Hi Lightsong! I've been looking forward to reviewing this, and here I am! So, let's get to the review shall we?
One thing I like about your poetry is that it doesn't seem to like become stale - you don't just recycle the same thing over and over again, but as a reader I see growth and development.
My first critique is I think the title sounds a bit cliche or like too "lovey-dovey" for a poem that has all these layers about secrets and such...
I liked the format you used a lot. The lower case letters made everything seem more intent and mysterious and you weren't using sentences but commands or descriptions in a lot of the statments anyways so capital letters weren't necessary. I liked the numbers too because the interesting thing about this poem is that it wasn't delivered through a narrative. (ie. it didn't say, "one day I fell in love. Then the next day my love and I did this. Then I had a thought about that.") instead it had narrative draw and plot and conflict but these were expressed by phrases and statements and commands rather than just straight up prose. So the numbers sort of mimicked a list and highlighted the fact that the delivery was unique.
I also appreciated that all of the stanzas began with these half statement things where as a reader I didn't know what the noun was - mysterious. And it also highlights the theme which seems to be something about hidden love. Like these two people aren't allowed to be in love, or people wouldn't approve, so they have to live their relationship within these secret means. You build up this whole metaphor of caves with hidden doors and stuff which works as a really great physical emobodiement of what you're talking about. I enjoy the imagery that you used in describing the setting of this -- there was a lot to work with in the imagery that seemed symbolic like the "horned creature" (satan?) and the "winged moon" (angels? spirits?).
Another little critique is that a few times you use the word "it" and I had no idea what the "it" was -- was it the tunnel the relationship, both? or something else?
For me the poem seemed to have pretty good flow - even while not always using full sentences (which is hard to do! so kudos!) I did find there were a few lines that seemed a bit wordy, or had content that seemed insignificant. For instance in this line, "and winged moon painted the wall and floor." what does the detail of "and floor" add? We already get the image, why mention it twice? or these two lines: "and our parents (if they aren’t afraid of what/ is in the dark) so that they can see the cores of our bodies" also seem particularly wordy. I would go through and try to eliminate 2 or more words from each line if you can. Especially in a poem where you've committed to not writing complete sentences the whole time, I think an exercise like that can be really helpful to get at the core of the message and clear out anything that is just extra fluff.
Overall, I enjoyed the piece. It was intriguing, it was poetic, and it painted a dramatic story through this description of a hidden relationship. Well done!
As always, please let me know if you have any questions about my review!
best,
~alliyah
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