Young Writers Society

Hi Navita,

I'm not sure what Kylan's seeing, but this poem is basically a decorated corpse. It's smiling with face paint and you can move its flimsy arms around, sure, but that doesn't make it anything more than a decaying reminder of what could have been, and may have once been. It's just a bad piece overall, but I suppose for NaPo nobody could expect more than hackneyed junk to come out of most people's minds. One poem a day, always meeting a deadline, etc. It's unhealthy. But I digress.

Navita wrote:today, for the first time in years
I tasted the mauve juice of
sky after a heart-ridden storm.

Right, so where's the catalyst? Let's break it down; "for the first time in years" is no way to begin a poem (keep in mind that I always speak in generalities, for they are sadly usually so true). So you tasted the whatever for the first time in years. Congratulations? That statement is just pandering upon itself, begging on its knees for the reader to keep reading so he will know what's going on. A trick strategy and not one that sits well with anyone. Only Shakespeare can dole out entire stories before the action even takes place, and unfortunately this tried and failed miserably.

Commit yourself to certain stretches of either no-imagery or imagery at a time. Tripping over the fence and landing on either end from time to time gives the reader no confidence in your abilities.

"Mauve juice"? You're just searching for words to use, aren't you? And it doesn't work, not in the slightest, but rather sticks out among the generally mundane vocabulary you use otherwise.

lily clouds tossed in the air
and lightning on white stilts
clacked onto stuttering roofs –

Here's what I meant about you completely wasting potential. Lily clouds. I haven't heard that many times before, and was expecting you to follow through on it. Absolutely nothing. So the clouds are lily-like, great. Isn't there anything else you'd like to tell us? Even if you don't want to expand on this possibly beautiful imagery now, a one-liner per image is tearing your poetry apart with its mediocrity. What's the symbolism of the lily? The purpose? Once you answer that, tie it in to later sections, creating a web rather than a straight line from point A to B.

we had abandoned the red jeep
somewhere between the field, the
highway and the burning horizon

What makes the burning horizon so special that it deserves the adjective (which, by the way, is tacked on with so much elegance as a wooden board being nailed to a door)? Again, you're hunting desperately for imagery and sticking it in at odd intervals. Stop it.

and the wind wore my faded
straw hat like a rolling banner;
not even the coral thunder slashes

could leap between your hand
and mine. ice splinters toppled
from the slippery tongue of eve

Horses' bones are too hard to beat, so I'm going to skip the line-by-line for this section and just say that it suffers from the same hit-and-run description that you seem to want to use for everything else. The stanza below (mewling like a cat, paws, etc) is equally half-baked.

into finned ditches, and the mewl
of day lay down to sleep, paws
covering its eyes as you and I

chased the edges of the rain.

And predictably we end our poem with another cheap magic tricks, considering that's all you apparently know how to do in your work. So there's a space between those last two lines... because you want the energy to evaporate before end? Right before you talk about chasing and rainstorms? Why? No, artificially squeezing the juices of your poem's theme/mood/tone/etc like a watermelon isn't going to do anything but maybe give you a quick drink and make the watermelon look dead. If you want something a little more far-reaching than three second enjoyment, try to use your words to create this effect. Don't get me wrong, many people use line breaks like that, and well too, because they manage to weave together the fabric of the power of their speech with the style of their speech. But you can't. Your words suffer from deprivation of all elements on their own, making this kind of break a crutch rather than an accessory.

In general, this was shoddily written and executed even worse. NaPo is cute and all, but hopefully you will soon start producing work of better value after this is month is over. Scrap these pieces and kick your mind to get it working on stuff that you can write without constantly having to look at the clock and see if you're writing fast enough.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Hey Navita! I've seen you around the site doing some awesome reviews lately, so I was excited to see that you had a NaPo thread.

All I really have to offer in critiquing poetry is an opinion, so don't expect an-indepth critique. I really like your titles, though. I think the title is always important, but especially so in a poem, when you have even less space than in a story to communicate your meaning. A good title can redeem even a crappy poem (which you have none of on this page), so kudos.

I read "field, highway and horizon" and "a most inconvenient bedfellow."

I liked the former for the feelings and images it evoked. My favorite line was "I tasted the mauve juice of sky." For the latter, even though I think the title is AWESOME, some punctuation would be nice. At places it ran together, and I found myself needing to re-read to catch a couple of the lines.

