Young Writers Society

Hello! My name is Via, and I'm here for a review! So... let's get started!

POSITIVES:

First and foremost, I love this poem. The theme and mood are well developed and completely out there. The absurdist and nihilistic vibes are very obvious and not clouded. Like what @whatchamacallit stated, your verbs and descriptions add on this absurd like and confused mood, which I strangely loved. The speaker seems very conflicted. Torn between good and bad, positive and negative. All the absurdist theme sets and messages all work well to enhance that conflicted character. Wonderful job on that!

The structure is very simple. I love poems that are this straight forward in structure. It allows the poem to be a more complex due to the juxtaposition of the intricate images. It also keeps the poem from being too hard to understand.

At first you used the word "I" and then you transitioned to "we". That was just so masterful and interesting to add to that emotion set and mood. Like what @whatchamacallit stated, your rhyme scheme was, let's just say, weird. From the first line's use of "bleed" and "deed", and then "bloom" and "soon." That peculiarity is very unique and adds more layers to poem. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, doesn't matter, it's beautiful.

@whatchamacallit also mentioned the lack of enjambment until that one line. I noticed it too. The flow was just perfect and then that sudden change, usually I find off putting. Here though it works!

All of your metaphors and images are well written and developed. Kudos to you for that!

Oh and thank you for using proper punctuation, which was needed to keep the flow consistent and rhythm well done.

My favorite line in particular is

in sight. I learnt we do not trust our eyes,

I trust that the bone will bloom.

We sign our wills under our tombs,

believe in the nothing of birth.

Heyo Lim! Saw your poem chilling in the Green Room and thought I'd drop by with a review <3

I am going to use some tips from your awesome poetryreVIEWS hashtag hehe - dividing this one up into interpretation and structure/details :)


Interpretation

Hmm so on a first read-through I'm getting some fairly absurd vibes from this one. A lot of the verbs and descriptions you use don't "make sense" so to speak, for example how do you "bleed a final stand" or how does a bone "bloom". After reading through a couple more times, one thing that really stands out to me is there's a lot of trust (or lack thereof) going on here. Not trusting our eyes, trusting the bone, trusting the blood, believing in the nothing of birth - it's like the speaker can't decide between cynicism and optimism. I think, on a whole, this poem is about life and kind of see-sawing between nihilistic and naive and realistic. In the final couplet, I feel like the speaker finally settles on nihilism and is mocking people who give life so much meaning when it's really just "the nothing of birth".

I wouldn't be surprised if I got this totally wrong from your interpretation - I honestly read it a bit differently every single time I read it, which I personally adore in poetry <3 Like one idea that crossed my mind is maybe this is about the family vs found family idea, especially with references to "blood thinning" and "bone blooming". (Both really striking images, by the way!)


Structure / details

I love the simple structure you went for with this one, I think it helps emphasize the complex imagery and keeps it from making the poem feel overwhelmingly intricate or hard to dissect.

The two stanzas also separate "I" language from "we" language, which I found really interesting! It's like the poem starts zoomed in and then with the subtle incorporation of "we do not trust" in line three it starts zooming out slowly and then by the end of the poem we're at a bird's-eye-view or something c:

I did find the rhyme pattern you used a bit confusing - like we have "bleed" rhyming with "deed" on the same line, and then "bloom" with "soon" across stanzas, and then stanza 2 is your standard ABAB set-up. It's definitely not a huge deal or anything, it just made me go "huh, I thought there wasn't a rhyming scheme in the first stanza but now there is in the second??" Which, come to think of it, could potentially be a choice to match the shift in perspective/zoom!

Another thing I found interesting was that for the most part, you didn't use any enjambment - but the two lines you did, it was really heavy! Especially dividing a familiar phrase like "the end nowhere / in sight" in half is super noticeable and abrupt, and then compared to the next stanza where each line ends in a comma or period, it definitely contrasts that quite a bit. Not sure if that was intentional or what the thought was behind that, I just thought it was a cool little detail ^^



All in all, this was a really interesting poem to dive into! I like how kind of puzzl-ish it is, and all the different layers you have incorporated into it - I feel like if I spent more time on it there's even more stuff I could find buried in there but I'm afraid I've zapped my brain xD I hope this review is useful for ya - it's not super critique/suggestion heavy, but hopefully my reactions/interpretations still prove helpful :)

All the best! Keep writing you wonderful poet <3

-whatcha

I. Adore this. It's so hauntingly beautiful and uniquely written; it's incredible !! The shortness is befitting of the poem, and even after only eight lines, the ending hits like a truck. Everything, down to the way you've divided the lines, serves to add a spooky, almost chant-like mood to the poem.

I also love how interpretive it is: I see it as a person growing pregnant, perhaps to some sort of sacrificial purpose, as the blooming of bone and thinning of blood can allude to this, though there are so many other ways it can be taken. No matter what someone envisions when they read this, it will no doubt be utterly gorgeous. Gah!!! Every single word is so beautiful!!! This poem is absolutely incredible