Young Writers Society

Hello, Firestarter.

I have been meaning to review this for a while because it's just lovely and haunting, and it's haunted me since I've read it.

And now, this is the review that will get my next blue star. I decided to make it a good work so I would enjoy this review.

Let's begin.

drowning the baby
screams

Hey firestarter, thanks for recommending me in Reviewer Testimonials. I've been interrupted about 5 times when writing this review the past couple of days so sorry if it doesn't make any sense. I've also been very busy with finals so sorry if I don't get some obvious points about the poem.

drowning the baby

singing again

screams

wetter days.

when sinews
rattled with silence,

and languid
limbs stretched into [the?] sunrise
like the unravelling of a sail.

Some nights, the whales are quiet
and I am reminded of the emptiness
of my muscles.

In the morning when it is time to sleep
I miss their skeletal wails and how they echo
my insides, because they are lost and old
and far from home, rotting in a stereo. We are husks
together, but they have found a voice
while I am wordless, sinking deeper into the trenches
of the mattress and forgetting how to fight my way out.

Jacko! So, just some disjointed comments, here - I don't like your wording on 'like the unravelling of a sail" and want it to read "unravelling like a sail."

Second stanza, "emptiness of muscles" is just... uninspiring? That's not quite it, but it doesn't ring quite right for me; however, you build on it to "rotting in a stereo", which I really like. Though I definitely read it as "rotting in stereo" the first couple of times I read this.

Not sure I like the idea of "wordless," simply because this poems exists therefore there are words, communication of some kind. I dunno, that seems a bit too meta, but I keep coming back to it and the idea that it's not words, but a voice that hasn't been found, a name for what is going on - not the lack of communication, necessarily, but a naming. Maybe a bit too far on a tangent, but there it is.

However, I love the last two lines as a whole.

Now, all that said, I'm also reading this with some of what we've been talking about (because we talk so much, you know), and I really like what you're doing - especially with your imagery and the how you're drawing ocean and the movement and sounds of an ocean inward to a human body that is at war (with itself, I'm inferring).

Looking forward to more from you! It's been way too long, mister.

Alrighty, finally getting back into the reviewing game! Here we go...

I didn't understand this poem's setting, at first I assumed it was in space due to the name "Moby Celeste" but I'm not quite sure. Nonetheless, I enjoyed your use of imagery such as "drowning the baby screams" and "because they are lost and old and far from home, rotting in a stereo". As for the separation of the lines, they don't seem to work very well with my mind to make the poem flow as nicely as it could, but that's just my brain being terrible with poems.
This work was very short, the shortest I've seen so far on YWS, and I can't really think of much else to say... Basically, I liked it, enjoyed your descriptive wording, and hope to see more from you in the future.

Farewell,
JKHatt

the poem is a fine work , superbly spun and the suspense is well maintained.i love the work and this is one of the finest poem that i am about to review.
i would however suggest some flaws which is attended could perhaps make it sound better-
the theme is some vague and i like suspense but only when the mystery is revealed at some point. i do not understand the strong connection of the protagonist with a whale, and is he a whale too as only then he can hear the others.
please attend to some grammatical errors, the punctuations are missing and i would rather like each line beginning with a capital letter, it makes the work look more like a poem than a prose.
perhaps some addition to any incident when and how this member reached his present state of mind. like what happened due to which he left..
overall the work is really fantastic and may be some of my remarks were too cheesy, please ignore if i did make them sound rude
i am looking forward to reading more of your poems.
Rituparna...

This is going to be brief, but I wanted to broach some thoughts that haven't been offered so far.

I appreciate the vagueness of your whale presentation. While the interpretation may go different ways (even into the sub-meaning of dreams, despite being conflicted with other dreams in line three), I like the reflection that the whales singing are literally whales singing, and that the narrator is at odds with a presentation of nature that makes him contemplate. Makes him introspective. It's a root of poetry in the natural cadence of things, and that's one of the reasons I'm attracted to this piece.

My first critique, however, is your only traditional poetic device that turns out rather clunky, which is the parallel wetter days/better days - not because parallelism isn't sexy, but because it just doesn't accomplish anything to make up for the destruction of flow. I think the more plebeian phrase is 'better days' and as such can be modified without much fuss. On this note, there are few specific points of flow disruption as you've executed word choice with a decent hand, but in general your flow and cadence leaves much to be desired as it reads prosaic and uninspired, which is a real shame because you're competing with imagery from the ocean, and in personal experience those images beg to be treated as velvet.

On the note of imagery, you receive higher marks; your choices fit and work and more importantly work together. This is something in which most writers find difficulty.

I'm unimpressed, though, with choice descriptions:

rattled with silence

echo / my insides, because...

We are husks / together, but they have...

Hello CapitalMonday here for a review. i like to begin on how you used the whales as a symbol of your dreams also how some people might relate since they might live near the end of the water, and hear those whale calling their names to each other.


Whenever I read a poem like this one, i try to look for corrections/mistakes that could be used in a sense, to help the writer with what they are doing. Some poems have this problem while there a few that don't. Like this one, is so well-written that the words in here that i don't even know like sinews or languid, are just amazing adjectives for this poem.

All and all, i think that poem has a great symbol of a whale since in the beginning, you are comparing the dreams/nightmares that you have are like the whale's singing (in a sense). but there are some nights that, when you are sleeping, you can't dream and those are the nights that the whales are not singing.

Also I think that this poem might have something to do with a lull-a-bye since the whale's singing blocks out any other noises.

(Sorry for rambling just my way of saying how amazing this poem is)
Farewell,
CapitalMonday

The whales are a good metaphor for a song. The dream is interesting, I never thought that the dreams of a person could be that creepy. The quiet of no music in the background must be irritating. This does seem creepy, it seems dark but it was interesting. I feel lazy most mornings and never seem to feel better until around lunch. I think that this is a comparison to waking up.

The whales are a good metaphor for a song. The dream is interesting, I

I don't really get it, is this about someone who is delusional? Shinigami king, I recognize that profile photo.