.

.

I'll do edits first, then tell you what I like/dislike, etc., all right?

///

the wash breaks from the line,
white linen flinging from your hands,
coming undone midair,
like wings without bodies,
the shoulders of shirts smoothed out
and wilting as wingspans.

far above the cumulus is curled
in the shape of a woman,
such long lines and swoops—
she walks into the sky
as if she were a bride,
the linen gathered at her feet,
fluttering,
and in her wake
the petals of diving wrens,
a slanted arc of bodies in flight,
their hollow bones clasped and aimed
as kites untethered in a twirl
around her.

your shoulders move in the pale curve
of hers, her torso lifting like a sail
at an altar of immense blue, arms
flared into wings and flying,
everything within her unraveling
into cirrus—

but far beneath
your hands are still hands,
your body still a body
and the line stripped of its wings.

///

o.o Wow. Okay. So...this poem...is completely mind-blowing. The imagery, the narrative, the voice. It's so beautiful. I want to tack it to my wall. (You now have gained a stalk--wait, I mean fan.)

There are a lot of run-on sentences I noticed, some that could make a decent stanza, but they didn't bother me. The flow worked, thusly. My eyes went right along with the words.

Um. So, yes. I don't have anything else to say really, other than say that I may be lurking around your portfolio to see what else you have.

Now, two things. First, nice title. Simple. It's what caught me. (Ironically enough.) Second, are you trying to be e.e. cummings as far as "lack of capital letters" goes? *raises an eyebrow*

Anyway, Gute Nacht and good luck with all your future writing.

-Casper

Hi! Hope you don't mind me sticking my nose in, here, but I saw your name in poetry as I was browsing through, and I had to take a look!

Briefly, I had trouble with connecting your opening stanza and handling that imagery with the rest of the poem. However, by my third read, I was fine, so I'm guessing that was me being dense and sleepy, or just not reading carefully enough. The entire stanza felt overly wordy to me, though, too much crammed into too many words and strung out struggling for meaning. Not enough in too many words? I'm not making much sense, but that same pull nagged at me throughout - I'll highlight below what I mean in other stanzas, since I still am having trouble wrapping my head around the first one.

Just a technical question, since I don't know the answer, should "far above the cumulus is curled" be "far above the cumulus [are] curled"? "is" just sounds wrong to my ear. The line below, I'd nix "such" - it's a non-descriptive word, attempting to modify a perfectly lovely description in "long lines and swoops," and I'd like to see you let that stand by itself. It's strong enough, I think, to not need "such" to hold it back!

Ok, the below I really, really, like. I just can't resist playing with words, and trying to make lines tighter to pack more punch per word/line. So, forgive me my meddling, please! I'm trying to use it to illustrate what I mean with the first stanza, though I'm not sure I was successful - cutting the wordy bits, and possibly over-tightening words and lines and metaphors.

You have:
she walks into the sky
as if she were a bride,
the linen gathered at her feet,
fluttering,
and in her wake
the petals of diving wrens,
a slanted arc of bodies in flight,
their hollow bones clasped and aimed
as kites untethered in a twirl
around her.

I want to make it (forgive me butchering line breaks, here):
she walks as if a bride:
the linen fluttering at her feet
and diving wrens in her wake -
a petaled arc of hollow-boned bodies,
clasped and aimed as kites
untethered in a twirl
around her.

As a side note to this stanza (and I didn't change in my edits) - with the birds, are they around her, or behind her? You imply both, and only one really would make sense - yes, they can be both behind and around her, but since you already specified "in her wake" before "twirl/around her," I can't quite let it go.

So yeah, the above (edits/playing with your words) is what I mean for the first stanza - something feels just off to me, and it lies somewhere between too many words and not enough said. It also sets up the wings/bird metaphor you have running through the poem, and I think part of my trouble also lies in how you have a very concrete image of the wrens in one stanza, again the much more abstract and oblique bird imagery in the others, and it clashes to me. Yes, you keep with one consistent metaphor, but your usage does not remain consistent - the bird imagery shifts from the woman-cloud to the wrens and then back to her/the narrator, and it's jarring. If it's intentional, well done! If not, please figure out what you want to do with the metaphors, and realign them! But, having the same imagery used throughout and inconsistently (i.e. assigning the same basic imagery for all metaphors but only differentiating between two, and only once) just doesn't work. Er, anyway. I think that made sense? If not, just send me a note and I'll try to explain myself better! Heck, I may end up arguing with myself, but I'll do my best to help! One last bit on imagery - I also wasn't quite sure what to do with the sail metaphor in the second-to-last stanza, but I liked it!

