Young Writers Society

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This is really interesting and well written.
As I started reading, I interpreted this in many different ways, by the end I figured out that it was from the perspective of a tree. (hopefully)
The lines and sentences flowed really well, leading the reader to want to keep reading. I loved the line "I spoke about the glass sun in my dream last night, so clear and so bright", it was very beautiful and left the reader to imagine some nice imagery.
Some of the metaphors are great and some are a bit confusing, but overall they work to piece together the poem really well.

I really liked this, hope you post more in the future.

It's always good to see your work, fortis!

I loved this piece, I felt like I was sitting on my back porch at home, looking into the trees as the sun set on a breezy summer evening.

Radrook has some good points, but I did think your word choice was very intentional. This is about two people growing closer together. I feel like I'm being shown around their town-- the bad boys on the bikes, the troubled life the friend leads, the overview of the landscape, the mountains and trees. I could feel the parallels between the glass sun and the paper mountains. I liked the idea of a mouth welded shut, their inability to communicate, probably a result of that empty valley they lived in for so long until they met the speaker.

As for form, I loved the rhyme you started off with but I felt like the rhymes were a bit too far apart to be noticeable by the time we get to the fourth and fifth stanzas. But not to worry, I didn't notice until I read it again. In a way, I like the subtlety of the rhymes, but I think if you're going to go for subtlety, you might want to consider employing it all the way through instead of starting with very definite, distinct rhymes, and then tapering off to more Dickinsonesque slant rhymes toward the middle and end (below/own, paper/there/air, considered/corners).

It took me a couple of reads to understand the meaning of the fifth full stanza, but when I did, it hit me in a place I didn't realize I had so I want to applaud you for your subtlety there in dealing with a really difficult topic. And with that being said, I think the ending doesn't do this poem justice. I don't know what you mean by "balanced like a book." I mean, I know the financial sense of balancing books. But how are they balancing? Like are they sitting somewhere balancing precariously, perhaps on top of one of those paper peaks? Or is it more of a figurative balancing, where they're recovering from the suicide attempt and finding balance in their life? I like the protective sense I get from the next line, "And you felt so small next to me," but the final line. I thought it was kind of a let-down. It's a bit clichéd, and vague. I'm not sure how the speaker was trapped in the first place, so I don't feel that kind of release that that line is, I think, supposed to entail. We need something to show that the speaker was restrained in some way, because the stanza before that is already quite liberating, talking about being "full to the roots with light" (which I loved by the way, that imagery is incredible). I think I want either a beautiful line to end your beautiful piece or another stanza that gives us a tension that would be released by this ending line.

I love tree imagery in general. I love the strength and wisdom it conveys. I think I want to see more of that towards the middle and end, since it's pretty obvious in the beginning. Basically overall, I'd like more consistency across the stanzas, in rhyme and form as well as the usage of tree imagery. If you're gonna use it, use it all the way! While still remaining subtle, which is one of the things I love most about this poem. Not to mention that I love mountains and trees and stories about people growing closer through the survival a traumatic experience.

Okay, I think that's all for me. Let me know if you have any questions. I know I hate editing my poems so feel free to ignore all my advice, but I always love seeing your work where it belongs-- in the spotlight. Much love!

Thanks for sharing this very beautiful poem. I love the mysterious mood that it conveys and the way that it challenges me as a reader to see a harmonious meaning.

I won't pretend to know exactly what this poem involves but I do know that I find it a very fascinating reading experience because of this intense mysterious tone and conveyed by its enigmatic imagery. Writing it so that we could clearly understand it would divest it of this intrinsic charm since it is the continuous sense of being paradoxical that is its charm.

In this sense it resembles abstract art where the viewer strives to reach conclusions from the images which are never quite clear but which yet hint strongly at concepts and challenge us to provide them with a total harmonious meaning.


Looking forward to reading more of your work.

fortis! Hey hey!

Been a while since I reviewed anything, honestly this is just my interpretation.

On second reading (and because I clicked on this because it's written by you, and totally ignored the title), I realized that this is written in the perspective of the tree. The lines are lovely, dreamlike. I found the line "I was full to the roots with light." delightfully clever.


The opening verse, "We sat.", made me think of Treebeard from Lord of the Rings. Moving but old. But the 'you' in the poem still evades me! I'll quote bits of it with my thought process.

You were there to lob rocks at the water

but in the end, you just sat on a curb somewhere.

You told me your mouth was welded shut
or made of brick and mortar.

I don't know how to interpret it.
I do like your not completely free verse style in writing.
I think that next time you should make your poetry easier to interpret.
I can see that you have been writing for a while though.
I am following you and hope to see more of your work.