Clockwork

I thought I would torture my competitors by earning point for my team from their works. So, here I am.

I love the idea you have here. Its a very beautiful concept.


To me, this poem seems so be about you as the clockwork fairy shaped by a wonderous creator. As you go through life, obstacles cause your "wings" to become damaged. Just when all your pieces are about to fall apart, God whispers in your ear. Thus causing you to become born again as a new, stronger creature. Is that the message here? Because I was a little confused reading this as to what that might be. It took me a minute to think about this, and not in a good way.


Other than that minor quirk, I LOOOOOVED this poem. It's one of my favorites on YWS.


Jesus loves you! Have a beautiful day/night!!!

Until The End And Beyond

-Ari

Salutations, Mea! Lems here for a quick review. You're style in this piece is absolutely amazing. In the beginning it felt kind of broken apart, but not in a bad way. The way I saw it, the poem, as well as the fairy, was kind of messy and shattered, like you said. But after that, in the middle, it began to piece itself together, it became strong. Personally, I think this does not only relate to this situation, but life. Okay, call me cheesy for finding a deep meaning in this, but I mean it. There are times in life when we honestly are going through hell, like life just really SUCKS, you know? And, though it might be a bit exaggerated, I think the beginning captures that. And then something or someone comes along and reminds us to be strong. It reminds us that we are beautiful and things will get better. And they do. Then we, ourselves, are take control, but just like clockwork, the pain comes back. It's apart of life and it just happens in a cycle I guess. But still, it's up to us to stay strong. Okay now I want to go sit in a corner and cry, my thoughts are going too deep. Nevermind that, though, thank you for publishing this wonderful piece and I hope this review was helpful.

Hi Mea, I'm here to review your poem! Let's get started shall we?

Interpretation
I'll start by just giving what I took to be the meaning of this piece which you can use to see how clearly your intended message was delivered. And to track through what some of my thoughts were reading the piece.

So initially I found the first stanza a bit nonsensical in that it was difficult to discern what was happening because of the lack of complete sentences. Then I got to the phrase,

"I am... /
stanza break
/paralyzed..."

the little phrase "I am" was my clue to what the poem might be about, and that the nonsensical language and disruptions in the flow were a purposeful indication of who the speaker sees themselves as. Which is actually a pretty neat technique! And that stanza break is placed perfectly by the way.

As I read through the poem, I saw the speaker as being mechanical, feeling empty, and feeling broken, with all of the language dealing with some sort of machinery. Then we get to the line "I breathe" -- and the phrasing switches up. At that point the poem transitions from a narrator that feels empty and used and broken to one that has agency. And the sentences start getting completed and have more clarity as we get to the last stanza where the speaker sees themselves as a whole clockwork.

The whole poem seems to be literally about a clock being made, but the metaphorical level of the poem is a bit hard to discern. I wouldn't say this poem's message was super clear, but this seems to in some ways be purposeful. So the lack of clarity in this case maybe isn't a bad thing, if it's what you were going for.

I think you could do away with a bit of the imagery and description in the first few stanzas though, because as a reader, I don't get a whole lot of them, because they aren't directly attached to a character or speaker. As the poem moves on the unique message gets much clearer, and it's the type of layered piece that a person gets more from the more times they read it.

Narrative Development: Conflict
When reading a narrative poem, I look for several characteristics that one might also find in good prose (strong characters, clear conflict, clear resolution, character development). I believe these characteristics keep a reader engaged and present in the piece they are reading, because conflict and character build empathy.

In this piece, you do a good job with building logically to the resolution - we have a triumphant ending, with the last word of the piece highlighting the conclusion "whole". The narrator also has interesting development in the wording of the poem. At the beginning there is very little "I voice" and as the poem continues, the speaker seems to have more and more agency and there are more "I statements" this makes for a developing speaker, which is also great, as it makes for a more interesting piece. There wasn't a ton of emotional pull in this poem, but that sort of came with the conflict expressed too, so I think it was okay that the language didn't come across as very emotional.

One aspect of the poem I have a few suggestions on is the clarity of the conflict in the piece.

As the poem is written, if we go through this poem looking for conflict phrases there are an abundance. They deal with themes of feeling empty, broken, stagnant, disoriented, and having a force against them. That's a lot of conflicts for a reader to keep track of, and then at the end because there are so many diverse conflicts it's difficult to see how the resolution could solve all of them. I would suggest one of two things.

A) making the conflicts more interrelated, right now they all have a theme of life being mechanical - but it's never directly stated how being mechanical leads to any of those conflicts. If you related them all to one source, it would be easier to see how they all effect the speaker and how the resolution ultimately solves the conflict.
or
B) Limit the conflict to one or two subjects. Rather than tackling all of these different issues, it might make for a clearer and more powerful piece to just pick one or two.

Flow and Wording
I actually really liked the disjointed flow in the first stanza where the line breaks were within phrases, this made the poem lines feel disjointed just as the speaker was describing. You may want to highten this effect by making the flow even more disjointed maybe by making the lines less even in the first few stanzas, and then once you hit the transition with the "I breathe" when the speaker gains agency, you could make a very clear transition and make the flow much softer. As it's written the two stanzas have nice flow as is, I would only maybe suggest making the meaning of what is happening in these lines a bit clearer:

"gossamer brushes my cheek.
look, it whispers: wings.
soldered on in the burning,
they are fierce and you
can be strong."