the soldier ate his heart for breakfast,
quietly, tongue in cheek,
filled his pockets with finches' feathers,
tight at the seams, and caged
an albatross in his ribcage
where his heart used to be.
and he walked a mile
on a mile
on a mile on end,
sang a ballad to a dishmaid
and seduced her kin. and as he walked,
the miles trampled him by,
until he was a garden sprawled on your doorstep,
his legs weak, his tongue spry, his eyes
beseeching and cold
from the northern wind's sighs.
you saw his lungs were stifled with dandelion smoke
and he choked on his spittle
when he finally spoke; 'a glass,' he said,
'of water, a pitcher of black wine?
vendetta has been making cruel jokes,
but she is mine. of twelve women rejected,
nine rejected me--chekhov is not as wise
as he makes out to be.' and he wiped his face against the moon,
called the world a tramp, said he was tired of running,
and asked if he might stay
among the asters for a night.
and then he left, and came again,
and left again for a thousand days;
your matchbox house awaited his arrival,
for the tell-tale sign of yellow smoke--strands
of sun that hung in the hollow of his cheek, stories
that jostled the feathers in his pockets, adventures
that weighed down in the vacancy of his chest; he always
spoke of them truthfully, but only for the sake
of your listening.
your landlord said, 'the cruel bloke is dead',
and blotted the stars out, so you
would not see the sun in his daylight.
and he walked on,
unseen in his daylight,
in his daylight,
in his daylight.
but you had seen his lungs stifled with dandelion smoke,
heard the plea in his wanders, the badly-veiled
croak. you saw his transformation
from a sea in the sky, to an oasis
in a land made from the rubble
of tired suffering, of lies, and of war
within bones
within bones within--
bones.
when he spoke your name, it sounded to you as like
a thousand galaxies spinning on a top, a single star
caught in the curve of his mouth as though it would stay there
forever & again, on all of his travels.
on all of his--
all of his travels.
and perhaps you will learn, and grow like he did,
perhaps one day, you will realise that the sun sets,
that one need not take a pair of shears to a garden
that has been uprooted. you will learn,
because once you were a sea
for all kinds of disrepair,
a conjurer for the dismal--and here, he differed,
because he swallowed heartache as easily
as he swallowed hearts: do you remember? he stole away
with yours, with his,
and with mine.
'there is beauty in the night sky,' you said to him once.
'and there is beauty in the landscape of a forgotten dream.’
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hello! I'm not very good at reviews, so please bear with me and feel free to take my advice with a pinch of salt, I'm still learning.
First of all, I really enjoyed this poem. I think your word choice is beautiful and creates a quite melancholy and reflective atmosphere, which was cool. Also, I liked the repetition of certain words, I think it created a more natural flow to the poem. That being said, I'm a little unsure as to why you added the italics and repetition in. I think it definitely adds to the poem to an extent, but I still wasn't sure by the end why exactly they were used. If you had a specific reason in mind, great. But if you added it in because you thought it looked good, maybe revise it and try to either cut it down, or come up with a meaning behind the italics and repetition.
Also, the poem did seem a big vague at times, like you weren't really sure where the stanza was going and so added a few lines in. A specific point when I thought this was probably at "You saw his transformation...and of war within bones." I'd maybe try and shorten it down slightly, but that's just my opinion.
Again, please don't feel like you need to change it if you disagree, I'm still learning how to criticise and I'm not particularly good at it. Loved the poem, hope you have a great day!
Hey there! Mcleo1 here for review day. It's time to get this poem out of the green room pompadour!
Okay, sorry this just annoys me, but I really want capitalization in here sooooo bad.
Well, this poem. I absolutely adore. I really do, it has so much symbolism, and imagery, and the word choices are just to die for. I'm not quite sure what the poem is about though. It talks about this one man, and then there is a lot of symbolism in it. So I'll see what I can do. I'd say this may be able hope sometimes in the worse situations and that life gets pretty bad, but it will just keep on going.
For this poem Pomp, I'd like to see a little but more use of descriptions of landscapes, or a bit more of a storyline. It has a basis to it, but it's a bit hard to keep track of. I got confused quite a bit (or well maybe that's just me) I wasn't sure what you were trying to go for here but this is wonderful and I hope to see more poems like this and more from you. It's not everyday you see a poem like this.
