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125,021 Literary Works • 672,742 Reviews
Hi there, whatcha!
The genres you have matched to this poem make a lot of sense! I felt a frenetic melancholy mood throughout. The tone is also very layered and nuanced. The concept of being too attached to water imagery seems a little mocking and satirical at first, especially with the line about the bleeding ink, but there's a sense of genuine introspection andoverwhelm towards the end with "in a flood it overtakes the poem". Relatedly, the overall narrative seems to match that sense of being 'taken over' by something, perhaps sadness.
Language
My favourite lines were:
I love the juxtaposition here - it's very dramatic and does have a sense of irony to it!
This poem also does make me wonder who the speaker is addressing in this poem. Is it their usual readers? Or is it potentially a stranger? Or are they just ruminating to themselves?
Additionally, I feel like you've touched on nearly all common terms associated with water in this poem - from waterfalls to wells and floods. That's pretty impressive! (I wonder what you're going to go for in a water poem next. More saltwater features? An oxbow lake? Underground rivers?)
Structure
As usual, I love how you play with form! The (s)well(s) thing and the stanza surrounding it is arranged really cleverly, as that triangular shape of the lines matches both the idea of an outpour of water imagery and also visually creates tension and release, if that makes sense.
The only place I got stuck with this format was - "page on the pooling" - maybe because it needs to be read right-to-left? "pooling on the page"? And no other part of the poem is read like that, so maybe that's why I was confused by it.
Placing the first and last lines on the same ~indentation level~ gives the poem a very distinct shape, which I think is useful given how much the shape is played around with in the 'body' stanzas.
Miscellaneous
Plain white background seems new to me, but I like it! It does seem to emphasise that fade-in effect the words have in the beginning. The only thing I'd watch out for here is maybe that the first two lines might be a bit heard to read. I managed it, but it may not work so well with some screens~
That's all
Overall, I really enjoyed this poem whatcha and I do regret only reviewing it so late ha <3 Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!
Cheers,
-Lim
Hey whatcamacallit!
Elinor here. I'm going to do my best to review your fantastic poem, especially as it's been sitting in the Green Room for far too long. I realize as much as I love and know my fellow present and former members of the mod team, I haven't read as much of their writing as I might have liked.
I really love how experimental this is, especially in the way the poem is laid out. I'm sure this is intended, but to me it evoked the feeling of being on a beach and watching waves lap against the shore. Additionally, while I love the effect of what I'm assuming is your handwriting, and think it's an integral part of the poem, it was a little bit difficult to read at times and I found myself having to squint. I'm not sure if you're intending to try and get this published but it maybe an issue if you do go that route. I think if you were somehow able to type this out it could still work, but I just thought I'd mention it.
I thought it was interesting that you had this categorized in "humor" -- I didn't strike me as a a funny poem but moreso a self aware one. I had a smile on my face, but I didn't necessarily laugh. Of course, it's all about the effect you're planning to go for with this.
Hope this helps! Keep writing, and by all means please keep up the awesome work.
All the best,
Elinor
Hey whatcha! Spearmint here for a review
Okay, so first up-- this poem is amazing! Love the format and the creativity with the wording (especially the (s)well(s), like alliyah mentioned). And I might be wrong, but I think the frothing part is also able to be read both ways? If so, it might be clearer if you added parentheses somewhere within "frothing," for example "froth(ing)." Then the horizontal line would read "soon swells into a waterfall, froth from my palm." I know having just "froth" might sound a little weird, so what I would do is add a verb or something in front of it, like "soon swells into a waterfall, spilling froth from my palm." (Other verb ideas: gushing, pouring, spouting, cascading). This is just really picky though, so feel free to keep your poem the way it is! ^-^
Another thing that felt a little unnatural to me was the reading right-to-left part ("pooling on the page"), because in English it's always left-to-right. That's totally English's fault, though, not yours!
Overall this poem was super creative and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting this work of art!
omg this is so cool!!!
thanks Kendall!!! <3
Can you send me this in an easier to read format? I lost my glasses.
Aah I'm sorry! It is meant to be a bit of a concrete poem, so the formatting plays a fairly significant role in how I intended the poem to be read. If you'd really like a plain text version, though, I can PM it to you - there are just some places where the lines interact that are impossible to capture in plain text. But if you do want the plain text regardless I can send you a PM ^^
Can you change the color only?
This is really pretty! And I think the message is that a single image might *seem* limiting, but with a bunch of creativity it is actually boundless ~ just like the multiple forms water can take, or the multiple ways it is portrayed visually and poetically in the poem itself. I would actually probably lean into finding meaning a little bit more in this, rather than trying to make it "jokey" ~ I think "dramatic" fits the genre well, and maybe "literature" but no sure about "humor".
Loved that the "dramatic" line of "comes out too fast for me to construct a dam" was the one that was really long and dropping; made it feel almost panicky to read. This was overall really easy to follow (the very top was a bit light, but still read-able).
My very favorite part was probably the (s)well(s) chunk - I mean how clever is that to be able to read both ways. I'd love if you did that more than once in the poem if possible!
Overall, love the concept! And the execution was very polished and the image looked clean! It's a good, fun read.
Aww thanks for the lovely comment alliyah! <3 Mm I did debate the genre a bit; I only really included it in humour because I was poking fun at myself in my head while I was writing it, but I can definitely see how it might make more sense to just stick to dramatic c: