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if your soulmate rolls over like phone minutes
month to month to month
and you find yourself comparing rates between carriers—

your costs have climbed too high
to justify the waste of all those moments
you could have spent talking to someone you loved.

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Points: 4109
Reviews: 94

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Sun Jul 01, 2018 3:33 am

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Wordzyy wrote a review...

Hey, Kale!

I enjoyed the read, one suggestion with the concept is we love spending time with the soulmate and the bond will be eternal. you should've replaced that word by partner or anything like that.

Since, you've stated this line.

your costs have climbed too high
to justify the waste of all those moments

I got the message you've said here. It is so true, why waste our precious time with the one we don't love and the face-to-face convo with our true love gives the best feel than a talking through the phone.

month to month to month
and you find yourself comparing rates between carriers—

The phone bill wouldn't matter to us if we speak to our true love, it's worthy right.

ait is realistic that you brought this to your recipe of your poem. Clever!

We does feel stingy if it's not our true love. Well said, the poem is written is amazingly simple manner. The message wa cut to the bone, you do have the knack for it.

This piece was unique. People hesitate to write in this subject, Well,a writer is the one who tells the things that's not able to be told.

I could see the plight of the speaker, the tone at the end was so moving.

Keep up the awesome writing! Looking forward for more of your works.

Kale says...

Thanks for the review, though I'm a bit confused about some of the things you mentioned in it. In particular, your comment about how "soulmate" should be "partner" confused me since the main idea behind the poem is that we shouldn't take oir soulmates for granted, even though they're there whether we talk to them or not.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

Wordzyy says...

we shouldn't take oir soulmates for granted, even though they're there whether we talk to them or not.

Exactly, what I meant was when we've said this

to justify the waste of all those moments
you could have spent talking to someone you loved.

using the word soulmate confuses me, we don't doubt our love. It has a strong bond and never abandons us. My kind suggestion was, just suggestion, no mistaking, if wrong let me know:

If replacing the word soulmate at the first line by partner since the word seems not much committed,it'll if it is mentioned as life partner and if the word soulmate is used in the last line like if we ever find never let go kind of theme, it would be more effective. We don't go in search for soulmate, it is kinda rare to find. None will give up if found,right.It's blended with our soul, how could one ever take 'em for granted.

Got my doubt?

Kale says...

I think so.

The commitment soulmate implies in the first line is intentional because people do take the important and irreplaceable things and people they have for granted, or don't even realize how important the people and things they have are, and fail to appreciate them.

Does that make sense?

Wordzyy says...

That makes more sense. It's so true. We don't know the value of something until we lose it or ourself.

Thanks for the response and clarifying it. Looking forward for more of your poems. You've got much potential.

Points: 35799
Reviews: 1274

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Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:46 am

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niteowl wrote a review...

Hi Kale! Niteowl here to leave a quick review!

Okay, so I saw this a few days ago when it was in the Literary Spotlight, and I found myself really confused about it. Like I felt like it was relatively straightforward to read, but something was missing so I didn't know what it meant. The fact that I was thinking about it days later is a compliment to the simple power of this piece.

So anyway, after all this thinking, I came up with a couple possible interpretations that may be way off base. At first, I was thinking that this "soulmate" isn't in the person's life because the person is being too picky, looking for a laundry list of things they want in a phone carrier/soul mate and they end up old and alone because they let their perfect person get away.

But then the "rolls over" bit made me think of someone rolling over in bed, which made me think...maybe the "soulmate" is already there, lying right next to the person. Still, the person is too busy shopping around and looking for someone better to appreciate what they have.

I don't really have any suggestions. Perhaps you could do something (I'm not sure what) to make the interpretation a little more clear. Then again, the ambiguity kind of works, so maybe there isn't anything to clarify.

Overall, this is a solid poem with some interesting possible interpretations related to how we can overlook or take for granted the value of our loved ones. Keep writing!

Kale says...

Great news! You are right on the dot with your interpretations.

And I do like ambiguity of meanings in my poems, so I'll take it as mission accomplished on that front.

niteowl says...

Fair enough lol. I just realized I might have an actual sort-of critique. I think "month after month after month" might sound better in the second line.

Kale says...

I'll think about it. Originally, I was planning to have that line set off with a parentheses or an indent ot something, but then I figured the shift in rhythm was enough on its own to set it apart. I'm not sure if making it blend in with the rest of the poem is something I want to do.

