Stagnant

The river pulsed round me
carried dreams from my booted feet
down to the summer-swim lake, where they
grew old and tired in stagnation-
erosion dug at my skin, freezing and numb,
too long soaked in swirling clouds of mud,
caught in the monotony of water stumbling
in a confused which-way manner
drops tumbling like trapeze swingers-

I bent over, grasping at a slippery rock,
familiar weight covered in a slick wet moss,
only to have it fall from my grasp
and crash down to the trickling water
upsetting the murkiness and gentle rhythm,
turbulence throwing a small piece of clarity
a bit of disruption, just enough for things to
briefly make sense
in everything that’d gone gross and
slept in ignorance of the world around them.
But, it was only a glimpse, and the current pulled and tugged,
determined to uphold tradition,
to pool ignorance back to the lake as it always had
and eventually,
revertion filmed over with algae and mud,
and stagnant waters bloomed again.

Spoiler

Okay, so believe it or not, this poem was kind of meant to be a metaphor for trying to break a habit of some sort (whether it's drugs or biting your nails) and being unable to- but it doesn't really work. And that's not the exact metaphor- I can't really describe it.. it's more of a feeling than anything else. But... yeah. Thoughts?

Thanks for reading!
-Coral-

I really enjoyed reading this! I'm not much of a poet so I can't really give you much to work with but I'd suggest capatalizing the beginning of each line--it looks a little more uniform that way. Sorry for not saying much, but that's all I really have. Great job with this; it holds a good message. Keep writing!!!

This is good, I can actually see the metaphor pretty good, after I read your little note there I love the words you chose and all of it, really. I don't have any critique for you. Loved it! Keep on writing!

-Truth-

Persephoneia, dear, why must you always make it so difficult to review your poetry? One can't, you know, because you're just too darn GOOD. It's really becoming an annoyance to the YWS community! Of course, pretty much everyone knows I'm a terrible reviewer in the first place; I have an apparently unfortunate tendency to see only the good in people's work. (Either that or I'm just too lazy to nitpick poems that are so terrible no amount of editing could save them.) But you, your poetry is wonderful, and this is no exception. I actually wouldn't have recognized the metaphor unless you had pointed it out, but after you did, I saw the poem in a whole new light. It was skillfully crafted, my friend. Need I even mention that your imagery is superb? I especially liked the last two lines:

revertion filmed over with algae and mud,
and stagnant waters bloomed again.

Though I've got to say, that's the first time I've ever seen or heard someone use the word "revertion."

~WP

Hullo!

I don't review much poetry, because (even after taking a college-course on the subject) I really don't know that much about it. But since you requested so politely, I'll see if I can say anything constructive. ^.^

Okay. So firstly, I'll say that I'm a little confused by your punctuation. Sometimes you punctuate as though it were prose with line breaks, but sometimes you punctuate in a way that seems to me (in my ignorance, I'm sure!) to be random. For example, why is there a comma between these two lines:

too long soaked in swirling clouds of mud,
caught in the monotony of water stumbling

but not between these two:

in a confused which-way manner
drops tumbling like trapeze swingers-

I'm not saying you have to fix it (e.e.cummins is probably my favorite poet ever, and he did really wacky things with his punctuation, to be sure!) but it's just something I noticed, so I thought I'd point it out. ^.^

So now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to talk about the poem on a whole. To tell you the truth, I'm a little confused by it. Maybe the poetic metaphors are a bit above my prosaic self, but I can't exactly grasp what you're saying--even after reading the note. I think the main reason for this is the syntax of your poem; it reads (to me, anyway) like a run-on sentence. Each stanza is one big phrase, full of beautiful, wordy passages. But they seem a bit too wordy. I feel like I'm trudging through mud myself in order to try and understand what you are saying. I would suggest making syntactical (but not necessarily grammatical!) sentence breaks within each of these phrases, to make it all a little more graspable. For example, when I'm reading the first stanza, it flows nicely, and I understand what each line is saying individually (and within the context of one or two lines) but when I get to the end of the stanza, I realize that I don't really know what I just read. Like I say, I don't really know much about poetry, so I'm not sure how to fix this, (or even if it needs fixing) but I thing it's because the stanza is such a syntactical run-on. You're probably going for "flow," but I think you might want to actually make this a little more choppy so that it's more digestible.

But of course, that's just my thoughts. They may not even be relevant to you, but it's the best I can come up with. ^.^ I really enjoyed reading the poem, and I like it a lot--even if I can't quite understand it. I think it's really interesting that you've chosen to describe emotion without putting anything emotional in the actual poem. The poem is completely visual/sensory, but yet you've managed to portray a certain frustration and an ebb-and-flow of determination that even I can pick up on. Your imagery (as has Princess pointed out) is beautiful and you the way you use words is lovely. Maybe too lovely, because I got distracted by the actual words and had a hard time seeing through them to their meaning.

I hope that at least something I've said will be of some use to you! Please let me know if you have any questions or anything about what I've said. I may not be able to answer them... but I'll do my best! ^.^

I hope that you are having a lovely holiday even if (like me) you don't celebrate Christmas.
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