Ok, I reread this, and I'm not sure I make any sense - you have to use the flight metaphor, but not necessarily the wing one, I think, is what bothers me. You use mostly the wings, then the sail reference, and a specific bird - but not in conjunction with the woman or the narrator directly. Instead, I'd rather see a bit more variety of flight ideas - you start this with the "long lines and swoops" line, and I'd love to see more of that! Especially because you can tie in the idea of a wash line more, and use that to your advantage! More like how you used the sheet image so effectively - I love how you used it as a dress of sorts (er, "gathering at her feet" bit, anyway - I wanted to imagine that as the bottom of a dress gathering), and as the "wings" in the final stanza (er, that's how I read it, anyway) - I'd love to see a bit more there, but I do love what you have. Do more with the idea of lines, and vary the flying imagery, and I think this will be all the stronger. I'm just not quite sure how you would do it - my best advice is to start by trimming the fat, so to speak, and then seeing what else you can do with this day-dream like image and the flying, almost wispy air you create.

And I love your last stanza, and I'm resisting really hard from suggesting you stick the "and" on the third line, and take it out of the fourth, since it's lovely as it is

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this! I was able to really sink my teeth in to it (sorry if it hurt!), and I enjoyed the images I took away from the poem.

Thanks for a good read!

Bek

Hi blackbird nice to see you around again.

This reads really nicely but it fails at any attempt to develop and work as one.
All together what's lacking is a sense of progression, I just did a review on poetry that suffers from still-life, static.

What happens here is that you're creating shapes through these images, but you're not creating any motion.
You aren't suffering from static exactly, rather the static is caused by a kind of disconnection in your images.
I think it's caused from the lack of connection between the images you choose to use, they all have to do with fabric yes. But there's a lack on webbing so it's disconnected cold and honestly gets boring. It's like a thread that's held together at both ends, but split into tinier threads in the middle. You have a starting point and an ending point and a dozen different strings that connect them, but as long as you don't snip all the strings, you still get from your end point. You need to emcompass everything with a thought process rather then using images for the sake of using them. It needs to be one thicker thread where everything works together to get the reader to the end point, because in a poem everything has to have a purpose and has to support something else. It's like a house of cards. You can't build it with only one card standing on it's own, because it can't stand on its own. You need the whole deck to work together and position it at the right angles and delicately build it up. And we all know that if one card goes, then so does the house. Right now you're building it with cards separate, each standing on it's own to make the house. Perhaps that's not your intention but it's how you've communicated it to me personally.

I'll going to keep this short, because I know you know what you're doing. I'll give you some specific nitpicks to work with if you want to improve this specific poem.

he wash breaks from the line,
white linen flinging from your hands,
coming undone midair like
wings without bodies,
the shoulders of shirts smoothed out <- Weird verb association between smooth and wilt.
and wilting as wingspans.

[far above the cumulus is curled
in the shape of a woman,
such long lines and swoops—
she walks into the sky
as if she were a bride,
the linen gathered at her feet,
fluttering,]-> In brackets it's rather hard to read, choppy the flow picks up swiftly but you lose it just as quickly.
and in her wake
the petals of diving wrens,
a slanted arc of bodies in flight, <- Like this.
their hollow bones clasped and aimed
as kites untethered in a twirl
around her.

*your shoulders move in the pale curve
of hers, her torso lifting like a sail
at the altar of immense blue, arms
flared into wings and flying,
everything within her unraveling
into cirrus—*
You get a lot more motion in this stanza I see it developping here compared to the rest of the stanza

but far beneath
your hands are still hands,
your body still a body
and the line stripped of its wings.
Weak ending, anti climatic, and generally disappointing.

Could be better,

Kamas

blackbird! I get to finally review something of yours. Sorry it took me so long to get to it.
Anywho--

lovely piece. I think that there are definitely some things that can be played with a bit, but this is wonderful as ever.

the wash breaks from the line,
white linen flinging from your hands, Remove the comma here for smoother flow.
coming undone midair like
wings without bodies,
the shoulders of shirts smoothed out
and wilting as wingspans.

Great start-- I love the feeling of motion in the very first line, and how you continued it smoothly. The second and third lines had a little bit of flow problems, but I think it was primarily caused by the comma there. The wings simile is excellent in the fourth line-- I like how you continue the feeling of purity almost, which I always associate with laundry for some reason.
However, the continuing of that simile into the last two lines kind of bothers me. First, you change from a simile to a metaphor, and the repetition of "wings" and "wingspans" makes the end a bit off. You might consider changing the last two lines altogether, and incorporating different imagery there pertaining to wings, or you could just rework this and do without the repetition. Make the transition smoother. Second, in the beginning of this stanza, you have something beginning to GROW. The laundry is coming undone, it's swelling in a breeze, flinging itself out into the air. The last line suddenly takes this image and reverses it into wilting; you need to slow it down a bit to make it more effective.

far above(comma here) the cumulus is curled
in the shape of a woman,
such long lines and swoops—
she walks into the sky
as if she were a bride,
the linen gathered at her feet,
fluttering,
and in her wake
the petals of diving wrens,
a slanted arc of bodies in flight,
their hollow bones clasped and aimed
as kites untethered in a twirl
around her.

