Sol Invictus on Trial

Galerius --

Beautiful. This exceeds your other poems both in literary quality and clarity. You have nearly created an epic, I believe. I thoroughly enjoyed the language, the impressions given, and the topic. Very appropriate for summer. I wouldn't mind putting the sun on trial myself, today (102 degrees).

Your first stanza brings wonderful, hazy images to mind. The only thing that bothered me is something that you seem to do in quite a few of your poems:

to the pyramids becomes nothing
more
than dust in the wake of a starless shore.

I find it extremely annoying that you've given the word "more" its own line. Doing this benefits nothing. I see no meaning in this, it doesn't help the structure, and it ruins the flow of things.

It took me a while to swallow some of the yoda-speak of the poem. It seems strange that you'd incorporate a verb-subject word order unnecessarily -- there being no rhyme scheme to worry about -- but I suppose it added a kind of timeless, ancient feel to the piece. I just wanted to let you know that it feels a tad pretentious.

Have you ever read your poetry out loud? Because I honestly can't see a poem like this being read out loud. It's definately a busy poem, and not being able to savor each word at your own pace would make something like this impossible to grasp or comprehend. Something I'm working on -- because I've been asked on numerous occasions to read my work (which I'm not very good at) -- is to make my poetry more...verbal. You might want to try this?

Have you ever read anything by Cormac McCarthy? Because I get the same feelings from your poetry as I get from his novels. Especially the book Blood Meridian. Your styles are nearly identical -- many sprawling, epic, transcedental descriptions.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I also expect to read that novel you've rumored about.

-Kylan

I have a confession to make. I was going to be a bad reader and skim through the first stanza and not comment, but then I actually started reading, and the rhythm swept me away until suddenly I had consumed the whole thing. I didn't mean to, I swear! lol. That said, this is beautiful. Word choice is varied and meaningful and there's a clear intent throughout the whole thing.

I will say though to be careful not to detour too much. For example, line seven: "pressed into the surface" is the main point of the line/phrase, but it detours to a description/modification of "by sagging organs and flesh". I'd love it even more if I didn't get the feeling of detour from the second half of the line, but got BAM! Impact! from the line as a whole (sorry, I was mesmerized by your avvie while I was thinking, haha).

Like Kylan said: epic.

^_^

Hey Gal ^^ How's my favorite ten year-old YWSer

I'm here as requested... and a bit late. I'm not sure what I can do for you since Kylan's already been here and he didn't have much to criticize. I may have to come back again since, as you said, a bit long. But then again, there are quite a few poems this long on YWS, yours is just one that you have to take the time to savor and to contemplate for a while.

Cracking firecrackers only to knight

Since I'm going to have to be a critic this afternoon, I'm going to admit that this is really bothering me. It's like describing a flower "flowery" or calling butter "buttery" . But then again, it's dialogue, so they can say whatever they want. It's really up to what you think fits here. In the long run, one opinion from someone who's half-asleep doesn't matter much.

amid crackles and static rushing from ear to ear, that

Yet again, a form of "crackle." I hate to be the picky one, but this repetition breaks the flow for me, as poetic as it is.

-----------------

I read the whole thing, Gal, and I'm processing it piece by piece, and then by whole. I'm really amazed that a ten year-old has a vocabulary like this. You must be a genius or a child prodigy.

Back to the poem- I'm slightly disappointed that you don't mention anything about the nighttime, or the moon. Neither the villagers nor the narrator considered the effect of no sun. Yes, this poem is focused on the sun and "summer" as Kylan said. Still, I think it would matter to the villagers if they had no energy source. Their crops may burn from too much sunlight, but without it, the crops cannot grow.

I also once read this Chinese fairytale about the Sun and Moon, and since they were names, I now capitalize them. It was basically about two sisters, the Sun Goddess and the Moon Goddess. Every morning, the Sun would come out and shine its beautiful light on the village and would make the villagers happy for a new day. The Moon Goddess, the Sun's sister, also wanted to shine like her sister, so she'd put a lot of "glow powder" on so she could shine just as bright. The villagers got angry because while the Moon shone with such a bright light, they were trying to sleep.

And anyways, the Moon got upset because she didn't think she was important like the sun, which made crops grow and gave energy to the people. What happened later was there was a drought in the village because of the Sun and the lack of rain. The crops died, houses on fire, all of that jazz. The Moon's father told her that she was also important because the villagers needed the Moon for rain, cooler temperatures, to rest, and for travelers traveling at night who needed some sort of guide. The Moon ended up using a faint glow powder and she glowed a soft, peaceful white instead of a blazing, fiery orange.

And that basically sums up to: If you're going to include the negatives of the sun, include it's positives, also. Or perhaps include something positive about the moon. It's a basic Yin Yang thing. The Sun is weighing up a lot of the Yin, here.

