The beauty in writing lies in its freedom—
opening up to an inanimate object
without fear of judgment.
****
Here, words roam freely,
unburdened by how they’ll be received.
The pages don’t feel,
don’t respond,
don’t misinterpret,
don’t look at you with love, pity or disdain.
****
The beauty in writing steals you from reality,
It lets you live without restraints,
breaks the walls of the possible.
On the pages, there are no limits,
no rules but your own.
****
But I’m scared.
Scared that I’ll get addicted to the pages,
that human interaction will lose its appeal,
that I’ll get lost in a world
that exists only in ink;
A world
where silence feels safer than sound.
****
And when they finally notice—
when they realize my body was just a shell,
a walking robot with a far-gone soul—
I’ll have already become the pages.
****
Then they’ll read me,
and for the first time,
see the version of me
humanity and society never allowed to flourish.
That is the beauty of writing:
it bares truths too raw for this world.
****
But beauty this pure is rarely safe.
It is liberating but can be dangerous.
It invites you to linger,
tempts you to stay,
until you no longer remember how to leave.
****
Because writing can take you too far,
farther than you can return from.
It can steal your humanness,
And yet, I wonder—
what does humanness offer, anyway?
****
Beauty this powerful always has a cost.
So I ask:
Would you rather become the pages?
Or endure this torture that is humanness?
****
I’ll leave you with that.
****
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this is such a nice poem about writing!
It is a CRIME that this has been hanging in the green room for so long, so I'll give you my thoughts!
I like how you seem to be posing a question here. Embracing the bliss and excitement that comes with writing. Sometimes it's intoxicating to see the words trickle onto the pages. Your own world forming before your very eyes.
However, while the independence of writing is sublime, I believe you are also pointing to the idea of getting writing out there or presenting it to others. Paradoxically, writing shows our humanness maybe more than ever, and getting it out there would be (technically) rejecting this place where "silence is safer than sound".
I like the idea of "becoming your pages" and leaving your humanness. Maybe you could use a different word other than "humanness?" Something like humanity, maybe you could relate it to blood as well?
I personally like the spacing here with the asterisks, but I will caution you to ask, why are they important? I think I could also just see this poem with no asterisks and have no problem digesting it.
Of course, these are just my thoughts!
You seem to highlight that there is something that can't even ever be put into words when it comes to writing and it's really beautiful that you go into that!
From one writer to another, keep on writing and stay safe!
Hi there Carly! I saw your request for a review and so here I am 😀
The thing that strikes me the most about this poem is the part where the speaker starts to become writing:
I thought that was a powerful image. It was at that point where I formulated my interpretation of the poem in my head, and it really made me think about how anti-social creative writing can be, in some circumstances, at least the times when it feels like it’s just you and the page and you’re not writing for an audience. And conversely, I also found myself thinking about how social relationships put restrictions on how we express ourselves, for fear of being “misinterpreted” or being looked at with “pity or disdain”.
I thought these lines expressed an interesting take, since even though the speaker has ‘escaped’ their body in a way, what remains of them is connected to society in terms of being its opposition, a version that “society never allowed to flourish” - and can still be “read” by people.
Something you might want to think about is the order of your stanzas. At times I felt like the lines were jumping back to a previous theme when I thought we’d already moved on, for example:
This part felt like it was a repetition of the earlier stanzas (the danger of writing is that you may become addicted to it). At this point I was kind of hoping to see something new, like another detail or angle to it, because in longer poems I tend to expect more plot twists, so to speak. Could these lines maybe be grouped together somehow with the lines about fearing an addiction to writing?
Your poem also made me think about how the speaker’s “soul” is said to have left their body. I wonder what is written on the pages that seems to contain the speaker’s soul? Is it a novel? A poem?
Finally, another thing I like about your writing is how you used line breaks in:
It felt like each line paused at a natural place and also builds up the emotion of the poem. The pauses make the speaker seem to be adding emphasis and gravitas, which reflects how freeing yet tragic it might be to have their “soul” only be legible to people after they’ve decided to escape humanity.
Overall, I like the idea of the poem and how you’ve written it around this conflict between escaping from misunderstanding and perhaps still longing for understanding from people. My main feedback would be about the structure of the poem’s narrative and maybe thinking about which lines fit together and which can be cut out.
Hope this helps, and keep writing!
-Lim
Thank you so much for your feedback Lim. This is very detailed and makes me happy.
I%u2019ll take a look at the structure again and see if there are any readjustments I can make.
Thank You o me again!
For those who want to review.
Please note that when I published, the stanza format changed and everything became jammed together. I don’t know why that happened
For those who want to review.
Please note that when I published, the stanza format changed and everything became jammed together. I don’t know why that happened