Points: 1820
Reviews: 129

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Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:40 am

Wriskypump wrote a review...

Okay, this doesn't sit well with me. Please let me explain why

Comparing love to phone minutes? And lovers to phone plans? It didn't work very well. Why does the soulmate roll over? While it makes sense in the terms of phone minutes, it does not in the realm of love and lovers.

But the main problem is that this reads more like a thought than a poem. The reason being is that there's not really rythm used in this, or much figurative language besides a simile and the personification that costs have climbed. Also a detached and unemotional mood.

Here is the definition of Poetry -
1. "A piece of writing that partakes of the nature of both speech and song that is nearly always rhythmical, usually metaphorical, and often exhibits such formal elements as meter, rhyme, and stanzaic structure."

2. "Something that arouses strong emotions because of its beauty"

So just consider that for future works

Kale says...

1. Who said anything about lovers?

2. Poetry comes in many forms, and many people have spent a very long time trying to define what poetry is and failed to reach a defining consensus outside of the simplest definition "not prose".

3. Even by the definition you quoted (without citation, so its credibility as an authority is questionable), my piece still qualifies as a poem as it is rhythmical, is an extended metaphor (not a simile) with additional metaphors nested within, and has stanzas in addition to using poetic devices like consonance, assonance, and alliteration (which are key to building the rhythm).

If you didn't like a poem, that's fine. Just don't make the mistake of declaring it not a poem and implying that the writer has no clue what they're doing.

Wriskypump says...

Well, true the definition of poem does vary quite a bit based on which dictionary you look at. Would I say easily interpretible what you have authored? Only so-so. But you like ambiguity, so that is your preference of style. I find something more relatable and gripping if I can actually know the concrete meaning, or at least the main message. Apparently I totally missed it?

Sorry if my opinion is a little rough, but I think this could be presented a lot better and maybe expanded on by one small stanza?

The rate of alliteration and consonance and the like found in this primarily last two words, which can hardly be heard with the ear when there is not at least a series of threes. The only one I notice that is longer, is the "O" sound in Soulmate rolls over like phone. If there is rhythm rolling through this it comes off a little bland.

I think some reviewers maybe telling you its solid and all that, but are sugarcoating the real way it strikes them, and reigning in their full bundle of notes, just so as to be nice and pass on. But will everyone sweeping by and merely complimenting it, vitalize it into a next level poem?

It may qualify as a poem by the majority of definitions, but it probably isn't making very many people jump up and down and applaud for Awesomeness and Encores. It's just kinda... hanging there

Kale says...

From the first line, and in bold so you can see the assonance: your soulmate rolls over like phone

There is a massive difference between reviews which are not sugarcoated and reviews which are based on unfounded opinions. Yours is the latter because the only valid piece of feedback in it is that you didn't like the poem because it didn't match up to your idea of what a poem should be like. That is not a useful critique because I am writing to conform with your ideas of what a poem should look like.

I also didn't write this to get applause and encores or to make people jump up and down because of overwhelmingly moving emotion. I wrote it to get people to think, with the ambiguity in the interpretations deliberately there to get the reader to think more deeply on soulmates and how one treats them. So far, of all the people who have commented to me about this piece, you are the only one who completely missed that.

More to the point, in your initial review, you cited simile and personification as two poetic devices I used when they are not present at all in the entire poem. Not everything that contains the words "like" or "as" is a simile, and if you take a closer look at the first line again and pay attention to what it's saying, you'll find that the first line literally reads "if your soulmate rolls over in the same sense that phone minutes roll over", which is a metaphor. Additionally, there are no inanimate objects being ascribed human traits: if anything, the exact opposite is occurring with inanimate traits being ascribed to a human. The name of that poetic device is chremamorphism.

Throwing more words around in an attempt to cover for the fact that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to poetry just makes you look worse than if you just admitted that you were looking for an excuse to dislike the poem.

You didn't like the poem. The end. No further attempts at justification needed.

Next time you review, I strongly encourage you to look past how you think a piece should be written and instead focus on trying to figure out what the writer was trying to accomplish so you can help them better accomplish it. At the very least, then your critiques will stand a better chance of being useful to the person you're critiquing.

Kale says...

*I am not writing to conform

Points: 650
Reviews: 766

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Mon Jun 25, 2018 5:47 pm

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Brigadier says...

Hi.

Will not be reviewing because I already reviewed it 5 times in discord.
Instead you just get the gif.

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