On Your Feet Soldier

Hi there! Happy Review Day, from the Purple Prose Eaters. First off, I'm really glad that a piece of fiction was able to get you through a personal war, showing again the merits of what we do <3

Now, this is basicañly right up my alley. I grew up on Irsh Tenors and ballads etc. Ive even written a few myself, so while this isnt EXACTLY that, it toes the line really well.
I love the.combination of the two eras of warfare. Honestly, for about 500 years it was quite a hodge podre between melee and trench warfare, anf friendly fire is something that has existed forever. I also so like the metaphor of it in relation to your own life, where friendly fire can come in the form of a metaphorical backstabbing instead of a bullet to the chest.

This piece flowed really well. It has this grit and demand to it thst you cant hrlp but feel like you're right beside them ln the battlefield i know Luminality mentioned it, but i also noticed the rhyming of the opening and closing lines, and really dug it.

Your armor is only dented, not broken.

Every tv show and movie ever, take note. Armor was made to withstand some damage, crazy concept I know xD

no one is untouchable—it can strike anyone.

in the words of Spears from Band of Brothers, you have to admit that you're already dead.

But, dear Soldier, you must wear sacrifice as a badge of honor.

Ah, see this i have a gripe with personally. This says nothing about your writing, but the older I get the more i find this to be a misguided view of war and soldiers. While what they id IS heroic at times, much of it is vanity at the hands of their generals, and no matter how brave their actions are, in many cases they should have never been in that situation to begin with. But i digress xD it's also not always the same when it comes to our lives as opposed to warfare.

But overall i love this piece. It makes me think of Sabaton especially, who you might like to check out. They are a Swedish? metal band and all their songs revolve around real military events like WW1, WW2, Japan, Eastern Europe conflicts, etc.

~ Messy

Hello Carly! Lim here with a review.

I thought this poem was nice and cohesive, focusing on the metaphor of a person living life as a soldier getting through a battle. It seems to have a motivational tone. The themes that come across to me are suffering and resilience. Describing life as a “battlefield” seems to portray life as full of suffering. Yet while the speaker allows the solider to grieve, they also urge the soldier to press on, forming a message of resilience (rather than denying the suffering or demanding that the soldier shrug it off, for instance). That aspect of this poem sort of reminds me of the poem ‘Sea Gods’ by H.D.

Something I like about the poem is how you’ve rhymed the ending and made it echo the beginning of the poem.

Stand tall on the edge of defeat.
****
One more time, Soldier—
On your feet!!!

I liked the unexpectedness of the rhyme between defeat/feet, because it brings the poem full circle without feeling too repetitive (which poems that rhyme all the way can sometimes get). Ending with a call to get “on your feet” also conveys the motivational tone of the poem.

Some questions I have for you as the poet:
I noticed that you’ve combined imagery of a more medieval era of warfare (the dented armour) and modern warfare (no man’s land, trench, smoke-stung), with war drums also making an appearance (they’re not modern, but definitely present in more recent times than plate armour). Was that intentional? Does it mean something within the poem?
“In the battlefield, friendly fires burn,” <- Does “friendly fires” have a double meaning here? I know “friendly fire” is when people on the same side shoot each other (which links into the next line where families ties “break”) but the ‘s’ in ‘fires’ makes me think of them as *actual* individual fires breaking out on the battlefield.
I felt like the pace of the poem was quite slow. Looking at the lines, I feel like even ‘fast-paced’ ideas like the soldier ‘taking a breathless charge’ come with a longer preamble (the bolded line) and lines with pauses in between (the commas), which seems to slow the reading pace down. Was this intentional?

So with smoke-stung eyes and a heart heavy with loss,
I urge you, with a rallying cry,
Take a breathless charge—
Stand tall on the edge of defeat.

Another thing I like about the poem is how you’ve kept the poetic voice consistent through the poem. It does come across as a message from a specific person. There’s a connection established to the imagined audience with the use of “you”, and the way the speaker uses imperatives like “don’t think of yourself as weak” and “take a breathless charge” fits with the idea of this audience being like a ‘soldier’.

Overall, I liked the shape and feel of the poem. The blending of imagery from different eras of warfare stood out to me as mentioned - to me it kind of feels like combining those images focuses the poem on an abstract idea of a soldier that spans across time and space, rather than situating it in a specific kind of battle. My main feedback might be to explore the rhythm of the poem (for example, faster or slower reading pace, longer or shorter lines) - there might be potential there to polish the story.

Hope this helps, and keep writing!
-Lim