I killed Time to kill time

Hi there, Galerius.
I like this poem, and thankfully I read Life of Pi, because I believe that book gave me a better understanding about what you were talking about, but not necessarily your message. First of all, I loved your ending. It was amazing and really gave a sense of...like your laughing in someones face.

The fact that we had to read the end of the Mahabharata epic was bad. Like, if you write a poem, we shouldn't have to read something extra just to understand it. But I do like that you based it on that, because it kind of gives a sort of religious character to the poem. (If religion is what your talking about, well that's what I got.)

Anyway, let's get to the nitpicks:

eyes widened throats hoarse

Comma between "Widened" and "Throats." Remember you're listing something.

His straightset lips part
like a shooting scar

"Straight set" - two words.

Namaste

You should give some sort of indication that this is a prayer automatically or before your next line; I suggest you to italicize.

right at the crossroads of the Sun and the Moon

"Sun" and "Moon" don't need to be capitalized.

You did a good job telling a story. It had good imagery and, like I said, the ending was really good.
Write on, and PM me for any help.

I have this saved on a document in case I can't get to it in time. HAHA.

(Crit to be done)

Not that you care, but this gets me my second blue star, so hoorah!

So, I don't know what most of this means! Which is actually a problem, since my mind doesn't like to separate style from theme/plot, and trying to give you an opinion without understanding what I'm commenting on is, of course, always going to be a bit of a cop-out. So this will be brief.

One: italicized portion in the beginning. In the beginning, it's described like the narrator is being cradled by the other figure, but in the end it says the other figure dies in the narrator's arms. Makes for a jumbled image.

They are broken bison... across the plains of Kurukshetra.

Also, I don't love this because there seems to be so little correlation between broken bison + chewing + a god who knows no noon. Why is the "knows no noon but for the Sun come too soon" significant, and why are they described as broken bison, what is the significance of the verb "chew" in this context? Actually, what is the pronoun "they" even referring to here? The thighs?"

His straightset lips part...snuffing out the stars

I fail to see the connection between straightset lips, and how they can part like "shooting stars aiming for the moon but snuffing out the stars". They're pretty thoughts, but I'm trying to imagine that expression on his lips, and it just won't fit.

I like the rhyme of "Moon", "hewn", and "runes".

"Abrasive days" is an odd adjective+noun pairing, and one that I'm sure you could find a better fit for.

and crush it like...the infant from the womb.

Here we have: "crush it like a firefly" which supposedly leads to "camp will be silent" while the "owls fly overhead" and something, perhaps the owls "knight me as this torch sails home", whichever torch that is and why it's sailing home, plus suddenly there is an infant being ripped from the womb.

And then in the second-to-last stanza, you're darkness in a tomb and then a third eye that guides torrents of arrows to the heads of snakes in sand and galaxies asking someone for a place to stay and meteors clinging to some anonymous body. So I'm thinking...what?

This is my main issue with this poem (besides not getting any of the references, hehe). Your images don't connect as well as they normally do. One image doesn't lead into the next-- it's like your old work, sort of, but instead of being just plain "too confusing", it's almost "too scattered". You have nice images and pretty phrases but it's structurally unsound, like you're using similes or metaphors to connect phrases where there need to be verbs. I'm missing any sense of "cause and effect" here. It seems like I could cut this poem's individual images up, toss them around in a hat, and then rearrange them without losing any chronological-sense since there's not much to begin with. Is there a story to be told in here? If the answer's yes, it's too hidden and obscured. If the answer's no...well, of course there's a story to tell, or else you wouldn't have written it!

My two-cents. Take it or leave it! Of course, PM me if you need any clarification.

~Evi

What have you done?

I was planning on reacquainting myself with Mahabharata this weekend just for your poem and you - and you -

I have no words to express my indignation.


I will be back for this new poem in due course.


Navita

You know what, Gallyallyarous?

I am very, very happy you posted this. So happy, even, that I can ignore that you changed your other poem to this without any warning, as I had a review in the works. I’ve spent a lot of time unsure of your talent, knowing I liked what you write and liked your reviews but not yet sure of you.

