Young Writers Society

Yeah, I'm dumping them all here, so watch out, world.

4.1. Jarring

Sometimes the Spring sun brings me
new feelings that I've been pushing off
for the long winter months, they fill me up;
you know – aren't I just a mason jar,
and just my insides a mix of sly smiles,
eyes rolled up to look at nothing on high,
my hands shaking with delight, my feet
flying out from under, tracing gashes
across my knees, I am breathlessness –
staccato heartbeats that pinball between
glass ribs and a loose screw-on lid.

Oh – there is the ever present reality
that I can be dropped and busted open,
my mixture messing up your clean place.
Don't shake me, I ask all passing by,
I break far too easily to be left teetering,
and Spring-time cleaning has left me
reeling through the dust, out of your clutch,
so catch me up and place me up high,
feel free to empty me of all that I feel,
wash me down deep, rinse out the excess
and fill me with everything that you need,
be it sick, condemning, passive, needy,
you give it to me and I'll make it real.

Hi, Clo!

This was a compact entity and I quite liked it. One of my favourite parts was "staccato heartbeats that pinball between/glass ribs and a loose screw-on lid".

One thing that I felt bothering me a little was that the majority of the second stanza was just one big sentence with a whole lot of commas. It might be intentional, but I tend to consider this kind of phrasing slightly distressing. It feels like it's speeding up more and more until it bumps into a wall in the end.

Glad to see you here as well!

Demeter
x

Yeah, I hate the end of this first poem -- it is too fast. But I'm too preoccupied with catching up to try to fix it, haha. But thank you so much.

4.2 The Rewind

There's a girl from the summer, from four summers ago,
who sits on the edge of my thoughts at all times; sometimes
my eyes become hers.
I see her version of the things that I see, constructed
from things that she said and that she believed; she's telling
me to think twice and to calm down at times,
she instructs me to sit still and breathe,
and no matter how many times I ask her not to leave –
she always walks away regardless.
I can rewind the scene as many times as I would like,
but each time in those five seconds she rises
and walks out of my life,
and I can watch her leave me a thousand times a day –
but I can't make her stay.

Sitting on the edge of my thoughts, she tells me,
it's just far too late.

4.3 A little etheree for thee

There is nothing more reassuring than
the two of us laying in the bed
and you turning your face to me
just smiling, saying a soft,
“I'm happy”. If I could
have this one moment
constantly –
just for
me.

4.4. Sleeps

He laughs, and says I'm bad at sleeping;
well, boy I tell him, maybe I just want to lie awake next to you all night
and tell you all the things I could be dreaming but come to me awake.

Maybe there's no time for falling back into my mind when I'm reaching
ever upward down every path that branches out before me, like how our legs
stretch out from us down to the edges of the mattress, all twisted up in sheets,

and maybe there's too many people to meet; I can't even ever know you
completely, I say to him, from head to toe, yes, but not from ear to ear,
and I can push myself up onto your chest but hear only a quiet pounding,

not the rise and fall of moods and dispositions and passing fancies
that fill a man up more than insides and the reality of anatomy;
oh, I won't ever be familiar with the fears that rise up randomly

that you squelch so smoothly after years of practicing and practicing
to be a calm individual who falls asleep in seven minutes.
He laughs, and says I'm bad at sleeping.




---

These poems suck because I'm writing them so fast.... all for M&Ms.

CLO, IT'S CLO. IT'S CLO~~~

Hi, Clo. I love you.

Okay, so the first stanza of Jarring left me thoroughly delighted, but I guess it set the bar too high for the second stanza, because it fell flat. Everything seemed perfectly crafted in the first stanza, and I can't even pick out a favorite line because they all worked so well and seemed so original. And the idea of the second stanza is nice, but it's not executed right. It all seems off. And there I can't pick any line to salvage, except perhaps

Spring-time cleaning has left me
reeling through the dust

But that's a small piece to salvage. Consider reworking it? I love the beginning, but we have to find a way to make the end fit and keep that same idea -- yes, the idea that it can break, that it can be washed, but I felt no breaking words (no shatter, no shards, no cracks).

