disjointed

Hey there, thought I'd take a look at this!

Specifics

1. The first stanza feels like it's high on excess words and low on imagery - the only solid descriptor you have is worn spaces because pretty imagery is more of a lack of something to imagine and probing reminders is a very vague piece of imagery that has nice emotional connotations but doesn't give the reader something physical to picture. If you remove some of the wordiness, you could add another physical image to balance it out. I'd suggest something like:


There's no pretty imagery in dull spaces,

worn by time, warped into probing reminders

like empty pins in the cork backboard.

2.

Shut eyes tight to block the flaunting regrets

only amplify the present premonitions

This is pretty fragmented and I'm not sure it's to your advantage. I think it either needs a 'to' after only or the first line should be 'Eyes shut tight' as at the moment it's not clear if it's the action of closing the eyes or because the eyes are closed which leads to the amplification?

3.

grown bored to harassing defeated sight

Finds new pleasure hounding with gnarled howls

I think a few too many of your nouns are accompanied with an adjective - present premonitions, defeated sight, gnarled howls. It makes the structure a bit too repetitive to try to shake it up by aving more nouns on their own or joining them with verbs.

4.

those cheap catalysts for better times

I like this line! It would be nice to see it expanded on - what is a cheap catalyst? Alcohol, junk food, drugs?

5.

conditioned to covet confinement

This line's too much. The alliteration feels really forced and it's too wordy for what it's actually saying.

6.

to fixate upon the short parts of life

brief encounters tied to blunt endings

Smashed back into an accepted reality

not by others but by me

This section is really nice. The language has a certain blunt straight-fowardness to it which fits the content.

7. The final line wasn't your strongest and felt anti climatic as the rest of that stanza had a nice rhythm building up. I think the last line needs to make some kind of point.

Overall

I think you're a little over wordy in this poem and that makes it hard for the themes to shine through. Maybe try to cut back some of the adjectives and focus on making it flow more quickly and smoothly. With poetry we don't get a lot of words so we have to try to choose nouns which also work as adjectives. I think there's some good emotion behind the piece but some of that gets lost because it's not connected to solid imagery.

All the best with this!

~Heather

Hi, Felistia here with a review for you on this wonderful day.

Title: Okay let's start with the title of your poem. It's defiantly intriguing and invites the reader in. I would capitalize the first letter of the title though, since it is the title.

Description: The description in your poem was wonderful. While not really that colorful, it was full of rich, interesting words that made the poem meaty to read. Like in this part

Stuck in neutral and the fumes exhaust me

This was a great way to explain and make the reader feel what you were trying to say.

Rhythm: Your rhythm on the other hand wasn't great. While the sentences all looked the right size, there wasn't any punctuation to show me how to read the poem. There for I struggled to get into the rhythm of the poem.

Grammar and Punctuation:

not by others but by me

There should by a comma after "others".
There is now punctuation in your poem and to improve the rhythm you really do need to add some. I'm not very good at punctuation, so here's a link to help. https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12474.

Overall it was a great poem and I look forward to the next one. Never stop writing and I hope you have a great day\night.

Your friend, Felistia.