clearly now.

An eerie mist of sleep resides
Within the breast of flushed malaise.
The dawning sun revokes its meaning
And leaves me cold upon my bed.

From now on, I'm going to write what I get out of these lines.

"A weird fog of sleep lives in the chest of a red unease. The morning sun "puts an end to the validity or operation" of its meaning (???? What could a sun possibly mean?) and leaves you cold upon your bed." The last line was the one that made the most sense, yay.

At long last, I awaken,
Like a river stone beneath churning ice –
My unlidded eyes ablaze with dull reflections
Of bright unflinching stars above the water’s film.
And among the orbs he sits, he stares:
My flotsam love.

"After a long cold sleep in my bed, I wake up like a stone (... did you mean "I slept like a log?" That's the closest thing I could think of, because stones don't wake up. They are not alive.) in the river under mixing ice, my eyes without eyelids that are "keenly excited (especially sexually) or indicating excitement" with blunt reflections of stars that are bright and don't flinch above the water. Among those (stars?) he sits and stares, my "material floating on the sea, especially debris or goods from ship-wrecks" love.

First of all, there are many good things here! Rose, your control of words creates such brilliant images. Each line is like a little picture; I'm amazed by what you can do with just seven or eight words. The only problem I have is understanding the poem in its entirety. Each line is beautiful, and each stanza invokes a different emotion, but as a whole I can't grasp more of the poem than the basic meaning. I can tell you are trying to explain very complex emotions. I think you're on the right track, but a little work still needs to be done.

Secondly, I would like to review the previous review on the basis of its helpfulness (as a review).

No more tears of blood on my toast? That is indeed a problem - I guess I'll have to use strawberry jam.

A review is supposed to teach. Would a teacher ever use sarcasm with a student? No, because it would confuse her. Using the truth in a satirical manner is misleading and begets further frustration.

Seeminglymeaningless, you had helpful comments in your review, but they were obscured by what felt like mockery. Each paragraph said the same thing: you don't understand the meaning behind Rose's poem. We got it the first time, and to go any farther feels like repeated assault. You know artists are very sensitive about their work and even a little criticism hurts.

One thing I like to do to make sure my criticism is balanced by positive comments. I can always find something I like in a piece. The key to a helpful review is harmony. My friend Thumper says it just right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oArDFU_IESQ

Sorry for not replying to this earlier, I was working on my university project going towards my bachelor of Secondary Education, (major English/Physics). Anywho. I agree with RachaelWater's comments about my review completely A review is supposed to teach, indeed. Regarding whether a teacher would use sarcasm, of course they would. Assuming that sarcasm would confuse a student would be stereotyping the student as someone of little intelligence.

Using the truth in a satirical manner is misleading and begets further frustration.

Actually, you'll find sarcasm and satire a far more gentle means of telling the truth than outright saying it. Either way, I used both, so I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here

Yes, I was very mocking I thoroughly enjoyed dissecting that poem, and I might have been a little harsh, and I absolutely won't defend myself in this matter. I do know artists are sensitive about their work, and all I have to say is that by the end, my review was obviously meant to be taken as a humorous rendition of the original poem. If it didn't read that way (as I'm positive it did - but that's coming from the perspective of the person who wrote the review and knew what was trying to be conveyed), but as "repeated assault", then all I can say is sorry.

As my childhood nickname was Bambi, I didn't bother watching the youtube video and concluded that the quote you wanted to pass on by Thumper was, "Hop over it, Bambi! Hop over it!" (lulz) Seriously though, I had absolutely forgotten about reviewing this poem, and if you didn't notice, the review wasn't actually finished, it just cut off randomly. I had intended to write what I liked about the poem at the end, but got distracted. Having had a discussion with a moderator before about how reviews should be balanced, I know all about that.

tl;dr I forgot I hadn't finished reviewing this poem and the review was posted incomplete.

- Jai

Hi there.

Be still, heart of taken, pulsing sin –
No more do tears of blood atone.
That dreary toast! as hellish haunts do
Raise to sneering lips their cups of fire,
So do you, sorrow-soul, taste blood upon the threshold,
The maw of the conflagration.

