He played with the grass clippings that didn’t blow away in the night wind
He asked me if I could carry the world
I told him no
He didn’t believe me
He asked where our yard was when he saw his first globe
I pointed to where it should be, on a continent the color of Pepto-Bismol
He laughed and said that our lawn was green, not pink
I said globes aren’t always accurate
He asked what all the blue stuff was around our yard
I said the blue was the ocean
He threw back his head and laughed again
He said that there was no ocean near our house
I said the streets were kind of like oceans,
and that the world was funny
He wandered beneath the spreading forest branches
He played in the rain
He smiled at strangers as they passed, and they smiled back
His socks grew too small for his feet
And his spine extended as mine crunched together
His eyes sparkled as mine grew dull
Late one night he ran, and I couldn’t chase after him
He raced toward the forest of his youth
It wasn’t until the next morning that I found him
He was sitting on a path, braiding grass clippings
His eyes shone with unwept tears
He said he had never seen the path before
in all this voyages through the woods as a child
He asked me to carry the world
To turn back time
I told him I would
He didn’t believe me
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hi! I'm going to be really nitpicky here, because I think in most places you've crafted some really excellent phrases. There are just a few spots that stick out.
"as mine crunched together
His eyes sparkled as mine grew dull"
Crunched together seems imprecise to me. It took me a bit to parse what that actually meant (although that is possibly just me being dumb). It still works...But not when he next line is just about eyes growing dull. I feel like it would serve the poem better to find a different way to say one or the other.
Similarly picking on the second last verse. "forests of his youth" and "unwept tears" strike me has very stock phrase poetry lines. There's nothing wrong with that, but its really noticeable because the rest of the poem has really fresh imagery and clear intent.
That's all I have for possible fixing. I really like the poem as a whole though. I really felt the regret there.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Fortis, this is absolutely amazingly GORGEOUS.
Haha, I love so much love love all the concrete imagery and the well-defined personality of the main character in this poem. It's what I'm kind of lookin' for in poems I read these days, so I was happy to find it, especially with such an eccentric character that just naturally made us reconsider our own assumptions.
This line:
This line was very very important to me to reveal some of the speaker's personality as well. It's an easy trap to fall into: having a speaker focus on the other character as a third person and just forget the speaker entirely because you want to showcase the main character. But that person is speaking. That person is present, and bringing their personality in makes a new layer to the poem -- I liked the texture this moment of the speaker's personality brought in, and I'd like to see more.
I love, too, just the main idea that he had never seen the path before -- I love how that can be interpreted so many ways and that at the same time you didn't just use that moment as a gateway to philosophy, but it actually FIT with the poem you were writing, the history of these characters.
The couple moments I didn't feel as genuinely were the following lines:
I know this can be taken literally, but it can also be that kind of metaphor and as much as that's what you're trying to portray, the phrasing comes off a little pretentious.
And this is definitely hitting that idea of aging too hard. I'd substitute something else here, because I like the return to the previous moment.
I hope these thoughts will be helpful to you! I'd say try to get this really solid over a period of months or weeks and send this out to be published, haha.
PM me if you have any questions or comments, or leave a reply to this review.
Good luck and keep writing!
Hannah
Hello! Retro here for a review, and happy review day!
First off i'll do some nitpicks, then talk about what I liked, okay?
The first thing I want to say is that you don't capitilise the start of every new line. Which is fine, I don't do this either, however, you neither have punctuation. The fact some lines start with a capital and some don't suggest that the implied sentence has a period. However, there are no periods, so i'd choose one or the other and try and impliment it all the way through (i'd go for periods personally!)
That is essentially my only nitpick with the piece, in terms of spelling and grammar you're all good! However, there seems to be a bit of a clash between your stanzas. Some you have incredibly beautiful detailed imagery, and others they seem as bit flat. When you talk about him outgrowing his socks for example. When I first read it I thought wow this is going to build and it just didn't. It was good, don't get me wrong, but I feel as though you could make it more. You already have some beautiful and incredibly powerful images so i'm going to be greed and say I want more
On another note I absolutely love this poem. I think it was well done, especially how you used the idea of atlas. Not only because it is atlas but you use spatial imagery well within the piece and the ideas of paths and what not, which is obviously another meaning for an atlas and it creates a sort of internal stuggle for the character. I also love how it is not from his perspective but the father, (something I attempted to do with Icarus' mother!!), and I think it creates a lovely bond relationship andis incredibly well written. Especially when we get the ending, and we still get the idea of non-belief from the child's perspective!!
Overall this was a great piece!
*Liked!*
~Retro