Young Writers Society

Good name. Here I came from the reviewing request thread.

Okay, I don't know whether I can "actually" comment more on your poem as your previous reviewers had reviewed them thoroughly in their prospects. I don't want to repeat same things but if there are similarity then, it's coincident.

I will try to give your some here and there and overall, I won't be long. And I would be ranting, so forgive that.

I love the contrast in every line and how they swing together by the rhythm. Just hoping you don't force the rhymes so much, because well, it complicates things that are supposedly easy to do and your meaning would be a little bit insincere--well, in my eyes. And I love that you making the poem have a static syllables in that because like Shakespeare said why he loved writing sonnets too much, it is because he thought it was challenging to put so many meaning in such a strict format. By the note, I don't know the reason or who you are writing this poem to, so it will be purely based on my view and I don't mind the language because I am currently playing a video game of such and would love to learn them more.

Kneeling land sounds great and has a punch of "wow" for me in term of your introduction of this satire. Satire isn't my forte or my genre, but I had written some long ago and I still remembered it was quite nice to write it because of how to create that super twist in your poem and somehow the line with monotheists appealed to me that it is the twist here. I don't speak belief in greater length so let's stop it here.

And welcome to the kneeling land, where sugar is a psalm
The truth will tear a wound in us, but curry is our balm
We all are for the freedoms here, there’s no need to be shy
We all are monotheists here, we’ll be free when we die.

Liminality,


I really enjoyed your take an a villanelle! It's one of my favorite types of poems, especially because they are so difficult to do well!

I know that myjaspercat said to take out the capitalization of the first word, and I'd like to clarify my opinion on that matter. Free-Verse poems don't need to have the first word capitalized for every line, however often it's standard for structured poems to have the first letter capitalized. Since your poem is somewhere between free-verse and structured, it's completely up to your discretion - although a capital letter will create a different effect/chopping up the thought, and a lower case letter might read a little more informally. @Aley has written an excellent little article on it if you're interested in reading more about that: Capitalization in Poetry.

I thought your punctuation was pretty good, though you were maybe missing a few places where a comma would be appreciated. And I think it's more standard for villanelle type poems to be aligned left to highlight the end words.

So to content!
The problem with political poems is it's really tricky to make people care or to create a personal connection with the content, especially if the general reader isn't familiar with the concerns expressed. I thought you did a fairly good job of bringing the reader into the poem though - especially with the refrain "we all are monotheists here, we'll be free(d) when we die" - that was poignant, and I think everyone will have a reaction to that.

I thought that some of the language veered a bit too formal, and might distance readers from the content even more, I think the words "jestered", "naught" and "spate" created distance from the subject rather than meaning. Though I liked where the poem became more conversational in a few places. And overall I thought the flow/meter was pretty good!

A few lines I thought were awkward,
"The social ill of soulish nil will grow like festered mange" <- that one is just really difficult to discern!
"Ignore those that would chastise you for jesting of a bomb" <- "Jesting of a bomb" didn't quite make sense to me.
"We all are for the freedoms here, there’s no need to be shy." <- "the freedoms" is a bit awkward phrasing. "for our freedoms" or "for all freedom" might sound more natural.

Meaning
I struggled to discern the meaning in this poem a bit, which isn't a bad thing because I think there's a lot layered in here. I think this poem is partly satirical? And that it is a critique of people/government creating the illusion that life is all a balm and that we all have the same freedoms, when really we are more trapped than we think. The government/society promises these freedoms which we think we all have claim to, and yet they give very fixed/rigid options of what people are actually allowed to do.

The refrain about monotheists could be interpreted a few ways.
1) We believe the government is our god, and we won't be free of them until we die.
2) The governement/society functions as our god, and we believe that/are controlled until it kills us/ and in death (could be a symbollic/metaphorical death) we will be free of their expectations and rules.
3) We all believe in a "God" or maybe in a universal truth/pursuit of freedom - but we don't achieve either heaven or freedom until we are dead.

^all of these are incredibly intriguing, and honestly that was my favorite part of the poem just contemplating that. I liked the language of psalm and balm and freedoms in here too because it worked well with the religious connotations of that refrain, I think you could have worked in even more religious allusions though for some more depth.

I'd be interested in hearing more about your intention with the refrain and your intended meaning of the poem - because I think I understood some of the wide-scope of it, but there's a lot to unpack here.

Overall, I'm impressed with the depth of this poem. I unfortunately read (and write) a lot of poems that are just about lost-love or reflections on nature, and it was refreshing to read something like this. Where you tackled a serious topic but were able to keep it personal and even emotional.

I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

~alliyah

(let me know if you have any questions about my review!)

Hey there Liminality,
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review.

1) Style, Punctuation and Formatting

So, the first thing I want to point out here is the fact that you have the poem centered directly in the middle of the page. Now, while I understand that centering a poem is a stylistic choice made by the author, it makes the poem more of a turn off for most readers and makes it look rather clunky and immature. That said, if you are only centering a poem for the sake of "it looks pretty" then I would suggest ditching the center justification and having it left justified. However, if you have this poem center justified for a reason, such as meaning, then by all means keep it the way it is.

Second, I noticed that every single line started with a capital letter. The problem with this is that it can become jarring to the reader and it could disrupt the flow of the piece. Think about it this way, if you had the stanzas lined up as if they were in a paragraph, would you want to have random capitalized words in the middle of a sentence? You want to look at your poetry that way, only capitalize the lines that really need it. Now, as with the center justification, if capitalizing every single line is important to the integrity of the poem then please feel free to capitalize them, just be careful how much you do so.

Third, punctuation. Did you notice that you only put punctuation at the end of the last line of every stanza? Is this to tell the readers that every single stanza is a sentence? If that last question is true, then I think you need to work on the structure of this poem just a little bit longer. The reason why I'm saying this is because without something at the ends of your lines (or at least a few of them throughout the poem rather then just the ones at the end of the stanzas) the piece becomes muddy and it makes it a lot harder to fully take in the poem without really knowing where to stop and pause. You need a couple more full stops so your reader can really stop and "smell the roses" of the poem.

For example, let's look at the last stanza of this poem.

The social ill of soulish nil will grow like festered mange
For minds that never change themselves are those that can be changed Here I would add a full stop at the end of this line or at least some form of pause. The second line really solidifies the idea of the first and I personally feel like it would best be read with this form of pause in it.
But we are for the freedoms here, Here however, I would rather there not be a pause, this line really feels like it would be best a little bit faster and the more punctuation you have in the middle of a line, the slower it's going to be read. there’s no need to be shy
We all are monotheists here, we’ll be freed when we die.

And come this way – the distance mere – if you want to create
This other way for engineers, then doctors – don’t be late

Indulge in borrowed blues, the traits that come in a great spate

For minds that never change themselves are those that can be changed