This stanza wasn't one that I could easily read once and understand - it made me stop, think and go back to read the whole thing again and dissect it line by line. Which is a good thing, in this case! Now, you've got your description and imagery spot on: it paints pictures in the readers mind and you've controlled the description so it's not too over the top. One thing I would worry about, however, is if what you're saying really drives the poem forward enough. You need to make sure that you don't fill up stanzas with imagery that sounds brilliant, but doesn't perhaps tie in perfectly with the story you're trying to tell. It's not such a big problem here, but something to keep in mind.

An eerie mist of sleep resides
Within the breast of flushed malaise.
The dawning sun revokes its meaning
And leaves me cold upon my bed.

I really like the last three lines of this stanza. The first, for me, isn't great. I dislike the description of sleep as an 'eerie mist' - it feels like you're trying to dramatise something which, in this case, doesn't need dramatising. Yes, you can write descriptively very well, but be careful not to overuse it.

At long last, I awaken,
Like a river stone beneath churning ice –
My unlidded eyes ablaze with dull reflections
Of bright unflinching stars above the water’s film.
And among the orbs he sits, he stares:
My flotsam love.

The first line seems to insinuate that the narrator has been in a deep sleep, which doesn't seem in line with the first line of your previous stanza. 'Mist' implies something lingering, but not substantial - dozing between sleep and wakefulness, not a deep sleep.
I'd like it if your second line was developed a little more; perhaps there could be just one more line expanding on it?
In regards to the third line, I would remove the word 'dull' because it doesn't fit in with your other description of 'ablaze'.
The 'water's film' doesn't sit well with me, as before the river was described as 'churning ice'. Churning and film bring to mind images of totally different rivers - you need to make sure that you're consistent.

Overall, I enjoyed this poem more than I thought I would at first glance! It is crafted well, and you obviously have a good grasp of imagery and description. Be careful not to go over the top, and let your imagery get in the way of your poem.

Hope this helped, keep writing.

-Amy

Back again to add all the stuff I didn't have time to write about in my first post.

First Stanza
I felt that this stanza was absolutely unrelated to the rest of the poem. You describe fiendish figures toasting the edge of humanity for their sins... and then you go on to talk about waking up cold in your bed... under the water. This stanza does not match the others. Not only in terms of topic/theme, but also in style. Generally when writing a poem there is a style. ABABA, BBAA, Quartet, Coupling etc etc. Unless you planned it to go 6-4-6?

Second Stanza
As in the first, the second stanza does not match the third in any way but in terms of describing waking up. You mention waking up in a bed, and then go on to say that you wake under the river like a rock... I think you've linked things without actually going over what you've written. Writing to please the eye with pretty words, but not to exercise the mind. This stanza is, I believe, the one that makes the most sense.

Third Stanza
This stanza is as confusing as the first. The reason why I wrote my review in the form of a humorous rendition is so that you can take a step back from your work and look at it from the point of view of a casual reader.

At long last, I awaken,
Like a river stone beneath churning ice –
My unlidded eyes ablaze with dull reflections
Of bright unflinching stars above the water’s film.
And among the orbs he sits, he stares:
My flotsam love.

I do believe it's because of the way you've chosen to style this. At the moment it reads like this: I wake up (like a river stone being tumbled by water whose eyelids reflect the stars, and amongst those stars is my love).

Do you see the discontinuity? You haven't made it clear that the whole stone thing is only a one line metaphor and the rest is within the parameters of your narrator. Even then it doesn't make sense - did the narrator awake at dawn, or at night? You say dawn and feeling cold (something you wouldn't be conscious of when asleep), and then say waking (again?) and seeing stars.

All in all it's a confusing poem that requires the reader to struggle their way through the purple prose and run-on sentences. I must ask you if you used an online thesaurus to replace some of your "simple" words to make them into the ones they are now. Because that's what it seems like.

Good luck in future endeavours,
- Jai

This seems like a poem of being rescued by someone. As if they have come to whisk you away from some miserable life, like a knight in shining armor of sorts.