The smell of Marinescence is everywhere,
like it painted the walls of my living room.
And as I step out onto the crash of the living sea,
I whisper everything I never knew out into the waves.
The Ankylosed Bifurcatives swim between crashers of white flim
as they trawl up for another glap at the fineous atmosphere,
The tokays circling above, calling out bilabial fricatives as they swarm.
Caeruleans meet for somber ciclades in the bycatch.
I laugh when I see the swarligig klapt between the edges
of a snalstream and a benthic strom.
I can’t imagine a more beautiful sunset then when it sets all aflame,
the sands with their buckler carbuncles, cilliated with fondlers,
and corroded in their aplombed frenzy.
I cry when I see the bones left behind by the assimilated mortuous.
I count the ribs and the corselets left behind, making a wish on every
mother-of-pearl, imbricated scale, scattering them to the wind.
The zephyrous breeze takes them where it will, but I, however am left,
feet trunkated in the siliceous strands.
I trudge back to my marinescent house
where the sharpfish and the jawfish hang on my wall,
hued in tones of opalesce and luminesce
in the moon glade of the night’s silver scene.
---
A/N: Originally inspired by Rod Jellema's poem "Because I Never Learned the Names of Flowers," which was a NaPo prompt from napoverse.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,797 Reviews
Hello, steampowered here for a review! Two warnings before I start: I don’t review much poetry (I’m trying to get more into reviewing poetry now) and I haven’t read the other reviews (I tend not to do this with poetry so it means I can form my own uninfluenced opinion of the piece)
I liked this poem. I really liked the words you used – it suits the poem utterly and I’m assuming that’s why you used this vocabulary. I especially like this bit:
Uh, I really hope you don’t mind me comparing this line to Jabberwocky, but that’s what sprang to mind. Are these words made-up, or not? It’s just that I Googled some of them because I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really come up with any definitions (although a Google search for “snalstream” did turn up a link to your poem)
Just thought I’d say that I love the repetition here!
Sometimes I feel like the rhythm could be smoother, since sometimes you have lines that contain a lot of syllables and sometimes you have lines that don’t. But that’s just because I personally like poems that flow smoothly and aren’t too difficult to read out loud, and in this context I quite like it. I can actually imagine the poem being read to the crashing of waves. And even though I didn’t always understand the words, I still understood the poem, if that makes sense. Hopefully this review didn’t sound harsh or mean or anything (I’m still insecure about my reviews – I’m sorry) and best of luck with your writing!
This was a good review, thank you!
I made up a lot of words, and for some of them such as "benthic" or "Ankylosed" or "Bifurcatives" I took real words from fishing jargon that I really didn't know how to use in context and just used them how I wanted to. A lot of the words are made up though just because I wanted to try that out, and a lot of the inspiration for the completely making up words did come from jabberwocky, but the using real words in other contexts came from the poem I said inspired this one. c:
Hello fortis!
This is a beautiful poem. There are just a few things I want to mention.
Since you're in present tense, I think this would be better either as "like it paints the walls of my living room." or else as "like it's painted on the walls of my living room."
I feel like you shouldn't have "sunset" and "sets" here in the same line- it sounds a little bit odd, and I think it's redundant. Maybe you can try something like "sinks" instead, which should create the same effect.
This part here is very beautiful. Even with the interesting words, it makes a lovely image, and it's rather thought-provoking.
I'm not sure how well "hued in tones" works here- Something like "with hues in tones" sounds more correct, but I don't know what is actually right in this case. You probably have it correctly, but I just thought I should mention it.
Moon glades again?
This is gorgeous. I love your writing.
-Falconer
Hey I wrote this BEFORE our moonglade thing.
Thanks for the review, falco!
First I wanted to say this seemed like a very good poem. I say seemed because every time you mentioned a different fish I found it hard to pronounce them let alone know what you were talking about. That is my fault though, not yours. I liked it, to me it shows how much the person likes the fish and knows about them. That they feel in some way connected to them.
I will say though I'm pretty sure every sentence is supposed to be capitalized, even if it's a continuation of the one before it. I could be wrong, but I think that is how it works. Very good job though, I'm sure someone who knows a ton about fish would adore this. My knowledge of them is not that strong. Though I was still able to get the jest of it and everything.
There are no fish in this. The point of the poem is that I made up words, or used existing words that don't make sense in the context. That's more obvious with the poem I took inspiration from, but I wanted something more subtle.
The first letter of the line (they're called lines, not sentences. A sentence has a subject and a verb and ends in end punctuation. A line is one line of words in a poem.) does not have to be capitalized. The best thing about poetry is that you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT with your stylistic choices and grammar and pretty much everything. It's art. You don't tell painters that they HAVE to use oil paint on a canvas to paint something.
I'd like to hear how you felt when you read this. You weren't supposed to know what the words meant, though you probably could have looked up a few to realize my point. Just in the future, not for this poem, I suggest you maybe look up words you don't know. I know this poem was full of them, so you might not have felt inclined to do so (I wouldn't either!) but just for the future, if you don't already do that.
Anyway, I'd really like to know how this poem made you feel, what you got out of it even though you didn't know the words (and weren't supposed to). What did you see in you mind during the parts that are less obvious. I'm sure you saw a house and a sunset, but what did you see in the water?