Young Writers Society

Hey Curves!

Here as I’m pretty sure you demanded! This is maybe going to be a bit long, I’m still not sure what I’m going to say exactly. Your poem is basically sound. You have content, imagery, emotion and some good technique in there. You are, however, missing a couple of other things which prose writers often miss when writing some poetry.

You have all the basics, as I said. But I’m not feeling this poem at all. You have a narrative going on but it’s clearly a dramatic poem. Your narrator is talking directly to an individual and appealing to them for understanding. The appeal gets through, but personally, that’s the only thing running through for me at the moment. Your imagery is condensed but repetitive and it makes me feel like I’m getting a little bit of filler – or that you weren’t sure what you were writing until you were in the middle of it and understood. That doesn’t jive with the kind of content and voice you have going though, so I’ll assume that we’re just running on some rusty skills. I don’t feel any of the emotions from your poem that I think I ought to be feeling. I think that’s due to the very... proscriptive nature of the poem. There’s no room to move in this poem, not even in an imaginative sense. We’re told what we see and how we see it – how we’re meant to see it. I don’t believe in mystery in poetry being from missing events, but I do think that if you thinned this out some and gave us some room to breathe it would improve considerably. To expand:

We are looking at the stars, which have some good solid description. Nice things, seeing through the dust and the like. We’re not told colour or shape or anything, because we’re talking about stars and not the solar system, even though we move to dust and dirt – is this key? Are you suggesting that they also don’t see their stars so beautifully as we can. I feel like there’s a they, a people on planets much like ours, living like-lives and such.

But really what your poem is about is love. The universe is metaphorical, the stars are, because it’s really about your narrator’s love and his progression through humanity. I would consider melding this throughout the poem, rather than letting it sit bottom heavy. We’re pushing downward and suddenly drop, if you think of poems in physical terms. Weave more of a story here, even if it isn’t a narrative, we don’t need any more information but a little more integration of the two concepts. Love as space, infinite. You’ve titled this ‘Galaxy’ but I feel that’s misleading, as it isn’t related to the topic of your poem, but I’m not sure what would suit better.
Your ending is certainly cute, somewhat anti-climatic but I think that’s because you have a prose-tone and your poem feels like there should be much more to it. I feel like you’re leading us on. A harder end line would fix that, something with a strong crunch of finality. Losing some of the repetition though integration will help this, it’ll make your last line seem more unusual, more noticeable as an ending.

It’s a sweet poem that I think needs some basic editing. You could keep it the way it is without too much trouble, as it’s your voice and that’s what I’m having issues with.

In any case, tell me if you do change it, I’d like to see.

-Tangent.

Also: Oh man I didn't check your reviews at all. Mesh has probably been way more helpful! I'm sorry!

Hey, 'Rina. So, in general, I like this - Dreamwalker hit on a few points I was thinking about, so I'll leave those alone.

Stylistically, however, I do have some issues here. Your first stanza just feels off. I haven't quite figured out why I think so - it may be meter, it may just be words aren't ordered the way I want them to be. I know part of it lies in using "let's" - the speaking to your audience screams wrong to me in this poem. Forced and unnatural. I'd at the least get rid of the first three words.

The first line of your second stanza you could delete entirely - actually, I like that. It gives you two stanzas that being with a question, an answer (or something like rationale, anyway), and then a plan of action with your last stanza. Also, I think you should end the stanza on "And I thank God for it." But, well, you know me. I like to trim things back to the bone.

Third stanza I love your first three and a half lines. The punctuation feels a little off poetically, though it's fine grammatically. Then with the rest of it I just want to stab extra words out (and in the final stanza, too). Like, if you don't mind my playing over much, you have:

Even in pain can the
light never be extinguished: the tears only accentuate
the sparkle of your eyes and your quivering lips only
beg to be kissed.

I want to make it more like this:

Even in pain the light
can never be extinguished: tears accentuate
the sparkle of your eyes, and your lips only
beg to be kissed.

Side note - extinguished reads off meter-wise. I want a two-syllable word there, not three, when I'm reading it. I'm also not happy stylistically with "only" in there, but without it the meter falls off.

All this aside! I'm struck by how lovely your imagery is, but I'm not sure what you want us to come away with. Like, we get all this love and reborn stuff, but what are you actually saying about it?

Happy editing!

<3

Oh my lovely Snoinker and her lovely poetry .

Anyways, a review from me to you should have been done weeks ago and I just never got around to doing it. So this will make up for my laziness, yes? Hopefully? xD.

Let's get this show on the road, shall we?

Now, as it goes, I'm a big fan of galaxy imagery. If you can remember 'you too will turn to dust, one day', which I believe you reviewed back when it was up, I had used similar, though not quite as interesting imagery to get a whole different aspect across than the one in which you did. Which is why I can respect this, and why I love it. After all, the universe is infinite and its very hard to comprehend galaxy poetry not being infinite as well. The possibilities are endless.

Which is what brings me to my first point. Why forlorn love?

I think I said this last night as well. The idea of longing and love and this shattering sadness is overwrought with superficiality. Its not pretentious, by any means, but lacking in that sort of breathy originality that lives in what is from the heart and from the soul. The stars are fantastic imagery but if not used correctly, they will come across as being cheesy and plain boring. You can't take two very known things and compare them, like an essay. If you have something deep to say about love, write it subtly. Make connections with the cold pavement under your feet, or the bricks that corrode away with time and shatter with an almost deflating fragility.

Its that kind of imagery that brings originality to old topics like loving ones who can't love themselves, or loving and not receiving love in return. Imagery that is so fresh and astoundingly new that its breathy and incredibly visceral.

Its a vice versa situation. With the stars, for instance, if you were to take something completely different. A different twist. A different situation. The feel of a cup of tea in the morning when sitting down to write. Or the feel of pages under your fingertips which spurn this warm ecstasy. Things that are very feeling and seeing and smelling and tasting. The human body is full of these sort of goosebump rising, near embarrassing traces of enticement its almost hard not to be able to capture that with words. So why love, when compared with the night? Why something so basic and fronting and forward? What does this prove other than what any poem before it has proven over and over and over again?

The last stanza interests me the most. The way it curls into a sort of third facet rather than the two very basic facets you have already. This way of bringing in this sort of omnipotent imagery rather than a full-fledged reality. That's were the start is. That's where we see talent, my dear.

through your tears, I can see the whole universe
tremble.

Aha, it seems I too, have fallen in love with your poem! My heart constricts here,

I taste salt:
primordial, raw, and teeming, and I understand
what it means to be alive.

So hold me: Let us dance and die and be reborn
in this glorious stardust, for you were made to be loved.