You are cemented. This is beautiful. Your flow appears effortless and you have a delicate turn of phrase which works wonders here, aided by the enjambment. I will go on to point out the issues I find throughout the poem, as specifically as I can think. I think your subject matter lends itself well to your structure and to the overall feeling in the poem. You use the content well to hold up the meaning, although as you will see, I wasn’t fully impressed.

“weeds and shipwrecked streams - cannonballs, jutting sails).” < I didn’t need the add on here, I feel it detracts from what you have.

“stretched out like infinite loops, handwriting” < I think you could run with “cursive” here, at the risk of it clashing with “curled”. I don’t think it will too much, and I think it will add to the art of what you have here. Handwriting is strong but heavy; cursive speaks the loops and curls of the writing.

“We deflected the
shine of the sun atop the winter gloom, watched
the thunderstorm approach in oceanic waves” < I am less enamoured with this. It’s slower, less beautiful and less effective. I don’t feel anything in these words, despite feeling something in the other lines. I would suggest losing it, but I don’t know what, if anything, you would put in its place.

“galleon wood lapping the crushed seaweed in fists
of foam,
stacked like cards, rigged,
anchored against tears of Away” < I like “stacked like cards, rigged” and “crushed seaweed in fists” but otherwise found these lines to be empty, boring. Yes, I understand Away, and yes the galleon ship is clear. I want more from you here; you’re leading up to something brilliant and taking it away every so often. It’s frustrating.

The entire next stanza is almost nothing to me. It’s allusions and imagery and meaning but it’s all nothing regardless. Like the above it is a lead on, but without the beauty of your other lines – is this because you are darkening our narrative here? Or did you not notice that you are becoming tired at this point, that you are re-covering lines and images and feelings that you have in the rest of the poem? I am déjà vu here, I am asleep, I am waiting. Mostly, I am waiting for the poem to pick back up and end with something I can adore. You’ve shown me in the rest of the poem you can do better, don’t slack off here.

You end admirably, although not spectacularly with the seagull reference and repetition of swept. However, the circles within circles made me happy and your ending brackets are lovely.

This poem teased, I think. I believe it wasn’t intentional but I also believe you can do better. It’s a good poem, a solid poem, but not a perfect one. Your language is beautiful and it is precise, but it wanes in sections and that made me so very sad, because the story you were telling was too beautifully begun to be let down in the end – which it very nearly was. Edit this, make it more evocative and more beautiful in phrasing, I will love you for it. ^^

I look forward to any revisions you choose to make. Don’t delete this randomly. -.-

*Hearts* Le Penguin.

Hey Galerius -

So, another dream-poem. My first thought? (And do be aware that I had to search far into the depths of memory for this, since the readings between this last and the first are many...) It was the following question - as amusing, pointless, and engaging as your title is - what happens when Time dies? What is there left? I mean, killing Time - if I take that in all seriousness - is surely the end of everything, correct? An apocalypse, of sorts. What happens if there is no perception of time, no continuity, no past, present, future? I was interested to see where you'd go with this; more so from a fantastical, almost scifi point of view, but also curious as to whether you'd mean it in the literal sense but still have humans afterwards for us to watch them in the aftermath - something I felt was far more intriguing an idea than what I seemed to get instead: a drawn out murder, the act itself.

Perhaps I am rather demanding. But that may be the danger of titling the poem so interestingly; we jump to assumptions fairly quickly. Boredom, I take to mean, the passing of time altogether too slowly; therefore the reasons for this are just as charmingly frivolous as the act, hence why it becomes difficult to take the poem beyond the realm of amusement into serious intellectual analysis.

Also - my only overall impression I will give you just yet - this is a very smooth, very mellow poem. It's so smooth that it borders on the boring. I wouldn't say there's very much, aesthetically, wrong with it; but neither did it strike me as particularly memorable. Very slow, very laid back, lazy sort of summery and semi-predicatable imagery - in the first part, especially - this felt soporific. The lines slurred.

