Young Writers Society

Hi Lim,

I was reading some of your poems, <.< and tried in vain to *like* this poem an additional time, but alas I had already liked it! So thought I'd leave just a few thoughts -

There's so many lovely phrases in this one like "liquid night" for the ocean !! & "film of time" ah that's a great way to look at things that build up on ships! and for some reason I just love the line "And then come barnacles:" - and the way you describe them is so inventive and poetic. It reminds me of those documentaries about the investigations on the sinking of the Titanic and how time is preserved not-quite in death, not-quite in sleep at the bottom of the ocean. And then there's the bizarreness that we're able to enter that sacred frozen time and still be alive. The poem lets the reader become part of the "life" observing, and breaking into the frozen moment.

I like that you describe the knight's brow!! as breaking rather than the shield too, as it makes a person ascribe whatever emotion that breaks the knight's brow then to the ship and imaging what and why the ship might be feeling.

My only critique would be - at the end of the poem I don't quite get if the boat has cracked now or moved or why it's now not staying put / staying asleep anymore. What happened between stanza 3 and stanza 5 I feel like there's a little bit of a skip in the narrative that the reader misses and has to fill in.

The little minimalist graphics are neat and add to the poem nicely too; they look like bubbles of course - so a little added imagery - but also they look like echoes in reverse, with sort of a "sinking" and "rising" look that brings up again this weird contrast between life/death, sleep/awake with the observations and the poem literally the hinge in between the two parts.

(Also just noticed this is another ship / sea poem ! to maybe go with your recent mash-up poems' imagery!)

Never stop writing ~

alliyah

This poem is a picture of gothic greatness begging to be painted and framed on a wall. Your words are enough!
"Picture Perfect" is, however, a nice phrase that doesn't exist-even Da Vinci art had flaws, and while I hesitate to call this a flaw, as it has more to do with my subjective whims than any objective assessment of art...
I HATE this thing you often see in poems, where you'll reach the end of a thought, signified by a definitive period, but then the poet will continue on with a different thought on the same line, to drop down and finish the new thought on the next one!
But, nevermind, this is nothing more than a silly personal preference...

hello hello Liminality! good morning, good evening, or whatever applies to you right now. i’m here to review your poem today, and i hope this will be helpful to you in future writing! ok, let’s jump in...

the first stanza: i think this sets the mood nicely for the poem. it’s beginning the story, and painting a wonderful image in the readers mind of this dark, shadow filled sea. the only thing i would change here is in the first line. i would put “a” before “deep-moving force”. it makes for a better flow.

the second stanza: again, strong imagery. the descriptive words you use are unique and strong. i have nothing else to say here, this is my favourite stanza by far! well done. you’re painting a masterpiece in the readers mind

the third stanza: the lines are just getting stronger and stronger as we move along. there is some nice personification in this stanza with the barnacles. actually, i wouldn’t call it personification, i would call it more ‘animalfication’. i’m picturing these barnacles as white tigers with long claws.

the fourth stanza: this stanza felt a bit choppy. the lines cut off a bit awkwardly. but i do like the comparison with the shield and the ship here. it’s quite lovely.

the fifth and final stanza: a beautiful ending to the poem. here you are again delivering beautiful personification! the only critique i have is the last two lines. i felt like they could be combined.

overall, this is a beautiful poem. i love the formatting and background. i hope to read some more from you soon. keep writing, you have a wonderful talent! have a lovely day.
~lillianna

Hey there, here for a review 🔥

To structure out my review in a more, well, structured way, I'm going to be writing it in three paragraphs. The first are the positives of this poem and the pluses, the second are the minuses, and the last will be tips or comments or just a conclusion really.
Now that that's out of the way, on to the review


✚ ✚ ✚ PLUSES ✚ ✚ ✚

✅ The background. Wow the background, the abstract drawings that vaguely remind of a boat or a whale or even just bubbles in a black ocean. It's just gorgeous with the white against the grey blue is just.. beautiful.

✅ The vocabulary is fabulous, I mean you're 18 years old so of course you wouldn't use dumb words like "the boat is on the sea"- but it's still striking. The words very clearly paint what you are trying to show and it's magnificent.

➖➖➖MINUSES ➖➖➖

❌ There's this one thing that really bothered me, you know this thing
"Roses are red and
I love you with all
My heart"
it's basically when you cut halfway in your sentence, skip a line, and write the rest there. Bad writers use those in poems to rhyme, but sometimes, it's just a form of style. Thing is, in this poem, it's everywhere. And it can't be for the rhymes since there barely are any. So why ? In Half-Caste it's because he wanted to illustrate how things "cut in two" makes no sense, but that's not the case here. I don't see what kind of message those form of style demonstrates.
But that's really all there is.

Otherwise your poem is absolutely gorgeous, and apart for that little thing, it's beautiful in its own very unique way