"good bye, dear sun," i remark softly
再见，亲爱的太阳，再见
knowing full well how the galaxy works & how we're really the spinning ones, in the end
-my head isn't tied on tight enough-
i bid it farewell, &
one ball of fire in one solar system is devoured by a hungry cityscape of
black ribs jetting into a purple-pink sky, & i
sit back and wonder
when i'll see it again.
"你好，亲爱的太阳," he remarks softly
"hello, dear sun, hello"
knowing full well where he sits in this world & how he's the severed link in a sea of connections
- '_____ is indeed an abandoned child' -
he welcomes the sun & its flaws as it rises through the mist,
lodging in a cloud-cluster of smog and broken stars,
it snags in his throat; he coughs, but leaves it where it is.
the two of them -the boy and the orb- have sat in lonely skies for quite some time,
so they may as well be together.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hello! I can't believe this beautiful piece is still in the Green Room!
I love your imagery and the descriptions of sunset and dawn. I'm assuming this is about your new brother because of the Chinese? I love that you are using your personal experiences about someone you love to create wonderful art.
That being said, there are a few things that caught my attention.
If I did not know your story about your brother, I would not know that this was about a person. I thought that the "he" you were referring to in the second section was the sun, and that the sun was speaking the Chinese. And then I remembered how excited you were to bring home your little brother. So I think you should make it more clear that the "he" is a human, and before the second to last line with "the boy."
I don't understand the "______ is an abandoned child" line. It doesn't seem very connected to anything around it. I know it's about your brother, but it still seems odd and disjointed. I think that entire second section needs more connection within it.
Why do you use ampersands instead of "and?" It was a bit jarring. Also the line breaks nearest to the two were odd, as well. I would try to end on stronger words. Generally, in poetry, you want to do that.
Altogether, I really love the imagery that you use, and the emotion in the poem really shines. You just need to clarify a bit what the emotions are about, and work on connecting the ideas a little more strongly in the poem. I hope that this review proves useful to you! Happy poeting, and happy review day!
Thanks for the lovely review! You made great points. The blank in "______ is an abandoned child" is where I would put his real name, but since I posted this I wasn't sure what to do there. But that was supposed to capitalize on how he and the sun are both alone.
I agree, this poem is pretty disconnected and has a few too many personal references to be clear. I'll try to work on it. Thanks again!
Hello! I thought I'd take a look at this one as the title caught my attention.
These lines are very pretty! I've never been a fan of the non-standard capitalisation in poems when there's not an obvious reason for it though, such as a speaker who thinks themself inferior to others.Specifics
1. I'd generally say to avoid using dialogue tags in a poem because they're not an efficient use of your limited word count and they make the reader feel distant to the poem. The speaker of the poem is assumed to be saying every line unless we're told otherwise so there's really no need for 'I remark softly' to be there.
2. I'm not sure about the ampersands - & - that feels odd to me, again because poetry is often spoken out loud and I don't know how you'd differentiate that from and or what the significance is behind it. At the moment, it's simply distracting.
3.
4. Ah so the Chinese characters are to represent what the sun is saying back? I kind of like that, however it doesn't translate well using google translate so it leaves me feeling confused and kind of cheated. If this was in a book of course, I wouldn't look it up at all because I can't simply copy and paste it. That's not a reason to take it out as we can guess that the sun is giving some kind of greeting back, but it's worth bearing in mind.
5. This is pretty but contradicting. It should surely be a sea of miss-connections if he's the severed link.
6. Oh so 'he' isn't the sun? I'm not sure how the 'he' related to the speaker in that case and I'd prefer it if that was cleared up and sooner in the poem rather than later.
Overall
The end of the poem paints a lovely picture and your imagery in this is consistently good throughout but I was left with too many unanswered questions and I don't like the vague, choppiness of the middle or how the speaker seems to be directly involved at first but by the end is simply an observer to the boy and the sun. I think the reader needs to understand more about how the three relate to one another and if the speaker is another person somewhere out in the world, they shouldn't be able to follow the sun's path to the boy and it should instead be something or someone else observing how the sun's path connects these two.
I hope that makes sense. All the best with this!
~Heather
Thanks for the review!
I have a few clarifications. This poem was about the waiting period between getting my brother from China and first learning about him, and how excruciating it was to know that the sun could see him daily but we could not, if that makes sense. The Chinese characters were a repetition of what the characters said in English in Chinese, or Mandarin in English, like an echo in another language, to show how we both greeted or said goodbye to the sun across the globe. I can see why it could be thought to be the sun replying, and I'll make that clearer.
The main point of the poem was how I was wishing that he wouldn't be lonely while waiting for us, and that the sun could give him company. It's a personal poem, and I view this one in particular as visual art. Does all poetry have to be made for reading aloud?
All this goes to say is, I should make this clearer because it's full of too many personal references currently. Thanks again for the review.
No problem! And I think poetry can be visual to a degree, there's certainly a whole branch of poetry called Shape poetry which aims to create an image on the page, but when looking at those as a group, we've still had someone read them out loud as well as projecting the image on a wall. I suppose it works when it's only one person reading it but it makes the poem difficult to share with others, either at a poetry reading or as part of a study group.
Then again, if this is a personal poem, it might not matter that it's not hugely shareable but it's nice that you're making it more accessible to a wider audience.