Young Writers Society

O-O

Yeah, that was my reaction after the very end. I'm gonna push my sleep to 3 a.m now... No, I'm just kidding, I loved the entire poem (especially the end).

Anyway, let me get started with this review! I'm not gonna lie, I feel like I'm burning right now.

I felt like the very identity, or the concept of horror in this poem is being depicted by how reality, "facts" and beliefs just flip and leave you stranded in confusion. Though the poem has a very pseudo-sarcastic tone, the very end is where the horror really strikes. And it's not the tone that brings the horror. It's the revelation or what's the actual reality in the scenario - the nature of things.

That would be after a first glance at the poem, but after a second glance, it hit me. It's not the end. The horror comes into play around the second worse. It's the flipping of reality, the fire underneath, ablaze in the water.

Now, that was after a second glance, but after a third glance it totally clears up and turns the entire poem into, not the kind of poem that would send shivers down your spine, but the kind to catch shivers and make them quiet. That's quite abstract, I know. I say a lot of such things. Do tell me if it's unnecessary...

Returning to the poem, you kept bringing our attention to the tub, the textbooks and the oil. Was this an intentional use of repetition to pull our attention back to these ideas or was it just to emphasize on these ideas. Maybe both? From all that I think this poem depicts how sometimes reality just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter what's supposed to happen. Things turn out the way they do, and it's scary the kind of things that can end up happening.

Looking at things this way, there's another aspect of horror that comes into play - uncertainty. That word is horror and terror if they were both added to each other. That's what I dug up from the poem. Of course how I interpret it isn't the way it was written but I've given you my interpretation to you to describe the magnitude of impact. It was all to describe how each word from 'immiscible' to 'soup' added to this impact.

That'll be all for today. Have a good day and live your life with purpose.

Yours sincerely,
Myth

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Featuring a vintage banner by @Magebird

Hey MageBird!

Let me just say I really enjoyed this poem, horror, and more grotesque imagery is my cup of tea. After reading the prompt set by Arcticus I find your expansion of the idea to be refreshingly unique focusing on chemistry, instead of something more true crimeish. The continual wording of textbooks and pages made me see it as a metaphor for a student's experience in school, which is very likely to comply differently then what you were intending but impactful never the less. There are some very minor grammar mistakes but nothing that takes away from the flow of the piece. As for the second to last stanza, I really liked it as it goes along with my idea of helplessness and lack of guidance. It also adds imagery to my mind of someone fruitlessly trying to get out of a tub filled with oil but sliding back in.

Hi Magebird!

I won't lie I was feeling nervous to review your poem because I have seen your other works and I know you are such a great poet. I think you really did justice with the prompt that was given by Arc. Especially the fact that you incorporated chemistry in it (I have seen your wall posts about science stuffs so I guess you are a science enthusiast) made it more interesting. You began with giving a simple scientific fact and used it like a sarcasm.(To me it felt like that)

The image of a man being restrained in a large cauldron above a wood fire and surrounded by bone-nosed tribesman or a witch doing some ritual is usually what comes in my mind for such a situation. But here like you narrated, some mysterious people trying to boil you in this porcelain tub and using the pages of your textbooks to feed the fire while you are trying to argue by claiming facts from those books you have learnt. It's like someone is throwing away all the hard work you did into fire as if they have lost their worth.

I really liked the title "it's a good tub" and that you used it with quotes just the way it was mentioned in the form of a reassuring dialogue by one of those mysterious people. Though you marked it as horror for me most of it felt like a humor because of all those chemistry facts that you were using to reason the ongoing things.

"you'll know when
to get out."

"are you sure?" i ask.
i prove chemistry ii's
assertion that

water and oil are immiscible
as i watch my sweat fall
down beneath the surface.