I don't have a lot of time right now, so I shall be brief, but "field, highway, and horizon" is brimming with fantastic potential. In my opinion, which at times agrees and disagrees with Galerius, I think you have positively brilliant moments. Most of the descriptions were gorgeous, but I think you ought to expand on them and tie them in with your overall theme. You give us many powerful images that linger in the mind, but here I too, have to say it felt like a hit–and–run, for they are disjointed.

My FAVORITE lines:

Well, I was going to quote it, but actually the third whole stanza.

Also, "the coral thunder slashes", spectacular.

"chased the edges of rain", again, beautiful.

It was lovely to read, it truly was. Some tweaking and it will be jaw–dropping.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

–antimelrose

Thanks everyone for your comments. Below is a chopped and changed version, since I felt rather compelled to do something about the previous one.

- Kylan: I'm glad you found something you liked. And thanks for dropping by as well .

- Galerius: yes, that comment did help, and it was possibly the funniest comment I've ever read. Overall, if I can summarise what you said, it was this: the imagery had nothing in common tying it all up together (an overall theme) which is why it seemed hit-and-run. Agreed. And the odd alternation of more literal language and more fantastical lanugauge made it seem 'half-baked' and 'shoddily written'. I see where you're coming from. I was hoping to try a simpler style of writing when I wrote this, but obviously the 'potential' imagery surfaced, making it seem strange. You said to have longer stretches of imagery or non-imagery. I'm trying that below.

- Areida: thanks for taking a look at my NaPo! And yes, I like titles too.

- Rose: I've done a bit more expansion on descriptions (see below), and I'd love to know what you thought, this time round.

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Erm... okay, I sincerely hope you don't hate me for this, but I liked the original version better. Especially since I am unfamiliar with music vocabulary, it was harder to imagine. I think–and forgive me if I sound confusing– that you incorporated new themes/descriptions, rather than elaborate on what you already have. What if you pulled out some shears, hacked off many of the adjectives, nouns, etc., reducing it so that we had more of an idea to work with? And then you take what descriptions you have left and build on them, in order to complete the frame of the themes. I think you ought to pick certain phrases that define the poem, give us the setting, the theme, the flavor, the memory– and keep returning to them, even if you put them in different words. Does that make sense? I hope I don't mean to be a headache! Or, if you don't want to keep returning to the same phrases, at least give a fuller depiction of what images you do give us. Don't give an unusual, unexpected adjective for something and then leave us thinking, is that it? Is that all my imagination has to work with? I think that's the direction you ought to be going.

Now, for a nitpick–"drip of coral thunder"– thunder and lightning are dynamic. "Drip" has more of a lazy, passive feel. If you want a noise, pick something, I dunno, jolting. (pun possibly intended).

By the way, I loved "Jug by the windowsill". You certainly have a talent for beautiful details, nuance; the last line I wasn't sure what make of, but other than that I really, really enjoyed it.

–antimelrose

Thanks again, Rose!

I preferred the original version too, even if it did have a lot to be desired. I preferred to simplicity and honesty of it, as opposed to this convoluted version - but it was still an interesting experiment on my part .

I think you ought to pick certain phrases that define the poem, give us the setting, the theme, the flavor, the memory– and keep returning to them, even if you put them in different words.

Well...I was trying to do that exactly here - it's a light, fluttery, tasty, juicy, musical version of a storm - and I use the motif of music and taste throughout; so I kind of am doing that. But I need to pull out some 'shears', yes.

I think–and forgive me if I sound confusing– that you incorporated new themes/descriptions, rather than elaborate on what you already have. What if you pulled out some shears, hacked off many of the adjectives, nouns, etc., reducing it so that we had more of an idea to work with?

I get where you're coming from. I actually did change the meaning of the poem, correct - it began as one of lovers walking in a storm ('heart-ridden,' 'between your hand and mine'). However, the latest version focusses more on the singular narrator and the musical and taste-oriented aspects of the storm; to do this, I got rid of parts in the old version that didn't relate, or swapped them for new ones.

Glad you enjoyed the 'Jug by the Windowsill,' since I didn't feel it was particularly inventive.

I'm going to leave all these poems for a week, and then come and attack them anew. I'll probably end up rewriting them all in many different ways - like thunderstorm one, I could hav rewritten it a lot simpler, in a Kooser-style - all in good time, though .

I don't have time to review any of your poems or give you some tips, but I just wanted to swing by and say you are a wonderful writer. I enjoyed all of your poems, keep it up!