The Ants Build a New Chamber

This is a cute poem about ants coming together to build a brand new chamber.The story behind the poem seems interesting,too.Are the greenhouses different dimensions that they are in? Could there be other ants out there like them? I’m guessing that there are.I liked this.Such tiny creatures with mighty hearts,those ants.I hope that you have an amazing and superb day and night.

I love the idea of setting poems in a fictional garden world, Lim! So intriguing, and the way you've explored the idea in this poem creates a deeply surreal mood and super curious imagery. I'm not sure if The Purple Instructions is also set in this fictional world, but it gives me the same, very unique vibe of something alien and obscure, yet alluring in its strangeness.

The title was really well chosen, I feel, because it helped ground the surreality of the poem for me by hinting at what could be practically going on within it. I agree with Plume that the assonance and internal rhyming is very rad, and to me acted as a guide that pulled me into the strangeness of the poem by being something consistent and more familiar. c: Reading the poem aloud was so so fun, xD and somehow added to both the peculiarity of the poem and my further learning about it ~

Two lines that I'm going to give some suggestions for (if you felt to change anything) are 'Step after step on dark bark spiralling,' in the second stanza, and later on 'One by one the march of ants,' in the second last stanza. Having both 'step after step' and 'one by one' to me felt a bit repetitive in a way that didn't seem to add new ideas or feelings to the poem. I really love how angular the visuals are in the beginning half of the poem and how it becomes ~bendier~ imagery in the later half with 'interlace' and 'tree bends', which is why I felt maybe 'spiralling' might fit better further down in the poem than it is. These are just minor suggestions, though, and overall I really appreciated reading and exploring the meaning and sounds of this poem :)

As for the magic spell (which I had fun interpreting), I personally got a slightly sinister feeling behind it, which kinda juxtaposes the more endearing feeling in the poem that you mention below asdf. The spell made me think of blood with your use of the word 'iron', since blood has a metallic taste, which I then connected to tree sap and these glowing green 'veins' of the palm. So the final image I arrived at with this spell is of the ants feeding off the blood-like sap of the tree, while their march weaves the spell that makes the palms grow and form a new chamber. Maybe I'm taking that too literally haha oh boy, but more vaguely I think your severe word choices in places gave me that darker interpretation, while the sound play and certain lines made the ants' movements cuter c:

I actually like the unconventional use of the word 'sarcastic' at the end of the poem for this reason, because I almost picture the palm bending into a sarcastic smile at the end, which I think ties in that feeling of the cute happenings in the poem having a darker undertone, despite the poem's title of "building something new" being a pretty hopeful activity. It makes me wonder how innocent 'The Garden Realms' really are, and what they're trying to achieve ~

I feel you did a convincing job portraying this unusual scene of this world, and I find it cohesively well-written. I'm looking forward to any more poems you write in this fictional world, if you do so!! In general, I appreciate how experimental and even non-human or outlandish your poetry can be in its style and perspective, and always look forward to reading more of your poems, Lim :) <3

~ Coffee

Good morning. I am quite a big fan of multiple aspects of your poem. To start off, I really enjoyed the little breaks in lines that almost come off as primitive speech. One example of this is this line here:

"chamber made, chamber strong

taste the spell? iron"

It really puts into perspective that the speakers are literally ants. I also adore the loose direction of the poem, which I interpret as something similar to how ants seem to roam aimlessly at times and just go to random points doing random things. If I'm being completely honest, I don't completely understand a couple of things, namely being the magic spell, and the sarcastic tree. I can't seem to really think of an idea that explains the nature of the spell in a way that was solid enough to deem it "correct" or at least probable. I would very much enjoy to hear your reasoning of that part. As for the sarcastic tree, I just feel like it is an adjective that doesn't really carry an image in this context. The most similar example I can think of is saying something like "An uninformed sky" or something. What I'm trying to say is, its a bit difficult to visualize, but you may have an in universe explanation that could clear things up. All in all, I enjoyed the numerous little choices that you made that really gave it a unique feel as its read.

Hey there! Plume here, with a review!!

First of all, that fantasy realm sounds super cool. It seems like it would be a really cool concept art piece, too. And what a great idea to delve into a world more than by writing a poem about it!! About the "magic spell" in the piece, at first I thought it was about making plants grow because of all the glowing green veins and leaves "whistle-dart and interlace" but given the title and the mentions of "woody stems" and "iron" throughout, it seems to be that they're using plants to build a new chamber? Not completely sure, but thank you so much for that author's note, or else I think the poem would have made a lot less sense.

One thing I really enjoyed was your soundplay!! You did such a good job of employing assonance throughout— still trying to recover from "strong/iron," "beat/leaf," "strong/long," etc. Some of my favorite rhyme schemes aren't traditional ones, and I think combined with all your repetition, this gave this poem a very unique flow and sound. It reminded me of slam poetry a bit— I feel like those poetic forms always repeat words in close succession/have certain words that occur a lot throughout the poem. I unconsciously stressed and unstressed certain syllables/words throughout, and while I'm not sure it was intentional, it's amazing how you can influence the way a reader reads this poem in their head by punctuation, line breaks, and overall word placement. Really nice job of utilizing those words and sound patterns to build your flow.

The one thing I was unsure about was your last stanza. I think although interesting, I just couldn't grasp the meaning. I'm also writing this review somewhat late, so that could be it. I think the choice of a tree bending "sarcastically" was a very interesting choice of description, but I'm not sure if I can really envision that in my head. It just felt like the narrative had already ended with the stanza before, so I'm not sure what this one added. To an already somewhat abstract poem, this, to me, didn't mesh as well with the narrative you already presented here. I'm curious about your intentions including that, because I do think it is a really interesting stanza and description!

Overall: nice work!! I really loved the flow and premise of this, and I think it was executed really well. I hope to read some more of your poetry soon! Until next time!!

Hey hey! Alex here with a review!



Awhhhhhhhhh it's really cute, dare I say! Since I'm still a newbie and quite idiotic, I don't know how to quote stuffs. But, I just wanna say that 1. I love the way this poem is written. 2. I honestly really do like the free roaming of the poem..! P.S.: If this poem does rhyme, sorry, but I really liked it still!) And last of all, keep writing! I know that you'll become one of the top people on this site, just beleive in yourself <3