Truths

hold my hand as I doubt-- silence
the trembles shooting through
my arteries and quaking tendons
and I’ll hold the silence you’ve spoken
in between my clenched teeth, trying
not to quiver and clatter together in uncertainty
and cooling faiths-- the subtle undertones taste of
sighs and psalms sung to the truth that
I’m not sure I believe in anymore--

it’s okay, love:
I promise that when all truths have left me--
when my world slowly cracks and decays
into a broken philosophy, I’ll keep my smiles
and I’ll hold my feelings, and
I’ll cradle what’s left against my chest
and nurse it into a new truth.



More of a personal thing. Not sure how I feel about it.
Thanks for reading--
Coral

Morning, Persy. As usual, I’m going to dive right into this without many pleasantries at all.

As you’re well aware, your first stanza (particularly your first lines) is a trademark tool of hooking the reader into wanting more of the piece. While you’re typically wonderful at luring me in, you seem to have missed on this introduction. It’s nothing regarding ideas or flow (yet), but rather the blandness of the first line. It may break down into the placing of the line-break or even the dead giveaway of ‘as I doubt’. There are a number of ways you could go about attacking this, but the way I’d suggest is as follows:

hold my hand as I doubt—silence
the trembles shooting through

The main issue I ended up having with that first line is the “, and”. You simply had too many pauses in such a short time that it seemed choppy. Now, while you still maintain only one word after that initial pause, you have two syllables—break—next line. Does that work for you? Read it aloud. It may work, it may not. This next piece of advice comes to you completely optionally, but you may see my point in stating it:

Line three, “my bones and nerves and quaking tendons:” gives me the following formula as far as what poetry typically makes of these body parts trembling:

“silence the trembles shooting through my CLICHÉ and MODERATE and quaking FRESH:”

Bones tremble far too much in poetry. It started back with Ezekiel the prophet and hasn’t lost any momentum since. The human body is comprised of countless points of gorgeous imagery that can be warped to fit whatever you need out of them; try some out. I’ll leave this open for your own interpretation. Consider it a challenge in refreshing style.

The last piece of advice on the first three lines deals with the colon after “tendons”. A colon typically implies the continuation of a sentence by form of an example or clarification. What I’ve seen out of this colon is that it’s used in lieu of a semi-colon for the sole purpose of creating one extended, poetic sentence. While you’re allowed to do this, let’s try to make it work a bit more precisely.

hold my hand as I doubt, silence
the trembles shooting through
my bones and nerves and quaking tendons,
and I’ll hold the silence you’ve spoken
in between my clenched teeth, trying
not to clack and smack together in uncertainty
and cooling faiths;
the subtle undertones taste of sighs and psalms
sung to the truth that
I’m not sure I believe in anymore—

it’s okay, love;
I promise that when all truths have left me—
when my world slowly cracks and decays
into a broken first philosophy—I’ll keep my smiles
and I’ll hold my feelings, and
I’ll cradle what’s left against my chest
and nurse it into a new truth.

Point 1: It made the flow seem a bit more fluid with the addition of the first ‘and’. If you disagree, then by all means, don’t use it.
Point 2: Clack and smack just isn’t working for me at all. It gives you a nearly playful rhyme and rhythm that doesn’t belong. Do as you wish with these words, but a reform is in order.
Point 3: the addition of the ‘when’ in the second stanza seemed to smooth out a rough patch where the flow started picking up unnecessary momentum.
Point 4: Taking out the “first” here makes the phrase so much more memorable, at least for me. A broken philosophy drives home your point with starlit grace.

I liked this, Persy. You never cease to amaze me, and you consistently show that you want to get better. One thing that I find particularly interesting in this piece is that you decide to declare this poem un-capitalized by general standards in the low-casing of one single word—hold. That makes me smile, really, because if that one word were capitalized, you’d be ‘grammatically correct’, which can be bullocks if you want it to be. I hope you found this review helpful, and as always, PM me/wall post me if you have any questions or comments!

-Lumi

Well I don't really have much to add to the above review. All I want to say is that the poem flows nicely for me however there is a part that disturbs me and is this line:

it’s okay, love:

I think you should find another way in saying it, I think it's too simplistic and for me it ruins that whole atmosphere that you built.

Overall I like the way you wrote the poem ... Nice

Iamnoperfect

Well I don't really have much to add to the above review. All I want to say is that the poem flows nicely for me however there is a part that disturbs me and is this line:

it’s okay, love:

I think you should find another way in saying it, I think it's too simplistic and for me it ruins that whole atmosphere that you built.

Overall I like the way you wrote the poem ... Nice

Iamnotperfect ... haloa

Hiya Coral.

I don't have many issues with this one (most of them have been pointed out/fixed, so yeah), but there are a few things I'd like to point out.

Persephoneia wrote:my arteries and quaking tendons,
and I’ll hold the silence you’ve spoken

The one thing with this line is that, while it's better than before the comma and "and" was placed, it still sounds a little funny. At least, when I read through it did. The comma sort of stopped my thoughts, so when I was going to the next line I felt like I had to start all over again. It's a very small change, and it may even be irrelevant, but that's what I noticed first.

Persephoneia wrote:not to quiver and clack together in uncertainty

I like quiver: it fits the mood, it fits well with the flow of the poem, s'all good. Clack doesn't really fit the mood of the poem. While it rolls off the tongue pretty well, it doesn't leave the best taste and it doesn't sound very good. When I think of clack, I think of my annoying little cousin, clacking his teeth 'till the sun goes down. It's not a very serious word, but this is a serious poem. But that's just my opinion. You, of course, can do whatever you like with your work.

Persephoneia wrote:not to quiver and clack together in uncertainty
and cooling faiths;
the subtle undertones taste of sighs and psalms
sung to the truth that
I’m not sure I believe in anymore--

Okay. I love this part (save for clack, haha) and wouldn't change the words. At all. The only thing you may want to consider changing is how this part of your stanza looks, visually. The rest of your poem is put together well - it maintains a form, the lines are generally the same length, etc - but this part is doesn't measure up to that uniformity. Again, I love the wording (very very very much), but perhaps you may want to just switch it around a bit so that the uneven lines don't stand out against the rest of the poem.

Overall, you already know that I loved this. You definitely have a great style of writing, and I'm definitely jealous of it. That is all.