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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
I've spent days reading this time and time again, grasping at the straws you've left me with to possibly critique. One day it was the shift in tense at the midway point, but the next day I'd have it no other way. Another day it was your reliance on Eliot's ending and how I'd want you to make your own memorable mark; I still believe this bit, but I cannot concede that the poem doesn't work yet without the paraphrase.
You see my dilemma.
What I'm left with is flow. Flow in the shape of
feeling as though the simplistic "not working right" breaks me from the stupor of the remaining verse. Flow in the form of
the feeling that there's a fluid arc missing from this change in stanzas because of the change in tense, and by proxy the change in momentum.
You've done a blasted good job with this: your imagery is tight; your word choice is fresh, alive, and on-pointe; and you have a solid ending. This makes me angry, though, because I want to be in the book of names that helped this along--and I think my only remaining shot is the borrowed ending. Over time, as you revisit this and perhaps grow ill-content with words not your own, you can find the appropriate closure for this piece. On a personal note, I almost feel as though your lack of personal closure with the poem symbolizes your inability to package together the end of the fire depicted here. And with that in mind, your borrowed words speak volumes to the central point of this piece: though the end grows obviously near, no one can be ready for the final dousing.
It makes me hurt.
Ty
I really enjoyed this poem. Not despite the lack of capitalization, but I think BECAUSE of it. I really must applaud your choice to not use capitalization. It was certainly a bold one, but I thought it made everything flow so much smoother. Each line and stanza rolled off my brain the way I think it would roll of my tongue, so bravo.
Anyway, ON TO THE REVIEW!
I am going to correct punctuation and spelling, but I'll try not to make that the entire review.
There are so many times you do this. You put a semicolon where really there should be a period. Just so I don't have to waste too much time, I'm going to list all the instances in which you do this.
-"not working right and your body
disconnected from your brain;"
-"around the fire in your mind
sometimes estinguishing parts;"
I might've missed some, but these are the ones I found.
Spelling.
Stanza 1.
-Should "whips" be wisps?
Stanza 2
-Should joins be joints?
-Viens should be veins
-chimnies is chimneys
Stanza 3
-estinguishing should be extinguishing.
Oh and in stanza 1, you don't need the parenthesis.
Okay, now for the important parts. I loved the structure of your poem. How your first stanza is SUPER long, then the middle to are average length and the last is short. The structure and overall appearance of poetry IS important. You did a spectacular job with it.
I also like your flow, and in places, lack thereof. There are places in this poem that flow amazingly, and others that are choppy. The choppy parts seemed very important, so the choppy flow made me stop to consider what you were saying and the ideas you were actually trying to convey. Good job with that.
Now for my favorite part.
This was perfect. I love this. I just think it was the perfect way to end your poem.
Overall, I give this a 9/10. You lost a point for spelling and punctuation. The rest was perfect and I really enjoyed it. Great job and happy writing!
XOXO,
Gravity
Your favourite part is, ironically, the one part I didn't come up with myself. "Not with a bang but with a whisper" is nearly a word for word quote from The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot.
Thanks for the typo correction; this is what happens when I do not have spell check.
Glad you understood why I chose lack of capitalization.
The reason I used semicolons instead of periods is because semicolons link two ideas together while periods finish a sentence cleanly, as if there is nothing more to add. As a result, periods felt too final in the locations you said I should use them. I wanted to connect the two parts on either side of the semicolon together somehow, hence why I used the punctuation I did.
Also, do you mean I don't need parenthesis as a punctuation mark and the piece within them should stand on its own, or that I should remove the parenthesis and everything between them? Your comment on that can be taken either way, and each way is a much different result.
You just don't need parenthesis as punctuation. The stuff in between was good
No, I do need parenthesis as punctuation. The part between them is only tangentially related to the main part of the poem; I can remove the whole part in parenthesis and the poem still makes sense, so it's not related to the main part. That's what parenthesis mean: "something that's extra information but only tangentially related so don't read it aloud when you read the poem."
I used unusual punctuation for very conscious reasons. If the punctuation marks made the poem incomprehensible, that's one thing, but from what I can tell you're simply telling me "your punctuation is wrong" when it's neither grammatically incorrect or horribly ruining flow; it's simply unusual, therefore "unneeded".
If you have any logic against my punctuation use, by all means, do say it. Poetry punctuation is extremely easy to mess up because there's such a small space to convey so much, and I know I could be ruining flow with one little slip up. But consider why it's in there in the first place before you say "you don't need it."
Punctuation means things. A period isn't always the best way to end a sentence, and it's by far not the only way. Sometimes the best way is a comma and a coordinating conjunction, while others need a semicolon. If I'd overused semicolons and the ideas were not related when I was tying them together, that's one thing to comment on my use of semicolons. But simply saying "you could've used a period" without any logic, you're not acknowledging those semicolons have a point that I want to convey somehow.
Sometimes, you want to emphasize extra information that's barely related but important to put in, so you use dashes to draw that emphasis. Others, you want to tuck away that extra information and make people aware of it but not shout it; that's when you use parenthesis, like I did here. Sometimes the information is so related you use commas to simply say an aside in the same tone that relates to the rest of the sentence.
It's all about how you say it.