Oooh, The Rewind is interesting, but it rests on the idea rather than the words. I won't remember the words, just the image here:

and I can watch her leave me a thousand times a day –
but I can't make her stay.

I adore 4.3.

And...

that fill a man up more than insides and the reality of anatomy;
oh, I won't ever be familiar with the fears that rise up randomly

that you squelch so smoothly after years of practicing and practicing
to be a calm individual who falls asleep in seven minutes.

This is heart-wrenching. It's heart-wrenching because I feel that, and I feel like you took my feelings out of me and put them into words and reminded me of them. D: I love the way your poems are often so personal Clo, and they're not so much navel-gazing as they are giving a well-written snapshot of someone. They could even not be about you, but they just seem like they're written from someone who is soaking in the experience, and that makes them vivid and important.

I love you.

-Hannah-

4.5. Jenny*

Jenny's laughing languidly, sitting lazy on the dock,
she's fond of Samantha and asking now for sympathy,
cutting out photos in magazines and carefully taping them up.
This is more than drinking lemonade and laying out for fun,
she's falling deep into the heat of a name-in-circle crush
except instead of sidling up to trunks and salty facial fluff,
her hands are trailing up along the contours of B cups.

Fingers intertwining while the crickets cackle by the road,
two small figures wind up tight and climb up circular forms,
and everything's the same except several happenstance parts
that matter as much as the sound of insects tattling in the dark;
this loving is an art and Jenny's perfecting it each night,
society out of mind and oh-so out of sight from this room,
while she's laying low, she's reaching startling new heights.

Jenny in her yellow dress, twirling her fingers through Sam's tresses,
as black as the nothing in which she takes her chances with, holding
onto everything another human being can give while kissing fears
into a grass-grown field, surrounded by the promises of next month,
a chin resting on her slim shoulder, small and light and lolling
to the music coming through the window, whispering,
“When we're older, when we're older”.

* I kinda want everyone to realize this poem is about young lesbian lovers and I'm attempting horribly to play off Rossetti's "Jenny", which is about a woman who is treated unfairly by society

I'M FINALLY CAUGHT UP. Also -- my grandma just passed away, and I wrote this after thinking about how much her wake bothered me. Don't mean to offend... or do I?

4.6 Dying is Fine

It's fine to pass through the line and let your particles dismiss,
accomplish it with a kiss and let me go, let me blow away,
cremate me and shake my parts all over the place –
dying is fine.

Don't let them kneel before my exoskeleton; burn it up
before their eyes can fall upon my skin cells, sear them down
to nothing and let them rattle my bones for good luck, I am
okay with this.

Flowers crumple under boots, and my organs fail to work –
don't imagine me in lit up halls on high while seraphs cry,
because I've become the heavenly bliss that is nothingness –
and that's divine.

What an offense to take my old face and make it up pretty,
lay me in a rotting bed and gather around extended family!
Make my pieces as small as possible, and throw them out,
just remember me.

Remember my mind and all the things you minded about
regarding my mannerisms, refrain from considering me in
death and being still and not an insult to anyone at all –
darling –

oh, darling –

dying is fine.

Hey Clo! Good to see you're doing NaPo and catching up on missed poems - I was doing that a couple of days ago, too. I am in love with your poetry, and there are times when I feel like shouting YES! when I read something I totally agree with, but haven't yet managed to put in words.

Take, for example, this last one, on dying. I so agree with that concept of cremation - because it is someone's memory, their personality, their moral mark on the world that will count in the long run, not some skeleton rotting away in a box in the ground. And this poem is so happily peaceful, while also being quite negative, in a strange way, that balances it out nicely - your character is fine with dying, but wants to go against the usual (Western) ideal of graveyards etc.