Of course, it is entirely possible that was intentional. We shall see:

(fine ...rain)

Circles within circles. The circle of time. A rather large and all-encompassing sort of theme...made cuter - of all things - by the brackets. From the outset, the tone is hushed, secretive. The ending likewise. Can't say much more that that until we get to the rest of the poem.

I...kiss

This is where it flows so softly that it's a blur. Were this in an anthology, I don't think, from this stanza, I would have continued reading the poem had it been anyone other than you. One of those poems that looks mildly interesting to begin with and the beginning just doesn't sing. It's humming here. Soporifically.

And yes, I will take your poem more by the general feelings than by the words, since that is the mistake I made with the last. You attribute more meaning with your emotion/effects/plot than the individual lines, if that at all makes sense. But still, the intellect in me would be satisfied, so: first thing - what makes your poems harder to decode is your little quirks ('I took her by the wrist...I took / her by a kiss'). They're amusing, and - conveniently or inconveniently - prevent any kind of deeper thinking from taking place. They're horribly distracting, really. You do this on purpose, right? So no one can grab head nor tail of your thinking since they're too busy being entertained by the wit?

Literally, I am assuming the narrator takes Time to the 'edge of the world' - a clifftop, I'd imagine - to kill her. A brutal idea, made much, much less brutal - soft to the point of being sleepy - by the phrasing, the imagery. Interesting paradox established already.

But yeah, like I said, wouldn't have bothered past here for another reason.

drew ...grains

Circles again. (Reminded me of Ramayana, a bit). Could be the circle of time, but I wonder if it is - she is time, is she not? So why have her, and the circle? I mean, you could kill her, or break the circle theatrically, but both? I wondered, here, what the role the circle would play. And 'sphere' and 'grains' - similarly circular. I also take them to mean rather solid things, like stability, lack of change, timelessness ---

Actually, this is absolutely fascinating. Something I recall thinking about a while ago myself. A circle/stone/rock - finite in the sense that it is complete; stable for the same reason. One would think, therefore, unchanging. But. It is, simultaneously, incomplete, in the sense that it is continuous - a wheel - subject to change, a product of time. A fitting paradox I could tie this to is this, then: if time is present ('alive,' to use your analogy), then everything is changing except the fact that everything is changing.

weathered...sails

Stones against wind. Stability against change. Timelessness against time.

By the by, that bolded part is annoying me on a visceral level. This smooth poem is no place for inelegance of language. Sure, you could say that you're getting all warlike on me, trying to roughen up the aura of lethargy here, but it's unappealingly clunky. So yes, I'd slur over that also.

Those...sky

Whose arms? The stones' supposed arms, if they are personified as sentries? Forward and back, dawn to dusk, fine. Continuation of time; fine. Boring, in fact, were it not for the bizarreness of stones - unmoving, stable things, meant to be not subject to change - walking with change in such a manner. This only mildly interests me here, this fact that what doesn't change is change itself. It's all rather bland, really.

And plus, you've got this bigger story behind this story all lined up - at this point, I want to know what's happening with that. The drama of the murder. The aftermath, even, which I don’t think you consider much. This is like waiting in a theatre for a magnificent production to begin – this is the waiting, the checking of the watch, the murmured conversations with one’s friends about the possibilities of the plot, the moral. Yawn.

stretched ...loops

‘Infinite’ vaguely interests me again. Infinity, incompleteness, forever change – but it is also something more timeless, is it not; this constancy that things will ‘go on’? That change will never change?

handwriting
...waves

A part that reads like a haze with its ethereal kind of imagery – or tone, if that’s what it is – but also irritated me for some rougher words: petrified, marble, grumbling. All pretty bearish ‘r’ sounds that trample around the fluid, sibilant lines. Consistency of your effect on my tongue would be nice – unless a deviation from it is warranted thematically, and not just ‘because the words are a little more interesting than the rest of them’. Oh yes, and ‘oceanic’ has just got to go. I mean, seriously, oceanic? Surely you don’t need to specify so hopelessly that it’s an ocean wave, and that the reader is intelligent enough to know you’re still referring to the ocean.

