Young Writers Society

Great job with NaPo this year, Mint!

Something I adore about your poetry is how you it is. You're not afraid of infusing your poems with your personality, and it makes them feel so much more genuine as a result.

Also it's been super interesting to see all the various tech themes you've incorporated into your poems! It's not a super common theme to see in poetry, but I think it can be really effective.

Some of my favourite images from your thread:

as the darkened highway speeds by
and I take photos smearing electric light into finger-paint lines

and

the blue scattered in the air
is perfect
and i watch the concave-up
dips of telephone lines.

and

but if my curved back turns me into a question mark, maybe it'd be more fitting.

but there are so many other fabulous lines as well!

aww thanks, @Hijinks!! yeah, I had a lot of fun combining tech, chem, and random things with these poems xD glad you enjoyed! <3

Spearmint, I kind of saved my congratulations comment for today since I didn't want to write it half-asleep. But SERIOUSLY - you should be really really proud of your NaPo, I am super impressed by your theme interpretation and the sweep of your poems make for a very satisfying ending. I love how you humanized (& Poeticized ... if that's a word) these different technical / computer / scientific processes and it created such a rich new fountain of imagery that was very unlike what most of the poetry I read uses. So many of your poems have this playfullness too, like the narrator is a little sarcastic / silly (like the late-night ramblings one for instance) and that added a terrific levity to the thread. It's thoughtful, and the different ways you played with form - even incorporating equations and definitions really elevated your writing too. I'm really glad you participated this year, and I hope to read more of your poetry throughout the year because I found myself really surprised and delighted reading your thread this month. <3

Some faves:
The EMOTICON One!!!

>.>
so versatile. so beautiful.
so impossible to imitate.

that cracked me up. And I kind of love poetry that can't be read aloud because of visual elements, so I enjoyed this.

I also really liked the word-play of the Lim poem. and it made me think of our dear YWS Lim so that was good too.

Your poem on 4/4 was a little mind-blowing too, just how fun to incorporate anagrams that way. I loved it.

<3

ahhh, thanks so much for the detailed comment, @alliyah!! ^-^ it brings such a smile to my face to hear your compliments, lol. glad you enjoyed!! <333

LISTEN I FEEL LIKE I'M JUST GOING TO BE AN ECHO OF EVERYTHING THAT EVERYONE HAS SAID ABOUT YOUR THREAD SO FAR, BUT AS @alliyah PUTS IT IN i'm not trying to write anything new, SOME THINGS ARE WORTH SAYING OVER & OVER AND ONE OF THOSE THINGS IS THE SHEER GENIUS OF YOUR THREAD - it's fresh, it's airy, it's like walking into a high level chem lab with a brand new labcoat and a spring in your step. You write about these heavy topics (homelessness, burnout, etc) through a clever chemistry metaphor or complicated code, but you complement it with such tenderness, such lightheartedness, that makes reading all of this an absolutely wonderful experience.

While reading through, I was trying to gauge out which poem I loved the most, but I ended up getting up several favorites lmao - all three parts of your late night ramblings, personal computers depreciate by 50% each year, malware malware everywhere (yes, i do have a bias for nursery rhymes), Ramblings (4/5), The Traveling Salesman Problem (I AM NEVER GOING TO LOOK AT A MATH WORD PROBLEM THE SAME WAY AGAIN), and apart from these, some lines i adored were:

Electrons are not planets;
their positions can only be described in probabilities

If an atom tells you it left its electrons somewhere,
ask it,
"Are you positive?"
And it'll respond,
"Yeah. I'll have to keep an ion them next time."

(PLEASE MINT I WOULD PAY FOR MORE CHEM JOKES LIKE THIS

(I never wanted to grow up past 12.)

do i feel personally attacked? yes.

and imagine swooping over
the shadowed countryside
and approaching those
Midas-touched dwellings.

should(n't) great privilege come with great responsibility?

TLDR; your thread is nothing short of a wonder, a place where intellectual blends into childlike, where high brow chemistry and code inspires simple (but by no means plain) emotion and thought. You sprinkle these mundane facts and references and give them new meaning by the end of your poetry.

Also, here is a little quote that feels a little relevant to the exchange of comments between you and @Meshugenah, about science and technology coalescing with art.


(THIS HAS ALREADY GOTTEN SO LONG I KNOW I'M SORRY BUT BUT.
your poem, old books 4/26, is the perfect combination of the pleasure of art and science as one - and reminds me of this quote

@Euphory
omg Euphhh :'D you're making me blush, lool! i love your comparison to "walking into a high level chem lab with a brand new labcoat and a spring in your step." and ahh those quotes on science + art are super cool!! never apologize for sharing a ton of knowledge, haha. ^-^ thank youuu for the super sweet comments!! <333