Letters from the wasteland

Hello.

Very sorry about what caused this poem. I have been there— when my grandfather died, I wrote 13 poems in 3 days. Breakups usually result in at least two dozen. It is not what I would call easy.

I'm going to give a suggestion: don't try to get everything out at once. Grief is huge, multifaceted, deep, wide... take every adjective for "impossibly large" and take every word to describe the endless, and you have grief. It's an ocean. You cannot capture it with everything all at once, and trying is excruciatingly painful.

You don't have to capture it all at once. Capture small things, big things, but the impossibility of articulating grief is best left to fragments. Trying to capture it all at once is too daunting for even the best poets. Processing is best done with a single focus, and the result is often better for the reader— digging deeper isn't as daunting when there is less ground to cover.

I like the metaphor you have going, with the garden. It's just trying to capture too much, and I wouldn't expect it to capture everything. One of the poems I wrote in the 13 in 3 days was actually about my frustration with how I could never capture everything in one single poem. How it always escaped me. Grief and love are two topics that can never be captured in a single set of words.

Go ahead and stop when things feel like too much. You don't have to try and capture it all at once. Little is fine. Little is good. The important part is to only tackle as much as you can handle in a single poem. It's not weak to limit yourself to the smallest facet of what you're feeling— it's still a facet, it's still worth exploring, and it's okay to write a hundred poems on a single event.

I hope you manage to process this. Don't listen to anyone who says it has to happen by a certain date. Take all the time you need, and write as many poems as you need. It's hard to move on, but poetry helps, and sometimes all you can do is take things one step at a time. But eventually you realize that in the mass of paper accumulated, you've managed to chip away at the darkness weighing on your heart, just a little, the blackness turning to ink.

You'll be okay.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hey Ash, I would like to apologize in advance for your marriage, Im so sorry hon.

I'm not really going to "Review" this because it is your feelings and I feel like those are sacred to you. You put a lot of emotion in this and I can tell because as I read it I could actually feel your pain over this. I liked it because of this reason and though I really wish this would have been written over something happier I'm glad I read this. It makes me stop and look at my own life and relationship and see before I delve any further if there's anything I should tread softly on before I move anymore further. I'm 18 and I hate that things like this happen in the world and every time I hear or see this happening I pray...I pray for the family.

I hope you're ok and if you need anyone to talk to I'm always online somehow and my inbox is always open hon <3

~Mem

Ay, Ash!

First off, I read the description and yikes--my condolences for your marriage.

So the crippling flaw within this piece is not the attempt at rhyming. Rhyme all day, all night, on a train, on a plane, in a house, with a mouse--you get it. But what must accompany the monster is concrete imagery, narrative, and poetic elements that concrete the piece as a whole unit. The way it's written as of now, it swings from idea to idea to fit the rhyme at the end of the lines, which is amateur hour, and I know you can crank out better jams than that.

Early on I picked up on some gardening imagery--seeds, life, blooming, etc. I think this is a good motif to follow to get your footing with your primary imagery before you branch out into what follows naturally. There must be something more there. Seething resentment. Complex emotions. Something not one-dimensional that makes me connect with the reader--because at this point in time all that stands in front of me is a list of things the narrator thought about her relationship. That's cathartic and all, but it's not good poetry.

You return to the garden imagery, I think quite well, in the very end with "Nothing/ Can / Survive / Here." That's money.

I hope this helps. Chat me up if you want to go over it together.
Ty