ankyl-atel-form

never stop writing good poetry <3

Hi there Ley! It’s Coffee here to drop a bandage of a review! I hope to glue together the broken cracks of your glass with this review!




First of all, I understand this may be a personally written poem as I read in your About that you are a medical student, so I hope you are slowly finding your way t heal! I won’t ask why you are struggling(that would be too much) but I hope you stay strong and find people who can support you!! Fighting~
As I hope you know, I am always here for a helping hand any way I can and you can reach out to me whenever and I’ll try my best whether it be just cheering up or advice!! And remember:it’s ok not to be ok!!

Now onto the sweet poem at hand!

Wow. This was so incredibly creative and I loved the title, it’s very unique to the topic and adds a great touch to the piece!
The way you described your feelings and struggles as a disease seemed very realistic too and how you mentioned your coping mechanism as helping others was a tremendous visual representation for me.


I could practically see a broken young woman(sorry if that’s not your gender or how you prefer to be called) smiling and beaming at patients, helping them and doing her job-acting as a ray of sunshine for people who have been stuck in the dark… and her heart is stuck in the dark, it screams and yells in pain, tape stuck on its mouth, tears forming but she pushes it down and forces herself to smile. She locked her heart away, convinced she wasn’t in pain.

“ ankyl- (broken), atel (imperfect), -form(what I am),
and when you put me together, I become a diagnosis,
one that kills any and all the step foot near me,
I am contagious and I caused a plague. ”

Oooo! I really love this poem! Being a sophomore undergrad in college myself, it's pretty relatable to think about. To work on college all while trying to grow as a person (all while being drowned in more and more work, only to graduate and find more work) is hard, and sometimes we feel broken despite doing what we thought we wanted all our life. I am in college for psychology, and my girlfriend is going for nursing, which it seems like you are going for as well. Nursing is VERY hard, but know your work changes the world and people around you.

I think I will show this to my girlfriend as well, she'll appreciate it

Now that this piece is out of the green room I feel a slight bit more comfortable reviewing as it is poetry and that is admittedly not my strong point with reviewing.

But all that aside...

The first stanza instantly brought the context of the piece. The writer is a surgical student and a student for 7 years! That's quite an accomplishment...quite deserving of the pride referenced at the end of the stanza.

"Breath[ing] papers and case studies" what a relatable line! Literally exactly what medical school is like. But here's the thing. "Breathing" is a word that signifies life. The line suggests that the author is succeeding quite well in school, and I can only imagine the As the author has received.

One quick suggestion though, and I apologize if there is a purpose to this being like this but I did find that the switch of tense between "repaired broken bones" and "deliver children" a bit distracting but please keep in mind that I am a novelist and I and to be on the look out for those switches in tense. But maybe that's actually the order of events? This is probably such a minor thing you can just ignore it but it did interfere a bit with the flow for me personally so I thought I'd point it out.

Anyway, onto stanza 2. This brings out quite the contrast between the first and second stanzas. And perhaps it hints at a slight burn out? The author gives her all into what she does. She mentions that she helps others, buttt...now I am seeing that she is breaking under her work. The emphasis on her being the worst disease certainly added a lot of impact to the last part. And I appreciate all the medical terminology such as the surgical cap, stained and chronic-this disease is suggested to be getting worse the longer this person is in school...

Stanza 3
Ah! The medical suffixes! A very true thing in medical school. I really like how you developed the name of this diagnosis that the author has given herself. Now at this point, I have learned that the student is a killer...one that kills all near her-quite a different take from the beginning lines of all that the character has accomplished in her 7 years of school. And whatever this disease is...it is contagious. This sounds quite critical and dangerous, giving off a sense of foreboding.

The second to last line really got me a bit confused. So the student definitely heals others and works for their good, but also infects the ones she tries to heal. But I don't think this line is supposed to be literal. I think perhaps this is more of a metaphorical thing at this point. I'm guessing it has to do with personal relationships. She tries to heal others, but also casts too many of her burdens on others and then attempts to heal them again. And of course all of this is kept in line with the medical terms to add a sense of mystery and questioning. Well written lines!!

The last stanza explains that the author wants to find a cure for herself. She heals others but cannot save herself. Instead she dedicates her life to helping others and tries to avoid the close contact hinted at in the second to last stanza that will cause her infection to spill out on others.

In a sense, I take the reference to PPE to be her protection against hurting others by allowing them into her broken personal life and spilling the disease-the pain and suffering she experiences- onto another individual. So she wears PPE in her personal life to protect others from what she is on the inside.

And one last suggestion that again may be there for a purpose and I just didn't understand why, but I felt that the capital "I" in the begining of stanza 2 was distracting since none of the other i's are capitalized. Again, sorry if my suggestions don't help or are annoying. I'm a novelist and only do poetry on the side.

Overall, I thought the poem was super good! I relate to a lot of the themes as a nursing student. And I hope that this character is able to find a way to heal and learn to help herself, not just the patients on the operating table.

-Kaia

Hello fabulous potato friend! Yay for more Ley poetry! This is review 390 for me Let's jump right in!

Okay first of all- Lovely cover art and very unique title, these caught my attention right away sop nice work on that!

i have been in college for seven years.
i breathe papers and case studies.
i even repaired broken bones, and deliver children.
yes, i can say that i am proud of myself.

but I have spent all seven years helping others—

i studied almost every single disease,
yet, i feel like i am the worst one.

seven years, and i still don't know how to fix myself,
i still haven't found a cure for the disease that is me.
and i don't think i will anytime soon. so,
i can only continue to heal others, and hope that someday,
somehow, i learn to heal myself.

Hiya there, Ley! I'm here with a quick review. ^^

I have to say, I've read a lot of poems recently. Like, a lot. But this one feels different than most. It feels personal; it feels beautiful and it feels real. I remember you saying, I think in a pad once, that you weren't very experienced with poetry (apologies if I'm misremembering or if this wasn't you; my memory kind of sucks XD), but this feels like an experienced poet's work. Nah, I take it back. This feels like a person's work, who put so much thought into making something so beautiful.

It's rare that I can say there are poems that made me cry. To this day, I think that number is 4 or 5. And... that number has just been bumped up. I am close to sobbing, and it's all because of this thing that you wrote. I think it's funny how much I can both relate and feel completely stranger to in everything in this poem... If you still managed to make me cry in a poem somewhat about being a surgical student when I have absolutly no knowledge about anything surrounding that, then you really have a talent because I could never do that.

I love that you took - I'm not actually sure what they are. Some kind of roots, maybe? - words like ankyl and atel to create your own word, your own disease. It's a super creative way to show what you're feeling and it's also just interesting. I love, too, that you connect it back to what you were saying before, and connect it to other things after. 'Being' a disease, even when you studied so many.

It's both a beautiful and heart-wrenching idea to call yourself a disease and the fact that you can't find a cure for yourself. Beautiful in that it's an amazing metaphor, heart-wrenching in what it really means. And the way you connect all these feelings to medical terms or processes, or anything related, like being a student studying this, diseases, healing, and whatnot is perfection. Like, everything is connected flawlessly and it all just makes so much sense.

And ahh there are so many lines that I love but I couldn't possibly fit all of them here without quoting the whole thing.

it seems that even if i bring more life into this world,
i still feel dead.

but I have spent all seven years helping others---
just to watch myself crack and wither

somehow, i learn to heal myself.