Nice imagery, again. I added a comma in the first line as I read it a different way about the first three times, and this clarifies the subject and action. The flow in this stanza is a bit too jerked around for my taste-- especially with this soft kind of imagery, I would suggest making the transitions smoother. Play around with your linebreaks a bit. The last bit after "fluttering" kind of bothers me. I love the wrens and everything, but it's a fragmented clause. There is no real action, only description. Obviously this might be a stylistic choice and completely intentional, but it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and I didn't see it anywhere else.

your shoulders move in the pale curve
of hers, her torso lifting like a sail
at the altar of immense blue, arms
flared into wings and flying,
everything within her unraveling
into cirrus—

Whoa. I was completely unaware up to this point that you were addressing someone. Without any mention, I had assumed this was in the third person. I would suggest bringing up this "you" a bit earlier, as you make the woman from the previous stanza seem the subject up to this point, as if you were building up from the laundry to her.
"hers" to "her" feels a bit awkward to me right next to each other. Also, you have quite a bit of adjectives in here. Not even just adjective, but description in general. You might consider adding some more concrete: if you look at this, while grammatically correct, there is actually only one action does in the first line, and the rest is technically description.

but far beneath (comma again)
your hands are still hands,
your body still a body
and the line stripped of its wings.

You have a nice sense of conclusion, though in the sense that it kind of trails off. You might consider making it a bit stronger-- this definitely isn't abrupt, but its weak. Only little grammatical nitpick I have for here is maybe the insertion of "is" after the word "line".

Overall: nice piece-- I love the imagery and language, as always. You might consider clarifying who exactly the subject is and emphasize that a bit more, and how the person you're addressing really ties in, because right now they aren't doing much except existing there. Your flow is a bit choppy in some places, but I think with some restructuring, it would be fine. No rewording necessary. All in all, good job.
Let me know if you have any questions or anything.

Hi, Sakin here! First of all, wow! I love this. Congratulations this made my night. You're a very talented person, I give you that. Keep writing! Other than the points everyone else pointed out, there was really nothing wrong with it. If you need me to review anything else for you, send me a link. I'd be more than happy to take a look at it!

~Forsakinshadow~

PS: This deserved a 'like'. If there were a 'love' button, I would have pushed it a hundred times

Sorry about the delay. Been busy.

the wash breaks from the line, Personally - and this could just be me - I'm used to "wash" being a verb, and not a noun.
white linen flinging from your hands, "Flinging" flows pretty horribly.
coming undone midair like Maybe sticking an "in" before "midair" might be a good idea.
wings without bodies,
the shoulders of shirts smoothed out Meh. Were you hoping for the alliteration to have some effect? It really didn't, at least not a positive one. Also, I don't see how this imagery relates to what precedes it.
and wilting as wingspans. Once again. And this time, it doesn't even make sense.

far above the cumulus is curled Meh. Tongue-twisters don't tend to sit well in poetry.
in the shape of a woman,
such long lines and swoops— Not sure what you're trying to get across with this.
she walks into the sky So bland. This could be much better.
as if she were a bride, Since when was there a rhyme scheme?
the linen gathered at her feet, Nicely done.
fluttering,
and in her wake How about changing the "her" to an "its?"
the petals of diving wrens, Comma? Normally a verb would follow the noun.
a slanted arc of bodies in flight, Not sure about "bodies in flight."
their hollow bones clasped and aimed Now it just sounds as if you're trying to carry the sentence past its limit.
as kites untethered in a twirl "In a twirl" is sooo simplistic.
around her.

your shoulders move in the pale curve I like this.
of hers, her torso lifting like a sailToo many L's in the last part.
at the altar of immense blue, arms It takes too long for the reader to realize that you're intending "blue" to be a noun.
flared into wings and flying, Pretty good, I suppose.
everything within her unraveling Again, this sentence is much too long.
into cirrus—

but far beneath
your hands are still hands,
your body still a body
and the line stripped of its wings. I think there should be an "is" between "line" and "stripped."

Okay! Thanks for the request. PM me if you have any questions or comments.

-Kafka