outside with friends

Hey there. Jonathan here to review your poem! Let's get right to it, shall we?

This is great. I love your imagery here, and how it's introduced right from the beginning-- "i'm where plants touch the clouds". You also use similes/figurative language really well and it's clear you know what you're doing.

In this review I'll be selecting a few lines to talk about. Disclaimer: you don't have to listen to any of my advice whatsoever. You're the author, after all!

Okay. Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start! (Sound of Music reference, sorry.) "i'm where the plants touch the clouds" ~ The use of "plants" here is a little vague and doesn't help me picture what you're saying. Even a broad word like "flowers" or "vines" would be better here.

"little angels, all of them, with parcels" ~ I'm not sure what you mean by "little angels, all of them". The "them" is a little ambiguous (in my mind) and leaves me a little bit confused as to if you're referring to your fingers or plants or something else entirely.

"who know how to treat the animals." ~ "Treat" is an awkward and vague word here. Did you have a specific definition in mind here?

"i will greet you with ripples, showing that / i know that you're here and i couldn't be" ~ "Showing that" is definitely not the most concise or evocative way to say this.

"happier. i feel alive here- in the mist." I like this ending. Excellent job with this and keep writing. ALSO. I apologize for any mistakes/inconsistencies. It's super late and I'm about to fall asleep in my chair. Keep writing!

Jonathan

Hello!
So this is quite a nice poem. I like all of the images of rain and plants. All of the images are really concrete, and that's what makes this poem so solid.
Honestly, all the formatting, your choices with capitalization/punctuation/line breaks etc were really well done, and the poem flows well. Everything I mention below will just be slight suggestions that /might/ make the poem better. You have to decide if changing the poem how I recommend would be wise.
My only beef with this is just that it seems a tiny bit vague as to what the real meaning is behind this. Like, I'm getting a lot of rain imagery, but I can't tell if the narrator /is/ rain, or is just friends with the rain, or what. Clarifying that might be a good thing to take this technically concrete but meaning-fully vague poem into the realm of all-around concreteness, but then again, it might also take away from the sort of ethereal mood. But I sort of get a little bit of a feeling from this that you yourself don't really know the meaning of this poem, like you were writing words that sound nice. If I'm wrong, by all means, keep it the same, or nearly the same, but if I'm right, maybe you should find some meaning in it that you want to focus on, and rewire your poem to fit that.

probably the vaguest part is
"showing that

i know that you're here and i couldn't be

happier."
like, i know what it means, but all the words just seem so lukewarm to me.

"angels" feels a little cliche to me also.


You introduce us to "you" in the second paragraph, sort of switching the point of view a bit to second person. It was a tiny bit unexpected. Maybe you could mention "you" in the first stanza?
also, I kinda wish you'd use actual dashes instead of hyphens, because I originally read the first two lines as: "
i'm where the plants touch the cloudssmall fingers with long nails here,"
which doesn't make a ton of sense. :p

also, I don't really get the "find me with spiked nets" part. am I missing something?


Anyway, great poem! It's good to see you back at YWS.
Keep writing!
~fortis

Hello! herbgirl here for a review!
So first of all, I really like your poem. The imagery is beautiful, and a little strange, but all the better for it. I feel like this really captures the feeling of just lazing around outside, and feeling totally connected to all your surroundings. However, while I really did like this poem, there are a few things I think you could adjust.
One thing that I noticed in your poem that sort of threw me off was where you chose to split your lines. One instance that really stood out to me as strange was "making it rain cats and dogs. find/me..." I felt like this split kind of threw off the rhythm, but this is more of a preference thing. I would suggest just reading through the poem again, pausing wherever a line ends so you can hear just one more time how the splits make the poem sound.
Another thing that bothered me a little was the capitalization in this poem. At first glance, it looks like you might be going with all lowercase letters, but I noticed that some of the 'I's were capitalized and some were not. This can be easily remedied. I would suggest making all letters lowercase, it seems to fit with the free-flowing theme of the poem.
I had just two more things that I thought I could suggest, they're very small. I don't like the dash in between the two stanzas. I suggest keeping the stanzas separate, but taking out the dash, That's just my opinion, really, it's not very important, but I thought it interrupted the flow of the poem. The other thing was even smaller, I recommend taking the last three words, "in the mist", and making them their own line. It will give those final lines more of an impact.
Anyways, despite these small edits, I thought this was a wonderful poem! Beautiful.
Thanks for the read,
herbgirl