Thematically. Not sure what role, if any, handwriting and trees and marbles play. Marble = solid = permanence while ‘infinity’ suggests forever change? Maybe. But it’s a stretch. Other than that, I can’t see too much else. I’m impatient for the curtain to rise here – not an impatience borne of your writing; rather the opposite, the languidity of it – it’s a personal matter. I mean, I like to see a poem flow as well as this, as smoothly as this, but then I also like a bit more energy, drive to the flow; something I see little of here.

watched
... day,

FINALLY. Circles and rings and seasides and her. Time. It is starting to pick up pace here. Ha – ‘smokier things’ – almost like a hidden reference to the ‘mirrors’ from above (smoke and mirrors = tricks Time plays ); and a writer’s note to the reader that there is something beneath the surface.

Okay, okay. I’m getting there.

counting
...haze.

Footsteps like clock ticks? Cute, and it works, but a tad ridiculous nevertheless. Surely there’s a better way of putting it. Insects – meh. Numbers – why the contrast, I wonder. Numbers are ‘straight-laced’ (/rigid / defined / set ‘in stone’/ not subject to time) while handwriting was loopy, curly, infinite / changing. Of course. Numbers/mathematics – generally the laws there are not subject to change. While in writing, the opposite; everything changes with time – Time. But if numbers are so solidly ‘straight laced,’ then why are they subject to change in the metaphorical sense – ‘etched away by eighty years and memory haze’? A contradiction here that jars with me, unlike the cleverer paradoxes. Fix it.

I ...Away

Pace shift. Getting wilder, faster and ugly words like ‘rigged’ aren’t so annoying here. So far, you’ve been relatively calm and lucid. Why? What was the purpose of inciting apathy, lassitude? I can see it would make us more accepting of the – of, well, everything, really – but what advantage is it to have so much static until this point? Flow – fine; pace – not fine – I want to see some inherent, interesting internal, personal, human conflict here instead of vague analogies and paradoxes it takes me ten reads to find. In all honesty, the symbols interest me a lot; the poem doesn't. I want to care about this poem as much as I care about the themes.

and ...there

I want to know what was like a time bomb. The feeling of walking ‘back-to-back with the sand whipped up’? The ‘tears of Away’? Regardless, this part felt refreshing after the slowness of the rest; almost my favourite, since it brings us back to that intriguing title…except for the fact that somewhere between this stanza and the last, the narrator killed Time, and we totally missed it. They are ‘bobbing like apples in the culled storm’ – I assume they’ve fallen into the sea from the cliff?

What did frustrate me somewhat was the fact that after introducing so many images and symbols that tied in relatively easily with each other, here in this stanza, you felt you had to toss them out the window to create a sense of ‘new’. Fireworks, blood, bracken, apples. Bitsy.

in ...floor.

Same as above. Serpents don’t belong. In a beachy poem, leave out the forest-imagery – farmhand paintings, cypresses, flowers , dirt, lichens – they are another motif entirely, one that has no place nor function here. I am confident that you can quicken the pace and liven the tone during this climactic stanza I so love without resorting to a departure from your original motifs entirely. This above part means nothing to me. I wanted to like this stanza.

We...lazy

And finally, four enormous stanzas of tonic stillness and mildly interesting thematic waffle later, the curtain opens and closes so fast that I can hardly believe what I saw in the middle was the production you enticed me to see from the title. At least you admit it – ‘lazy’! Exactly.

circles ...rain)

A rapid dash to conclude, and voila, a standing ovation for the spark of wittiness you toss in at the end. Circles within circles. I hardly care what this means anymore. Time within time? Meaning within meaning? Hidden meanings? Paradoxes? The duality of time, and such permanent yet changing things as circles?

--

Regardless, I want to know what comes after we’ve agreed that the narrator killed Time. And I want this to lose some of its slowness, also; perhaps to alternate a little more vividly in tone and pacing in the altogether boring striptease before the climax.



Navita