The Promise of the World

Hi there, Aly!

I thought this was a creative poem, using song titles to describe the speaker's feelings about music. The concept and the structure I found pretty neat, and there were some images in there that stood out to me as well.

Language

I am lifted up to soar, in the
Cave of Mind.
Amid a cloud of silver-bright scales,
Tinkling like bells, or clinking shells,
I fly with the crescendo,
Cradled in the arms of the
Reprise.

I quite like the song references, actually. Even though I've not listened to most of them, the titles kind of gave me the gist of it. The one above was my favourite, because 'Cave of Mind' is such an evocative image. It gives a sense of protection almost, of elevation from worries. The sound-related images like "tinkling" and "clinking" shells also match the visual ones like "silver-bright scales". Overall, they create this connotation of lightness, air and flight which I really enjoyed, which is why I found this set of images to be the strongest in the poem.

Oh, tonight
I am so tired,
But there’s a song for that.

I think here you might have been going for a lethargic mood to contrast with the really strong emotion in the next few stanzas after the music starts 'playing' so to speak. The beginning stanzas didn't quite do it for me, though, maybe because it felt a bit rushed, with just two lines about lethargy and then suddenly interrupting with 'but'. I would have loved to see a bit more of a scene being set up. Where is the speaker? Are they lying down in bed after a rough day? Is it dark in the room or painfully bright?

If you're ever revising this poem or maybe just writing a new one, I think something cool to experiment with would be trying to create a unified theme of images across all stanzas, or maybe even just a few repeating motifs. For example, what if in the first stanza, you use images of a silent, empty corridor to symbolise that lethargy instead of saying it outright? Or maybe you could describe the muffled quiet of a stuffy dorm room? Just something to think about.

Structure

Buoyed up by the swelling strings,
Bursting drums sustaining, become my surrogate heartbeat,
Martial, crying chords, my rushing lifeblood,
They give me the strength, the
Will to Live,
To breathe.

This part of the stanza was my favourite because of how the sound techniques create tension. I absolutely loved reading through "Buoyed . . . Bursting . . . " because they marked that shift in tone to one of energy in such a delightful and unexpected way.

Breathes its healing hope into me,
That I could never find alone
In my apathy.

I do like that you used a sneaky little rhyme here to create cohesion at the end of the first stanza. I also think it's fitting that the rhyming words are "me" and "apathy", which seems to emphasise the sort of lethargic mood of the first stanza.


Miscellaneous

I thought the patterns of dots you used to separate the stanzas was a nice touch. I don't know, it's just visually appealling to me somehow.

The overall shape of the poem is real interesting as well. Somehow having everything centre-aligned and 'swelling' in the middle of each stanza kind of matches up with the feel of the music you're describing to me.


That's all

Overall, the concept of the poem, especially structure-wise, I think gives a fresh take on music, which is hard to do given that it's a common subject for poetry. I also adore the middle stanzas in terms of imagery, and the song references were apt and didn't break the flow too much.

Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!

Cheers,
-Lim