Hopefully you get what I'm saying, and what I'm saying is qualified to be a review for you, Gal. I'm really not sure what to say. I'd mention the positives, but you already know about those

Kylan wrote: I wouldn't mind putting the sun on trial myself, today (102 degrees).

Try 114, Kylan =_=

Feel free to PM me or chat me if you'd like another review. It'd take be 20 minutes to think about it and write it, but they're fun to do ^^ Challenging.

-Shina

So, Gal. I was here last night, and wrote the review, and was about to click "submit", and then my connection died.

It certainly wasn't the highlight of my life so far, but I'm trying to remember what I said, and maybe I'll get something new out of the poem this time.

So. When I was reading this, I felt a little like being chased, or maybe more like I was chasing the poem, but it always hid from me. It's a good thing for both of us, because you managed to write something that pretty much awed me. Whenever I was starting to get the poem from one part, it like rushed forward in all its greatness and left me behind again. It also made me remember how much I still have to learn about poetry. What's funny is that there are a lot of good poems out there, but they're almost always as different from one another as they can possibly be. And this is one of the greatest things about poetry – the variety, and the fact that we can never fully understand it unless we're the author, and not necessarily even then.

My rambling isn't helping you at all, so let's move on.

‘till the ascent

to the pyramids becomes nothing

more

than dust in the wake of a starless shore.

What I like about this part is that even though there's the ever so lonely "more", it kind of keeps the secret of the upcoming rhyme. If it was placed on the previous line, right above "shore", the rhyming would've been obvious and thus the surprise would've been non-existent. And I certainly like it better this way, because it was one of the several bits in this poem that were so delicious and came up so suddenly, it was a lot more interesting that way.

“To the mirror I go and say that

‘I have had a sight tonight,

Such a fright from day to night,

Cracking firecrackers only to knight

A radian pest unto Sphinx’s stone quarries!’”

This was one of my favourite parts, but the lengthiness of the fourth line kind of ruins it for me. I do love how you play around with "tonight", though.

And it was he who killed our men and

left the women to their weeping and it was he who

torched these tender crops whilst we were sleeping

and it was he and it was he and it was he and it was he

There's too much repetition on the fourth line in my opinion. Usually I think that repeating something two times makes the most powerful impression, three is what is just alright and what's generally done, but having as many as four times really flattens it out. To me, it's all about being interesting, and too much repetition kills the interesting. Well, duh, right? Apart from that, I thought this part was quite strong and I liked it.


The first stanza was really pretty. The rhyme in the end made it complete and the images were astonishing, like they were throughout the poem. I wanted to absorb it and to really chew on it, but it didn't work with just one read, like it usually never does if the poem is good. As for the ending of the poem, I would've maybe liked it to be even more powerful, but I don't know how it could be done without damaging the current image.

I really hope this helps you, even a little, because I'm still such a low-lifer when it comes to poetry, I don't really know what else to say. You did a good job, Gal, and I enjoyed reading this.


Demeter
xxx

Hi Galeri!

My apologies on getting to this so late. I had a review started and saved, and somehow it eludes me on this computer, so:

As I read through this I had trouble focusing. I understand this (or I believe I do?) but it takes a second read for the images to come together and make a picture. It's not so much the images that bring the trouble in focus, it's parts like these:

from sentries’ hold across the Egyptian plateau –

cannot melt back into sizzling pottery

and

kissing this way and that ‘till the ascent

to the pyramids becomes nothing

While I'm not going to say that you should do away with these parts, I think you need to tidy them up a bit. I think the enjambment here is the most confusing part-- there's no transition between the two lines, and we have an ever-so-slight change in the language that makes it confusing. It's beautiful, but it takes a double read or a reading aloud in order for us to grasp this fully.

“To the mirror I go and say that

‘I have had a sight tonight,

Such a fright from day to night,

Cracking firecrackers only to knight

A radian pest unto Sphinx’s stone quarries!’”

I didn't like this part so much, dear. I think it fits with a bit of effort, but it sounds out of place, even if it is the sun speaking; throughout the poem you don't speak in first person, nor do you use dialogue, and using both here as the only place sounds slightly misplaced, almost as if it belongs to another poem.

Also, I know that you do use rhyme/slant rhyme in other places in this poem, but it's like... too much obvious rhyme in one spot-- it kind of staggered the flow of this all.



Anyway! Extremely nice job on this, Gal. I love your structure here. In some places, the poem felt kind of rushed, as if it were rushing us on, and in other places it seemed to slow. At first, I may have pointed that out as a bad thing, but it fits nicely, and is overall pretty well done.

It's an extremely creative poem. You got your message across clearly and effectively without stating everything flatly. It's pretty awesome, to say the least, and even though you used "big" words in some places, your language remained simple for the most part.

Wonderful, wonderful work here. Your poetry is great; I'd definitely love to read more soon.

June