Oh yeah, happy review day!
How do you do it, Pomp? How? This is beautiful.
Hey PomPom,
so since this is a longer poem, i read it and reviewed it at the same time. These are my reading notes.
Stanza One
Ribcage, Really? I feel like ribcage in poetry is used way too much. It's like the new substitute for breast, and breast was only abandoned because people stopped thinking about it as the chestplate/upper torso area and began thinking about the breast as a singularly female body part, which it's totally not.
That being said, Ribcage is more of a rugged word that really means bones more than meat and flesh so it gives off the impression of skeletal men, which I'm not sure you're trying to get through. Having so many bird analogies in this poem sort of makes it seem frantic and light however, so I'm not sure what you're going for yet.
Stanza Two
I like this one better, but I don't like the italics for the repetition of the title. I feel like it's sort of getting overdone even though it's the first time that it's been said in the acutal poem. We're going to recognize it as part of the poem, so there's no need to actually point it out with italics or the like. It's there, that's obvious, it doesn't need to be any more obvious, it's even set off by placement and spacing.
Saying he seduced her kin makes me think that he slept with either her mom or her brother, because why wouldn't he just sleep with her? This could be your flow getting away from you though, and I think you need to be careful here. You're getting into a very sing-songy vibe with this section of the poem, so I'm expecting it'll have some refrain or high importance since the first part was more mellow. Half of this is because you actually picked up a rhyme scheme by the end of the line. It starts with "by" as a slant rhyme. Kin and End are also interior rhymes, which is why I think it's getting out of your control right there. It almost sounds forced, but it's not quite as expected as a forced rhyme. It's just close.
Okay, who is "your" in this poem? We haven't had any mention of a "you" up to this point. Why did it take this long to get to the point of a "you?" Shouldn't that be something in the first stanza? Also why is there someone that you're speaking to when this is a third person point of view? Usually if it's third person, the only person the speaker speaks to is the reader, so what's up? That means there's got to be an I in here somewhere, someone in the story, right?
Stanza Three
Yup, there's the "I" in this poem. So right now we have several characters.
1) Me
2) You
3) Him
4) Dishmaid
5) Her kin
Omg, no, no, you got carried away with your rhyme/flow. Okay, so, let me explain what I mean by that. When you have this guy talking, you're using a lot of internal rhyme that's somewhat... obvious. Sort of like if I say Cat, you think of bat, hat, sat. That means all of those rhymes are cliche. If they come quick, they're going to come quick for everyone else and just by the context of the line, you can guess exactly which one is going to be used, and the language around it.
The other thing that's going on is that you're using things that don't make much sense or add to the poem itself. "a pitcher of black wine?" Even having your character question it makes it seem like you've sort of lost the plot. I really love the imagery of dandelion smoke, and all of that before he starts speaking, but, having him ask for wine when he wants a drink of water is just odd. If he's choking, he shouldn't be speaking for long, and definitely not asking for something as complex as "a pitcher of black" anything. If he wants water, he says water, if he wants wine, he says wine, end of story.
What's up with Vendettas anyway? It's personified in his speech, which means we've got a whopping 6 characters in the story by the third stanza. What Vendetta is teasing him anyway? A vendetta, I looked it up, is a "1) a blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family.
2) a prolonged bitter quarrel with, or campaign against, someone."
This means this schmuck we're reading about is in a war with someone. How could that possibly be playing a game of cruel jokes? That sounds more serious than joking. I don't really understand the allusion to Chekhov since I haven't read any of his work, but I'm assuming that it has something to do with women.
Overall that whole section where he's talking is jumbled, and seems to be heavily reliant on rhyme instead of subject or point of what they're trying to say. That makes it difficult to understand what this guy is getting at.
Otherwise, the parts outside of it are well rounded and I like them.
Stanza Four
I like "vacancy of his chest" much better than "ribcage" so aim in that direction when you replace "ribcage."
Wait, how would they know that it was truthfully spoken? "he always/ spoke them truthfully, but only for the sake/ of your listening" seems a bit melodramatic and pointless to me.
Stanza Five
Oh Yay! Character #7 ! Landlord.
