An Alien in Paris

High quality as always, Kylan. I thought this one moved too quick for me, though. I found myself without any pauses or breaths to take and it was over before I knew it. Perhaps that's the effect you wanted -- perhaps you want to drive home to dizzying feeling of a new place. I didn't like it thought. I wanted more time to reflect on what you were trying to say.

On a more critical level, I disliked stanza #2 . "Jet pack & glow sticks" seems lazy, as a contrast, and a "misunderstood but glad cowboy" is one of your worst lines.

Stanza #3 has hiccups, too: "I am angrier with myself for letting this happen--/I was standing sacredly in the Saint-Eustache" needs some word. You can do better than "standing sacredly" and the first line just needs something more unique in its place.

Stanza #4 I like the language but this is where the acceleration really kicks in and I start to lose track. Work on the rhythm and flow here. It spirals into a lot of exclamative phrases and suddenly we're talking about religion. I don't know, but I think this is the point where it almost feels like two separate poems, and I just felt sort of lost.

Hope this helps in any revisions.

okay, i don't know if it's just from reading gal's review first, but now this poem really spoke to me on the idea of being american abroad, in a world learning more and more (or at least a world where i am seeing more and more) about diversity, opening and opening to learn about everyone in the world.

even if it's not, the discrepancies between the two tones here speaks to what i consider the crudeness of america (because it's known) compared to the elegance of a country abroad (because it's only partially perceived).

and up until the last stanza i'm good with following that feeling: i am not worthy or elegant. i want to be dark and mysterious like you. but the last speaks, i think, too directly to colonialism. it's super nice and tongue-in-cheek, but wayyy too obvious after pretending to innocently want to belong in the rest of the stanzas. i would leave that to you to find out how to make it more sheer.
or perhaps it needs to be more earnest, to really leave the reader with a bad taste in their mouth. keep the innocence. let it ring as innocence. keep your opinion to yourself and let the reader build their own to match you.

one more thing: bunny is jarring. in a different way than glow sticks and jet packs and cowboys, bunny seems way too light, and you've already got a zipper in the line below that, so i think it would work better with rabbit. consider?

i missed you. message me! let's discuss more if you have questions.

First of all, can I just congratulate you on your creativeness? Good. Because that's what I'm doing. Congratulations! Also-- though this piece did not hook me at once (as most pieces should, but I'll let you slide...) I was fortunate enough to read deeper, and find a little genius treasure-y thing of a piece. Good job on that.

So, I've got a few things to say, most of them compliments, which is good for you. I suppose we should start with the positives, yes? That usually tends to make a person smile.

Firstly, as aforementioned, this a horribly creative piece. I’ve never seen one quite like it—and it’s certainly not beautiful, as most poems should be (of course, I mean not beautiful in the most inoffensive way humanly possible), but you’ve managed to pull that off. So I applaud you. It’s interesting, it’s new, it’s unique, and I suppose that’s what drew me towards it.

Also, let’s not lie here, shall we? We both know (as it is review day), I’m doing this for points. But, if I may point out, I hate poems. So, I could’ve easily taken a glance at this, and just scrolled by. But I didn’t, so pat yourself on the back for that. Mostly, because it was so different.

You’ve made this piece work. It’s awkward, not poetic, or lyrical. It lacks that musical quality most poems require. But you’ve sculpted this amazing thing, pieces of writing that you’ve laced together, and you’ve made it just brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. There’s a excellence it holds that just makes it so much better. And feel honored, because it really is great. And I’m really happy I’ve stumbled upon this piece.

Right. Now that I’ve polished, waxed, and shined up your ego like no one ever should, and handed you billions of compliments on a silver platter, let’s get right to point, and start with the negatives of this piece. After some scouring, some nitpicking, and some tearing up, I’ve managed to dig up a few bad things.

I don’t know whether it was intended or not, but this poem was seriously confusing. Like I was pretty much lost the entire time I was reading. Including the times I went over it, again and again. If it was intended… A+ to you. If not… buddy, we have some work to do.

Example uno: “Suddenly in the mezzanine filled
with disembodied madrigals
people see me for who I really am:”

No, I didn’t have to dig up my dictionary for this one, but I near about did. Your vocabulary is splendid, don’t get me wrong. But all those fancy words, with definitions that God-knows-what… it doesn’t match with the piece. It’s like you’re showing off, cramming all these words into once stanza. Calm down.

Even the next line: “a jet pack & glow sticks,
a misunderstood but glad cowboy
a dark ceiling that everybody is banging on
for the dubstep to stop.”

Is so deliciously simple—and it’s good that way. Work on your spacing a bit.

And really, that about wraps up the whole roll. All in all, good piece. Nice job. I enjoyed it.

And I’m hoping to see some more work from you soon! Adios!

~Bandit

Hi Kylan,

I want to say this is about your recent days abroad, but your work is always subject to extreme fluctuations of interpretation. So I will not focus on that. The poem is good, you know that already. Even so, it's jarring and the saddest part is that you probably know that too, seeing as how you started with a sudden occurrence.

"I am angrier with myself for letting this happen" <---- Yeah okay, you're doing this again. These poems of yours always have the tendency to stop what they're doing at a moment's notice and dart off on another plane in order to make point after point, never to return - or if they return, it is crashing back to the theme of the poem like a rock dropped from the Eiffel. A rave. The serenity of a cathedral. The middle of a Metropolis. The roman road that Christ walked on. And then, of course, no discernible setting at all, but an appeal to the universe. And fin. You have good ideas and a waxed voice, the imagery is passable of course. But you try to cram so much into such a short period of time that the reader is left thinking that it may have been better to just give them a piece of paper with the theme scribbled on it, for all the lack of concern for his well-being this poem has delivered. You used to tell people that every word in a poem needs to optimize its efficiency, to provide the most firepower it can within an extremely limited constraint. But you take this too far, you don't give these words enough room to breathe. They're efficient to the point where lungs beat against the linings of the skin without a buffer to hold them back. Let us go for a ride. Not just from point A to point B.

You've shifted from your old stream-of-consciousness overdrive to a body of work dedicated to surgical precision and devoid of the acceptable excesses that make humans more than biological robots. Find a balance. Also, hello, and I hope you have been keeping well.

Hope that helped,
Galerius