The one before, Jenny, is disturbing and light and pretty all at once - you make it come to life - it is spring, it is dancing, it is like pixies in the woods - the imagery is excellent (there is room for improvement - I think you can do better than 'black as nothing'). 'Yellow dress...crickets cackle...drinking lemonade...cutting up photos...' these are all sweet, simple images that you have created, effortlessly, and woven well into the general structure of the poem. 'Happenstance...insects tattling...asking now for sympathy (yeah, these are out of order)...' were words and phrases that didn't work for me - either replace with something that fits in with the style and tone of the poem more, or get rid of entirely.

'Sleeps' is interesting how it deals with the issue of really getting to know someone in a relationship - physically and mentally - and the differences between men and women. Some phrases were a bit cliche - 'twisted sheets' - and overall less imagery here, and a more talkative, conversational tone used, but I think it would benefit from less-directness in places and more figurative language, something imaginative and different. Seriously, the poem is about a very interesting topic: ' I can't even ever know you/completely, I say to him, from head to toe, yes, but not from ear to ear' - but you tend to get caught up in literal descriptions. The ending is great - ha, how they fall asleep so fast and we lie awake, thinking, wondering.

Really, the title of the 'A little Etheree for Thee' should be changed - I don't think it goes. It's obvious the type of poem it is, and who it's for; so maybe use a clue to a message in the poem, for added development. The snapshot instant in time of being happy is very cliche, so be careful when writing the balance of literal and figurative and try not to go overboard either way - at the moment, it leans on the literal side, and while you have created a sweet image, it's also a very cliche image, so it loses its power.

I actually got a very distanced feeling from the second one, which is surprising since you get into the mind of your character a lot - maybe because I felt like I hadn't gotten to know the other girl very well. Give her a face, a name, and it'll work wonders, I think. Maybe you were just rushed, writing all these poems in one go, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is in this one, but there's an element of something missing. I get the feeling that it's not an actual memory of yours - and even if it is, I think you need to make it more believable, more accessible.

'Jarring's' first para and second para differences have already been talked about, so I won't go inot those here. I loved how you say you are a mason jar - an inventive, cute little comparison, that sustains itself well throughout the first stanza and then dribbles out on a tangent in the second. I think you'd do better to begin with that line on how you are a mason jar, actually - I think it grabs people's attention more, hooks them in, makes them think: what??? The 'Sometimes the spring sun brings me' start is a little too much sibilance for my liking, and rather cliche, by contrast. I too loved the 'staccato heartbeats that pinball between glass ribs and a loose screw-on lid' - such a heartbreaking image.

Keep writing, and I can't wait to see the rest!

This year's NaPo poems are not nearly as okay as my poems I wrote for NaPo last year.

--

4.7 Location Lullabye

You say the city is just no good anymore,
the buildings – borderline unbearable
and now here we are standing, talking by
your window, our breath creating steaming circles,
rows of lights blotting out into yellow pixels.

The suburbs are unmentionable, the image
quickly drifts into tiresome decay where
we smile at our neighbors, curse them later;
country is fine for prints but my history lies
on green valleys and glens that go nowhere too fast.

See, there isn't anywhere suitable to be,
I like the crowds, you enjoy the trains, yet
the noise and dirty streets get to us both –
the unmentionable is thus so, and although
the smells are richer where it is wide and rural

the exile is a looming disaster for souls
that behave as ours do. This leaves us – where?
about anywhere, nowhere is suiting –
perhaps wandering could be divine, cavorting
and never settling or deciding anything.

April 8th, 2010

"Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell..."
--Dante Gabriel Rossetti,"Superscription"

Better off, can I call myself this now?
Who can name betters with just an experience to refer;
all the moments that never occurred, they do happen
in a perhaps-better universe --
perhaps-worse.

Alternative events to what reality claims,
they may not be subsistent but creep into dreams
so can I say that lack of matter makes them unreal,
when I can see them unfold in pieces
at least -- somewhere?

Your face has a location still, it's just
Not Here; justness is called to question on whether
I can even mention the What-If and When-I-did
to company; they keep telling me that the past
and the dwelling in it is discouraged by the masses --
what do they know? I knew you -- now I am marked.
The byzantine tangle that constitutes memory
is pushing you through, almost constantly,
and it colors my dreams. Pencil in hand, your face
multiplies across all the mediums; the subconscious
I know can be corralled, morphed and altered
but dreams -- they are proof
of what is there, and that is you.
I can push the snapshots back into
corners unknown and few, yet the further
the descent -- the longer
the night is.