Dude, this stanza is trippy. I understand the analogy between hope/light/love and all that with daylight, and stars, and that all makes perfect sense, but this stanza is so different from all of the other stanzas that it really throws me off. Why are we repeating "in his daylight" anyway? Is that supposed to be an echo? It doesn't quite make it. You'd do better with just having those three lines all blank, just white space. Consider it.
Stanza Six
Yup, still don't like the repetition.
I think you're going for something a lot darker at this point, but you're not quite getting there. Your imagery is hard to follow. It feels like we're missing some adjectives or descriptors here when you're going for "sea in the sky" because how is the sea in the sky? It just isn't clicking. An Oasis is in land so we don't have problems there, but you start packing on a lot of prepositions so it's not just a land of rubble, it's more like inside a bone, there is suffering and lying, and it's the rubble of that, which has an oasis. That's a lot to think about when you're still trying to figure out how a sea is in the sky.
If you cleaned up "a sea in the sky" and explained it somehow, like, well, I have no idea, but if you related it better to our experiences, then we would be able to follow you to the next imagery.
Stanza Seven
Yup, Tops and Galaxies are totally used together a lot. It's sort of like saying that the Galaxy is in a marble. Try something else.
Yup, still don't like the repetition.
I feel like this stanza finally gets back to the story though. I feel like we're finally getting somewhere again, especially since it doesn't have a good transition from the last stanza. It's like we jump from him being dead, to alive again, so it sort of dismisses the fact that he's dead.
I don't really like the whole "caught the curve of his mouth" because it sounds sort of gross and soggy. It doesn't sound romantic, or appealing, and it doesn't make sense with the top imagery before it. What came to mind was a guy with a top spinning in his cheek. A) That would hurt B) Not appealing.
Stanza Eight and Couplet
I'm going to wrap the last couplet up with the last stanza.
I'm not sure where the metaphor of "sheers to a garden/ that has been uprooted" came from because I don't remember much of a garden in the poem anywhere else. This is your summary, your wrapping up. You've already had a really good poem by this point, so I'd be willing to say just chop it off, but I like how it eases the reader out of the poem again, and invites them to reread with "do you remember?" because that's not talking to "you" but to the reader in my opinion. After that the "you" goes back to whomever it is this "me" is talking to, but because of the punctuation, because of the way it's placed in the lines, it makes it feel more direct, more like a break of the fourth wall and I really like that.
I'd change the analogy of the garden though, and go back to something you've already used in the poem and re-write it. You've already repeated dandelion smoke, perhaps use that? That would tie the sing-song nature of the poem together better and provide you with a visual and olfactory message near the end.
The last couplet, well, it's underwhelming to tell you the truth. I feel like it could have had a lot more meaning, but it feels like a stretch. You don't really need it. The poem ends nicely with the reminder that this really is a first person poem. This whole, forgotten dream, thing, is sort of cliche. I mean, dreams are beautiful a lot of the time, that's half their point. It's a beauty that's never achievable in real life, so why waste your last words on something that's half-obvious?
I think ending it with the announcement that this man stole three hearts and ate them is much better.
--------
I'm going to read the poem once through again, and then give you remarks from that.
Okay, so I missed "ribcage" and "cage" the first read-through, but reading it out loud, I dislike that. Having it repeat like that just sounds off because it's the same word. Now you really need to change "ribcage." If you want something boney, just use ribs. If you want really boney, use skeletal ribs.
Overall, I think the repetition is forced and doesn't add to the poem. I still think that needs to be taken out. I saw the same things I saw when I did the stanza review when I was reading it out loud, but you have a pretty good flow in the poem. You just need to change some things to make it less obvious that you're using a stark rhyme pattern and internal rhyme. and I'm not sure I like hearing this guy's voice at all.
Why not tell us more about how he's a garden on her doorstep anyway? If you're going to use that later, you should expand on it earlier. You should probably also erase the whole dishmaid thing because it doesn't really fit into the poem at all from the point of view of the speaker.
All in all, I think if you wrote along this story again, I'd do a love poem.
I'd really like to see what you do with a structured poem, like a sonnet or a pantoum. You'd do well with them because you've got a good handle on flow.
Way to go Aleyo