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138,271 Literary Works • 672,093 Reviews
ngl Rosey, the lump in my throat is the size of Texas right now.
I hate this and I love this all at once and I'm not totally certain if I'm going to be the best person to review this right now but I'll give it my best shot.
I love how tactical this is. How the imagery starts big and gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you get to the very core of what it all means. I love that it takes puzzling through almost, like stripping away concepts one by one until you get to that last line which is, by far, the most powerful part of this poem. It's an upside-down triangle that points to the very source of all the chaos.
My only piece of criticism lies with the punctuational choices. I can definitely see what you were aiming with this - that sort of Faulkner-esque stream of consciousness what have you - but where the lines should be breathy and on-going they feel almost cluttered and breathless. I had to reread it a couple times and add soft stops to slow it down a bit. However, having those soft pauses or not is completely up to you. If you like the way the poem sort of zooms through than thats totally stylistic and I wouldn't change it otherwise.
On a personal note, I lost someone back in June that I loved very much and this hit on some very sore, very real feelings. I'm not sure if my review will be all that helpful because of that so I apologize if this lacked the depth you were looking for from me.
Thank you for this,
- B
Stanza two, the permanence of memory speaks further than anyplace else in this piece, and that note needs to be made. I'm not sure if you acknowledge it personally or not, but the juxtaposition of "the right hacker can find your photographs / from when smiles came easier" in this area of the poem should speak as much to you as it does the reader because--well, while this stanza hurts me because of the notes on memory operation [period]--it gives the statement of the target's immortality in all moments, whether they wanted it or not.
I told you I couldn't do it.
He would've loved this.
Ty
Hi there! Writervid here for a review!
Okay, so I really, really like this poem. You hit imagery on the head right here with your descriptions of technology, a topic I don't usually see a lot in poetry in any way, shape, or form. And the fact that you related it to missing someone is beautiful and lovely--even though the person missing the other seems to be a strange kind of hacker.
I'm doing this editing in a notes format in parentheses in your poem.
the pokestops in my city are already
out of date, (I feel like this should be a period instead of a comma since the thoughts aren't super connected) bus stops hundreds of feet away
and stores long closed (this provides an image in my head, but it's description without form. It's a list without being a list if you leave the punctuation above as is. Try to put some form to these sentences and this will become ten times stronger), landmarks
long removed still pinned as
points of attraction, a record of
what used to be (put is right here and that shapes the sentence and the thought) chiseled into layers
like limestone, a digital record
of what used to be even after the memories
are haunting recollections (period here) it never
used to be this way (shouldn't a period be here since this is a complete thought?)
when a file is deleted, the computer simply
marks the memory as free to use. the
right tools can pull up what was thought
long erased (comma here) but the hard drive has not
spun on for (you can take out the for here) long enough to overwrite that
particular file, the encryption you put on there
so nothing could ever escape and ( if you take out the and you can put a period right after escape) yet
the right hacker can find your photographs
from when smiles came easier
At this point, the main thing your poem seems to be missing is form in sentences and punctuation to make new ones. I think this is an easy enough fix. You can distinguish thoughts here, they just need to be more distinguished through punctuation and the formation of new sentences.
every word you have ever typed stays stored
somewhere in pixels, information never
possible (you might want better word choice here than never possible. It doesn't quite click right, at least for me) to be erased. each keystroke
the first law of thermodynamics— energy cannot
be created or destroyed; it can only
change shape from heart to keys, from
one computer to another, old conversations stored (I love this)
somewhere long after applications have crashed (period here) even
after they are thought forgotten, always waiting
for the right key to be unlocked
even if it is made of bone
i miss you
Overall, fantastic job. I enjoyed reading and reviewing this immensely. Happy day/night! Keep writing!
Thanks for the review.
The lack of periods is semi-intentional, because I write extremely stream of consciousness and I generally try to create a breathless feel with the phrasing. I also dislike ending things, and I dislike interrupting thoughts.
I can overuse the technique, though, so I'll look at punctuation if/when I revise.
This is Kaos here for a review, as promised!
The start of this stanza was stronger than the second half because of the clarity involved here. After line five and on line five is where I got a little confused. From my understanding, you're kind of explaining this ghost town but it digital form. I find there are a lot of potential things you could do with this idea of digital ghosts and so far you do good at capturing the lack of people and the empty feel to it. Where I got confused was the fifth line after the comma. My way of interpreting it was landmarks that used to be new and not of age which is something that could be implemented into the stanza better. The last three lines of this stanza are more specifically what caught me up, they were worded awkwardly and I think it would be beneficial if you reworded and revised them to something that's stronger. In the second to last line of this stanza, I figure you're avoiding punctuation on purpose but I suggest putting a semicolon after recollections because it just sounds awkward.
Something that I noticed earlier in the poem but I decided to note here because it's more strong, is that you did a lot of avoiding of "i" and other pronouns like that and I couldn't quite tell if it was a stylistic choice or not. This stanza was robotic. It didn't have any life to it and you could use that to your advantage if you wanted, but I personally thought that it drained the poem of the emotion that was there in the first stanza. It's very technical and seems to avoid any sense of description that has emotional attachment or any type of figurative language. For me, I thought it did a lot of spewing things that people already know in a poet format without really adding anything to it. The ghost town imagery wasn't here which was something that I liked from the first stanza. This takes a more sat-down perspective like the speaker is now alone in a house instead of walking around some empty town. Something that I wanted to throw out there is the emphasis on the feeling of loneliness, empty streets where nobody can be seen in immediate distance. Even paranoia would fit.
Now this stanza was something that blew me away. I really liked the idea of the energy not being destroyed but it's something that can be converted into something else. The robotic tone is still there a little, and I think the flow is my main problem here with you experimenting around with the punctuation and a lack of punctuation. I don't mean this is something bad, but there are a few kinks that I think you need to sort out. The conversion of heart to keys and the applications crashing is something that I found strong but nothing that I found vivid? It was more vague than vivid for me, the poem is dense with words yet lacks imagery in some spots I found, but it's made up for in some ways.
Hearing the use of "I" at the end of the poem was something that I enjoyed a lot.
I hope I helped and have a great day!