Brother

Hey, Scar! Pomp here for a RD review~

Forgive me my incoherence. I'm short on time so this is pretty hurried.

I haven't ever worked with Quaterns before, but I looked them up and the structure seems to be pretty simplistic! It's interesting, anyway, and I like the flow it creates as line one travels down the bar. Shadow Poetry tells me each line is supposed to be in eight syllables, though, although you don't have to write it in iambs/any set meter, so you might want to look into that!

I think my main scruple in this poem is flow. The first stanza flowed best out of all four and also created the most strident images, in my opinion, because I could very clearly picture the addressee being lowered into a grave (furrows and broken nails in wood brought to mind coffins and I pictured them sticking out of the wood in a thornlike manner. I think this could be linked to the garden imagery in the next stanza, specifically the roses? I wouldn't mind the connection being made stronger, though).

That said, I was a bit confused when I finished reading stanza one, because I thought, 'If he's being buried anyway, what does it matter whether it's a deep or a shallow grave? How does the grave being shallow give the brother peace, and a sense of comfort as opposed to the obvious terror of being buried in deep?' The poetic voice reasons that being buried deep will 'smother' their brother, and that burying him/his memory, if we're going for a metaphorical visual, will allow for the real him to be retracted from the ground/from the past with greater ease than if he were swallowed up completely (by the earth, or by something less tangible). I feel like the idea didn't come across as strongly as it could, or perhaps it's just me who wasn't wavered by it? The brother is alone and frightened anyway; it has nothing to do with depth, and I feel like the images could be much, much more evocative if we focussed on the brother being pressed down by dirt and ... their position in regards to their surroundings, rather than their surroundings in regards to their position.

'roses weep' ---> cliché. I don't mind roses being used as a symbol, but their weeping has become a very common image that just fails to strike a chord any more. I also advise against using an article to end a verse upon, because it creates a sense of incompleteness and detaches the first verse from the second. The second stanza does not seem to accomplish much, because it is basically a weaker rendition of what stanza one was saying, except that it reinforces the graveyard image. You could do without it, or you could tweak the way it is phrased to strengthen the poet's cry for redemption and how they're indignant, etc.

The repetition of 'brother' in stanza three doesn't work for me. I like how lines three and four flow; the refrain's been worked in really well here.

What's pulling this poem down from reaching its full potential, at the moment, is the fact that there is no turn/no volta, and the poet is basically repeating what they said in stanza one. While there's an elegiac monotony to what I read as a funeral march poem, I think the monotony could call for some variation, seeing as the eight-syllable structure it's meant to be written in makes up for constancy in the first place. 'bringing him back' is something that could be focussed on more, and how the poet wants to do it, because I feel like the searing claim is only weak by the time we reach the last stanza, because it is insubstantial, and the emotion has given way to a tone of quiet acceptance (which is not, I think, what the poet meant to get across at all).

Overall, lovely poem, interesting structure! I'd like to see more of what you could do with this.

Hope this helped. Keep writing!

~Pomp x

Hello! I love playing with different forms so this caught my attention immediately! I’ve not written a Quatern before but I did my research and it’s similar to a few I’ve tried. Maybe I’ll give it a go later

Specifics

1. I think the last line of your first stanza could be stronger. There’s a nice simplicity and understated tone to the poem but that line’s your chance to give us a little atmosphere and at the moment it doesn’t flow very smoothly from the previous line. Maybe something like ‘and pierce your roof with blood and broken nails’. Something more active than ‘furrows’.

2. In the second stanza, I’m not sure why the grave is marked by shattered stone? Is that suggesting the tombstone is broken already? Maybe rounded stone would represent the gravestone better or you could use disturbed ground?

3. I think the third stanza is the weakest so far. The notion of digging him back up comes out of nowhere and isn’t properly explained and the last line doesn’t carry enough horror. Maybe for fear your air will run out would express that better? Smothering is weirdly quite a soft sounding word and depth is immaterial so it’s hard to think of the depth as physically smothering him? Suffocation from lack of air would sound more natural.

Overall

I love the initial premise of this and the process of grieving but I’m not sure the notion of bringing him back or digging up the grave fits there. That feels more like it has religious connotations or some kind of cult following but there’s not quite enough language around that to explain it. The desire for someone to not be gone forever is natural but it feels like too much weight was put by this?

I don’t know. Maybe if it was phrased more as a hope? Something like:

And one day – perhaps - we’ll cut back the roses,
Roll away the stone and pull the roof off your house.
Brother, we shall not lay you down so deep
We can not find you.

And then a final stanza to follow up with what they most would want to do with them again or what lengths they will go to in order to find a way to wake him up?

Thanks for the read and I really enjoyed the first two stanzas and I think this structure works really well with the theme but maybe take another look at the second half.

All the best,

Heather

Hello! So I'm not as familiar with the quatern structure as other structures, so I'll be reviewing mainly just for content. I liked the images that your descriptions brought up, I was reminded of when people used to connect bells to buried loved ones. So the first two stanzas were really great in creating these images and feelings of a kind of deranged love and care for the narrator's lost brother. But then I became a little confused at what was going on in the last two stanzas. Why is the brother being dug up again? Was this the goal throughout? I can't discern why they would dig the brother up again and why the brother would be alive, so maybe go into more detail on what is actually going on in this scene- maybe add a stanza or two to cement the reader in this world.

I hope my review was understandable (I am very tired today so I'm not forming sentences properly) and helpful!

-picklesole