Young Writers Society

Hello Mea! Thank you for making a request on my Will Review For Food page! So let's get to the reviewing thing:

So I'm picking up on two big themes in this poem and they're actually contrasting so that makes it really interesting!

Stanzas 1 & 2 seem to all be about separation:
The light isn't direct - it's blurred
The view isn't eye-level - it's airborne
glimpse, and dazzle carry the same distancing connotation
and then the first line where I'm like, oh no the speaker is actually not distanced is "clean-cut"

but then! that line is undercut in the next stanza adding the addition "has faded"
I interpreted this visual distancing to the speaker feeling like they're out of place, like there's something between them and where they are that gives their sense of place a feeling of not being tangible.

In the line "a plane sheds gravity in exchange" -- the poem describes a shift or descent to being literally more grounded or closer to reality and then we get stanza 3.
In stanza 3, my original interpretation is challenged. The speaker says "she is grounded" that she's not just on top of the city but is within it -- down the roads at night.

I'm really curious about the word "but" in front of that line "but she is grounded" it's like she realizes that to an outsider she doesn't look like she belongs, but is she trying to convince the reader or herself that she belongs? And then in the very last line the reader is challenged again, "though no road can take her home" an interesting twist -- and begs the question what really is the difference between being "grounded in a place" and "being at home" in a place -- because that seems to be the feeling this poem is getting at. There's this thin divide that's being described where at first maybe moving to a new city you feel out of place, disconnected, then you transition to feeling like you understand the city and like you're a part of it, but still it is not your home. And then it's made even sadder in this piece, because not only is the speaker not at home but possibly she has no place to call home anymore based on the detail that no road can take her...

I thought this poem was really clever in how it combined imagery and metaphor to create a sense of feeling and space that painted a larger story. You really only spend 3 lines (those last 3) on what I would call the real conflict - but somehow it works and I still feel like I get a sense of the character. I also like how fine-tuned the tone is in the piece -- the first 2 stanzas I was like, okay we've got a homesick poem - but the last three lines really make a very specific feeling -- it's interesting. I wonder if you could give another detail about how the speaker is grounded -- I understand how speeding in the middle of night has like an almost spiritual sense of familiarity with a place -- but not being familiar with Tokyo's traffic or how much that says that the speaker belongs or doesn't belong I find myself wondering if the third to last line is a lie. I just feel like I could use another couple of lines to try to figure out whether or not she is truly grounded in the place, or if that's just a line of her trying to convince herself.

Another line I was a bit confused with is "in exchange/for anywhere with a real horizon" -- is this saying the buildings are the "fake"/"unreal" horizon?
And I just realized maybe the last line actually means her home is over-seas... rather than meaning she has no home. Whoops -- I guess both interpretations make sense! But i would consider giving a couple more choice lines in that last stanza to give the reader a bit more to work with in deciphering where the speaker actually falls.

I didn't come across anything I thought should be changed as far as grammatical/punctuation/or capitalization choices -- it seemed pretty consistent throughout.

One last piece of praise for this work! Lovely job creating imagery and tone that readers can connect to whether or not they've been to the place you're describing. Your poem has a real sense of place and I think a lot of people (including myself) can relate to those feelings of being out of place or yearning for a sense of "home". Thank you for sharing your piece!

alliyah

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Happy Review Day!

Hello, E.E here for a possibly quick review and maybe some utter nonsense! Grim is here as well, drinking hot cocoa and being a slacker. *Grim looks over, glaring* So, lets get started.

So, the first thing I notice is that many places are missing commas. A few are “speeding down the motorway at ten pm” and “cold steel” in between the two words. Other wise I did not notice anything else wrong with the poem! Good job! The flow was pretty good and so was the Imagery.

Now is when I dissect your poem and see if I can't get its meaning right! So, in your poem you are telling us, the reader, that a women feels most comfortable not in some city, but perhaps a small town. The bright lights blind her and the people make her feel worse. The business is just too much for her to handle. But she can’t go back home, not now.

Overall I liked the poem and keep up the good work! Happy Halloween! I really need to go now Grim has souls to reap and he needs more cocoa. He has a problem, seriously. Cheerio and fruit loops to you!

~needs to write some Japan poems, probably~

ANYWAY.

I'm trying to get better at reviewing poetry (partly in preparation for my upcoming English courses), so I'll just start with how I read this and go from there, and then if you intended a different meaning than what I got out of it, you can perhaps direct me.

This sounds like a poem about someone who has moved to a new city (Tokyo). At first, from the air, it seemed like a grand, beautiful place, but now that the person is actually in the city, she feels trapped, lonely, and homesick. At first I actually thought the character was on the plane, but after reading more carefully I realized she's just remembering her first view of Tokyo from the plane.

I'm not sure about the line "sheds gravity." I guess because if a plane is landing, it's sort of succumbing to gravity again? Like it sheds gravity when it takes off, but here it seems to be landing so I'm not sure what you were going for here. It's a neat line but it didn't make sense to me.

Unless you meant it is taking off and trading Tokyo for somewhere with a horizon as opposed to a skyline, somewhere that's less "walled off." In which case that might need some clarification, since the "real horizon" part made me think the plane was landing, like trading in its flight for a horizon. But that could also just be me and maybe other people would understand that line right away.

And then the "ten million strangers move unseen" felt a bit off because: they're not unseen. There are people everywhere. I feel like the "unseen" is to get across the feeling of loneliness, but I think we already get that from the "ten million strangers" and the "unscrutable billboards" (I think it's "inscrutable?"). It might actually be a little more lonely if you can use the fact that the "ten million strangers" are all around her, because there's no loneliness quite like the loneliness of being surrounded by people and still feeling alone.

I mean, for poetry's sake I guess it's not so bad that you say "move unseen," but having actually been to Tokyo now that was kind of the scariest thing for me about it, all the people EVERYWHERE because I don't do well in crowds and Tokyo was like crowds on steroids. So I suppose as a poetic device you could leave the line as-is, but it didn't sit quite right with me. "Opulent" was also sort of a weird word because it puts me in mind of ridiculous quantities of wealth, people who own several sports cars and a mansion so garish it's hideous and clearly a big neon sign saying "LOOK AT ME, I'M RICH" which even before visiting Tokyo was not a way I ever would've thought of it, but that's a tiny nitpick and a personal preference.

Otherwise, I thought you had some great imagery - you didn't go into a ton of detail, but you used fantastic phrases like "metal sprawl" which was probably my single favorite image. Everything else in the poem fit together nicely for me, and even though you leave the character for a while, you do tie things together with "remind her of an airborne first glimpse" and "but she is grounded" at the end. Which now that I think of it is also a nice...mmm...not symmetry exactly, because "airborne" and "grounded" are opposing things, but I think it's kind of like nice complimentary lines to frame the whole poem, if that makes sense.

Hi Mea
I am Ishan 212 and so am here to review your poem Metropolitan. So here we go.

Insomnia. I too suffer from Insomnia, this is is atleast what I think.

Honestly I could not make out much meaning out of your poem. But I'll write about what I understood.

In your poem you write about what a person does when he or she is unable to sleeomin the middle of the night. He or she looks around f for the people he knows or atleast recognises, witness a flying aeroplane and then when he is frustrated, goes outside to rid the bike, accepting his Insomnia.

Fantastic poem!!!!
Keep Writing!!!
Ishan212