Very invisible before the dream

Salutations!

Your username is starting to become familiar to me. It's good that you keep yourself active and write a lot! I hope the reviews you've received on your works so far have been helpful. This poem certainly makes it seem like you've been practising.


If you remember what I mentioned a while back, this next line would make a bit more sense: I'm lost. See, I've never been particularly good at interpreting poetry, and my lack of experience and ability hampers me here. From what I can tell, the speaker is describing a misty scene where a knight is waiting to do battle with a knave, and though he's confident of his victory, he ends up being felled by his opponent. It could be that I'm just too inexperienced, but there could also be some confusion in the poem itself. I'll make suggestions that provide for both.

Let's start with the title. It's mysterious and cryptic, even in the individual words of which it consists: "invisible" alludes to something that is present, yet unseen, and perhaps also unobservable by conventional means, i.e. sight, if nothing else, whereas "dream" can refer to an actual dream, or it could be a metaphor referring to a surreal experience. Combine these two in a single title, and you evoke a mood of uncertainty and illusion. The reader can't even be sure about the nature of the title, as it could be mystical as readily as ominous.

Your title (as well as the title drop) and the first line start with "very". I'm not sure what you intended with that, but "very" tends to be avoided as an adjective, as it amplifies, yet also dulls. Exchanging it for a more impactful adjective or descriptive phrase is generally preferred, although many authors and critics simply recommend removing it completely. In this case, I feel the latter would be most appropriate, as less would be more.

The imagery is quite... nebulous. I feel that describes it perfectly; you mention "arid whorls", "vaporous in the light", "beyond the mist", and "vapors", all of which create a setting obscured with mist or fog. At the same time, you also rely on verbosity to enrich your poem. I can't say whether you succeeded or not, but it's always safe to err on the side of caution when applying wordiness. Often, as might be the case here, it confuses more than impresses. I'd advise trying to be more succinct, but since obscurity could have been your goal in the first place, I hesitate.

I don't see the point of the interjections. That's not to say they don't have one, but I simply can't tell why they're there, especially since they contrast with the rest of the poem so starkly. "Yo!" could still be considered fitting, although it does strike me as very ???, but I can't say the same for "Dig it!". They succeed in emphasising their lines... but what exactly are they emphasising?

The conclusion is the least clear part of the poem, for me. The antepenultimate line seems to be missing an auxilary verb, and the penultimate line disagrees in concord with the previous line. The last four lines are too far removed from the rest of the poem for me to have even an inclination as to what they mean.


It looks like you've worked on improving your poetry, but if you could provide some clarity, that would be greatly appreciated! It would be nice to hear of your progress. Keep on improving!

~ Hunter

Good morning (insert actual time of day here) LadyAstella!

I've been absent from the site for awhile, so I'm just getting back in the swing of things with reviewing. If any of my statements or criticisms seem weak, just understand aside from today, it's been months since I've reviewed any works.

General

While descriptive writing and fancy words have their place in poetry, they do not really serve a purpose if it makes the work too hard to understand. Lets break this down a little bit so that you have some examples of what I'm saying.

You beat arid whorls beyond the trees
Heavy! The Knave is coming

This brings to mind a dusty storm, driven by high winds, are you describing the dust thrown up by the feet of the Knave's horse? Or the Knave's own feet? Or does this serve to describe something else entirely?

So vaporous in the light
You converse with comely thoughts beyond the mist

Is the Knave vaporous? Hard to see beyond these arid whorls? The various brief switches to first person POV are a little confusing .

I think what you're trying to do here is paint a sort of jousting or potential fight scene? Maybe an arena with stands piled high, full of spectators hoping for a glimpse of blood and gore? I think with a little revision, this piece could be fantastic. I can see that you definitely have the potential to be an excellent writer, perhaps of epic poems and well written fight scenes? For now though; I would suggest editing this piece just a little so that I, as a reader who can only interpret it without your background and knowledge, might better visualize this picture you're trying to paint.

Grammar, Spelling, and Formatting

I like your formatting, I think it fits well with what you are attempting to do here. The only problem I have is that in the first half of the poem, the lines start with a capital letter, while in the second half, they do not. I would fix that, i think it works well to have each line capitalized; it just needs to be a little more uniform.

I see no spelling errors, so good on that!

Poetry really defies proper grammatical usage, but you may want to fix up the ending.

How many times the guest grow old while the crowd watched

First off, are the crowd and the guest(s) not the same people? But also, "guest" needs to be plural.


Thank you for reading through my review!
I wish you all the luck in your future writing endeavors,

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