--

I wanted to make this longer, but I feel like I need to work on what is here. I want to explore this one more. Please help!

Okay, so I have read this six times and can confidently give a bit of advice. I'll break it up into two parts: 1. the IDEA behind your poem and 2. the EXECUTION - the what/why, and the how, the matter and the manner (hey, this is starting to sound like debating).

I love the idea. I may not have understood everything you wrote first time round (more on that in the next para) but I GOT IT the first time. I know what you're saying. I think it's fascinating, and yeah, I'm skirting around the actual topic because I'm still trying to find the perfect words for it. Clearly, so were you. First off, it begins with a question on 'identity' - what we might have been - and 'experience' - the events that make our identity what it is:

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell

The second and third stanzas are really about the same topic, and when I read them, I almost leapt into the air, screaming SHE KNOWS WHAT I MEAN! I love it when people can do that. In these stanzas you are asking if we are justified in calling our dream-experiences real, and therefore allowing them to become a part of our identity.

These 'dream-experiences,' manifestations of our subconscious mind, are about all those things we 'might have been' or done. I have had too many of those to recount - dreams of flying, dreams of saying things to people I know that I should have when they were here, dreams of playing the piano to a large crowd in a majestic hall without fear, of doing back handsprings and back somersaults off the ground - and every single one of these has felt real, as it is based on something in reality (I actually do play the piano, and did gymnastics). I can feel my muscles moving, I can feel the heat of other people, I can hear them talking, I can see. You ask if this reality, this vivid, glaring reality in the confines of night is also valid. Am I justified in making it a part of me? Something I dreamt, I wanted, I did, but didn't really - what do I call it, then?

The fourth stanza seems to go off on a tangent to this idea. You talk about the 'past:'

to company; they keep telling me that the past
and the dwelling in it is discouraged by the masses --
what do they know?

I don't think this idea belongs. You have one strong idea in the poem already - of dreams versus reality, and how to classify an experience in our identity - you do not need to break off and hint at something else. It detracts, and, quite frankly, it was annoying. I think it was annoying because : (a.) it's slighty cliche, overused and (b.) your first idea is so startling and fascinating that I just do not want to stop reading about it. You've got a good grip on my mind, so don't lose it! If you want to talk about 'past dreams,' then you don't really need to say 'past' since we will assume it's in the past anyway - it was a dream! And I did not understand:

Putting pencil in hand your face
multiplies 'cross all mediums

And also, what didn't make sense was:

justness is called to question on whether
I can even mention the What-If and When-I-did
to company;

At first I thought I didn't get the whole of that last stanza, but I went back and realised it was only those two bits (yes, I know I'm going into the territory of 'manner' here, but since I'm talking about IDEAS, I thought it would be good to mention that I cannot talk about the idea in the last stanza since I do not understand). Okay...I'll try to dissect those two bits: the first one - well, I'm totally bewildered there; I can see you're saying something important; I just don't know what. The second one - seems to be asking if you can mention your dream-experiences alongside your real ones - but I'm only about 40% sure on that.

Over here:

subconcious
I know can be corralled, morphed and altered
but dreams -- they are proof
of what is there -- there is nothing I can do.

You say that although our subconscious can change, our dreams, once they have happened, will not change - I commend this original idea of yours, but I also think it lacks strength. I cannot pinpoint why - maybe because the 'subconscious' and our 'dreams' are too closely tied in for it to work - perhaps you need to have differentiated between the two somewhere earlier. Even though it sounds intelligent and is almost logically correct, I disagree (am I allowed to say why?) because our dreams change with every retelling, our dreams change with each time we go over them in our memories, they change when they repeat (recurrent dreams - sth different in each). So...our dreams are about as concrete as our subconscious, which, according to you, is very changeable. This is why the idea does not quite work - because our dreams depend upon our subconscious so closely, and will change as our subconscious changes - but I UNDERSTAND what you mean about one dream, one particular dream in the past: there is nothing to change what really happened there. So: just think about reworking that so it slides in nicely.


