Young Writers Society

Sometimes you slay me, Jas. So, right from the get go, I'm simply going to state my opinion as I know you'd be able to take it. That being said, this was not one of those poems, though I highly respect the nerve you have. It takes a lot of zeal to write something that could be either appreciated or a little too far outside the box for some.

I think a big reason I had a hard time really finding all that much substance to this poem was because of the fact that the title pretty much proves everything you're trying to say with the poem in itself. This is a girl (or boy) who obviously has delusions and, as the term for Oneirataxia defines, cannot differentiate reality from dreams. What other than that were you saying with this? And if so, was there really anything poetically genuine about it?

I'm not really the type to fall for quirky, as you may know from some of my previous reviews. But also, you must know that I appreciate your guts more than I'm sure you probably guess.

Anyways, the thing I found most intriguing about that was the bracketed areas, as if you were creating some form of an inner dialogue within the inner dialogue to symbolize the line between reality and dreams, which I found kind of interesting seeing the the voice/person cannot discern for themselves what that line would be. Where those brackets stood.

In any case, this was one I had a lot of trouble trying to understand, and I realized the deeper I dug, the more I found that maybe there really wasn't all that much stuff to dig into. The one facet was a weak facet.

What I would suggest now would be to take the idea and pull it away from poetry. Have you ever read the book 'a curious incident of the dog in the night-time' by Mark Haddon? I highly recommend you read into that a little bit and take a spin of your own when it comes to dreams verses reality.

Of course, that is completely up to you.

And I might be impartial to the name Beth xD.

Anyways, happy writings and sorry this wasn't all that useful. I feel I may have misinterpreted a tad bit, which wouldn't surprise me in the least.

~Walker

Hey Jas,

Thanks for requesting the review! I’ll get straight to it.

First of all – wow. Something about this poem really hit me – few of the poems I read on here draw me in so far and leave such a lasting impression. In other words, I loved it – it was unique, original and certainly effective! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began reading this poem. I read the first line and was drawn in by the ordinary simplicity of it, and then the first lines in brackets – they were written so casually, so smoothly that I did a double take when I realised what the narrator was really saying (green skin?) I carried on reading, truly drawn into this.

I love the way that you’ve written the real happenings normally and the fantasy in brackets. It’s a very interesting, unique form and it flowed beautifully. There were no interruptions in the flow, allowing the reader to keep reading and be truly drawn in. At the end, everything seemed to speed up – and the last line was so perfect, simple but conclusive.

I’ll try and point out some improvements I think you could make to make this even more wonderful, but I’m afraid this may be a bit of a short review since Kit has already done such a great job of pointing just about everything out, and this is pretty polished already.

Personally, I really love the ending – the way everything seems to build up to that final point where everything becomes too much and the narrator blacks out.

This piece is really original and most of the phrases stand out as beautifully unique. The only one which strikes me as something that’s been done before is the one about Julian’s eyes being the colour of fresh honey and cinnamon. It does the job pretty well in this case (especially since this may not even be reality; it’s most likely fantasy) but I think that to make that stanza even more effective you could try experimenting with different ways to describe him/his eyes.

we've arrived at school and i can hear the bell ringing for first period
(it's shrieking so so loud and all the students
with tentacle legs and wooden arms fall to the ground in pain and
beth is fine because she doesn't have ears, she can't hear anything and she's okay)

This is a really interesting subject, really you could do a whole series of poems about it progressing, if you wanted to. I have not read as much of your verse as I should, so I am not entirely sure what to attribute to your style and what to your choices in this poem, but here are some general impressions. The form is typical to modern verse, three lines, no capitals, minimal punctuation, semi-stream of consciousness, the obvious parallel is ee cummings, but of course he wasn't the last. I would be hesitant to break the three line thing, even in the end, stronger imagery, but if you are attatched to the one line life/two lines dream, sustain for as long as possible, when you do break it, break it big at the end, or have a gradual increase with the change from casual absurdity to nightmare. Four lines twice isn't enough of a slap in the face, mean it, or leave it alone. There is a lot you can do structurally to support the theme, and I find it curious that at the moment there is such a distinction, life (dream), when the title implies the inability to distinguish between the two, they aren't joined with enjambment, a line break is not sufficent, there are brackets to completely isolate the weird. That is not to say I didn't find it, compelling, you captured the lucid, conversational thing completely, you definitely have chops, but what effect are you looking for? What do you want your readers to feel? You can play on their emotions more if you want to.

Crappy narrative progression example 1

I walked home, got in the front door, realised, I don't have my keys, I'm locked out, start to panic, searching around the house, tearing open the couch cushions, coughing from the capok and dustmites, remember my keys are in my hand, so I reach into the skin of the back of my hand, it's like paint skin, stretchy, rubbery, on the other side wet and veiny, my bones crack like creme brulee as I reach through pulling at the keys, the serrated edge grating against my knuckles.

Emotionally it's primal discomfort (lost my keys), tinged with illogical (already in the house), works up to the false resolution (in my hand), progressing to logical yet horrifying surrealism (reaching through the hand to get them). That would be the purely dramatic poetry version. The way this poem is written is caught between lyrical and dramatic, the first four stanzas are lyrical, they don't develop plot so much as mood, and they do it very well, a nice bit of the absurd/surreal, should feel like it's rewiring your brain, and this does. The past two stanzas are dramatic, they are all climax, and then "black out". For me it is too sudden, it is a surprise rather than a disruption of resolve. So either you can make the poem longer, foreshadow, increase the decay of structure gradually, you can break it into a series of poems, lyrical and dramatic, or you can make more of the bang by making it more disturbing in form, language and imagery in the last stanza. But those are just basic ideas of messing with it, now we dissect.

i am walking to school with my friend beth.

(she's got red hair and purple lips and pale green skin,

like the color of dewy grass in the middle of august)

beth is asking me whether i did my chemistry project

(i say i do because i did last year or maybe forever ago in 1954,

spilling drops of acid on my arm to see how badly it would burn)

 
it's a beautiful day and i tell beth we should play soccer later

(we'll make a ball from pine cones and kick it around

until it becomes angry and yells and screams and maybe julian will be goal keeper)

making more beautiful princes with eyes the color of fresh honey and cinnamon)

we've arrived at school and i can hear the bell ringing for first period

(it's shrieking so so loud and all the students

with tentacle legs and wooden arms fall to the ground in pain and

beth is fine because she doesn't have ears, she can't hear anything and she's okay)

 
beth takes a textbook from her locker and hugs me goodbye

(she's got shark teeth and she's smiling so big like she's going to eat me up and then the sky is yellow and there are red dots and everything's too fast and i)