Right, now, I finally get on to the topic on MANNER and EXECUTION. Your manner is very Shakespearean; it reads like a sonnet, almost. You use intelligent vocabulary: 'subsistent...coralled' and the way you have phrased everything is old-fashioned. It makes me think of a bachelor, with glasses, sitting in his empty flat, dissecting Macbeth and all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, writing this as soon as the question pops into his mind. The topic is such that I, myself, cannot currently think of any other way of approaching it. Because the time of the language is so removed from our own, because it is formal and official-sounding, I feel like the MATTER/IDEA is more hidden behind that wall. It's kind of really, blatantly clear in the first few stanzas what you are saying, but I seem to come out, understanding everything and feeling totally confused nevertheless. Which explains why I read it six times. It's kind of interesting, but it's a poem that you have purposefully crafted so that people don't get it the first time round - the HAVE to reread it, and in doing so, they pick up on hidden meanings they didn't understand, and later, they feel good about themselves in having managed to decode what you were saying. A double edged sword, that.

Be careful, though, that you don't go over the top with the old-fashioned phrasing. Firstly, it means that the audience for your poem has to be reasonably intelligent and mature to get it. If you overdo it, we are confused, and intelligent people don't like to be confused. Especially if they don't understand what you're saying in the last, the most important line, the finale. The words you have used ARE understandable - it's just the order you put them in; think about swapping and changing order for some lines to make them more 'accessible'. I feel like I can't breathe if I am tied up in strange phrases.

A note on length: this length is actually fine. With your ingenious skills, I think you can shorten it further. Yes, the second stanza ('Better off, can I call myself this now?') sounds smart, but no, I think it adds very little to the rest of the poem. Think about incorporating the guts of that stanza into the third one, which is where the 'juicy bits' are. Actually, on that note, I would have to say that this poem is like a PhD thesis; that's it - it's not juicy at all. It's cool, calm, collected, dry, grey, square. Somehow, I think that adding a dash of colour would not work as well here - it would tear up this black-and-white reality you have so carefully constructed. Imagery would likewise have to be exceedingly formal and in legalese, so it would lose its flavour.

But emotion...think about putting emotion in this poem. I read it, and I feel nothing and think everything. You have a quiet sense of anger, just ever-so-slightly throughout the stanzas; almost cheated of not being able to call your dreams a reality. I want to see this surface more; maybe not obviously, but subtly, in the words you use.


Right - I didn't notice how huge this review was, so I apologise (and hope you managed to read it to the very end), and humbly ask someone to tell me how to write a shorter one. Just wanted to say that I wouldn't have written all this if I didn't like your poem so much!

Your review was AMAZINGLY helpful. I don't know much about the badge system at all -- I used to be a Junior Moderator, but grew too busy, and I haven't been around much -- so I'm very rusty with a lot of the new functions of this site. I think there's something about nominating people for an Instructor badge? Tell me how to do it, and I will give you a nomination for those two reviews, haha.

Also, your confusion and annoyance over the mentioning of the past showed me some shortcomings of the poem, some of the lines and the ending -- because you're completely right about the dream-experiences, but there was supposed to be another dimension. Really, the poem is supposed to be about missing someone that you have lost due to an event in the past, and how you wonder about the situation in which you lost them, and begin to ask "What if things had been different" and imagine the way things could have been; you even dream about different versions of the past in which things are different, and the narrator is supposed to be questioning the substance and reality of those dreams, and whether it's valid to consider those dreams a part of your experience with that person you lost.

I can see that I didn't develop the past part enough, I didn't really relay that idea enough. And the ending obviously is vague and weak.

This was so helpful! Thank you so much -- best review I've ever received actually!

EDIT: My last years NaPo is located as a thread in the NaNoWriMo Archives forum!

<3 Clo