Young Writers Society

Sigh, you have amazed me yet again with your work... here's my two cents, love:

The adjectives you use are incredible. Word choice is so important, especially in poetry, and your particular word choice adds so much to your work. Sunbathe, twilight madness, hideous ugliness, dipped in sunlight... does the artistry ever end?

I am jealous of a line of Mannequins,
who sunbathe in swathes of orange light

I like how you opened this piece: you set a scene that promises some mention of insecurity or jealousy- I picture a teen gazing up at mannequins while she is shopping and being completely envious of their seemingly perfect existence. The imagery in the beginning allows your audience to delve really deep into the meaning behind the poem.

One morning I awoke to discover
The wild tales of twilight madness,
As hideous ugliness
Were dipped in sunlight and forgotten.

As I was reading, these lines screamed out to me: I immediately thought of some bad memories surfacing in the speaker's mind and being portrayed in a rather positive light. Then, I got to the next stanza...

Those unique feelings in deep secret
Of silent eyes of faithful evening sedate
No curtain falling will have same rehearse,
Of those fading moments like dead verse.

And BAM! My mind ran wild! Now, all I want to know is more: what are the deep secrets, the fading moments?

And, even now as I'm reviewing, all I can see is symbols screaming out at me. You've done a great job hiding a lot of meaning into this short poem. In order to make this symbolism more prominent, I would suggest trying to tie each stanza together a little more. The meaning is very vague, but it's definitely there, and with a little more clarification, I think you've got a real winner.

As always, great job.

-unluminescent

Hey, Steg! Pomp here for a quick review~

So I think the main problem coming through to me is that, while you have something you're attempting to convey to the reader, it's reading as pretty vague. Your images aren't as solid as they could be; one image is linking pretty loosely to the next and that doesn't really ... tie things together. For example, the narrator mentions being jealous of the mannequins (do the mannequins symbolise something deeper? or are they literal mannequins?), but then moves on to describe how immensely ugly they are. By the end of the poem, the tone is melancholy, somewhat pitying--and there is absolutely no resolution to the jealousy with which the poem began. The narrator's journey from envy to pity doesn't entirely make sense, mostly because it's very abrupt and the feelings of jealousy are not solidly reinforced besides a quick run through them in stanza #2 .

The narrator's presence also isn't very obvious in the poem, mostly because the narrator only ever mentions themself and their thoughts twice in the entirety of the piece; it doesn't do much for the knitting-together of things.

Let's break the poem apart and take a look at it, then.

I am jealous of
a line of Mannequins,
who sunbathe in swathes of orange light.

I liked the image of sunbathing mannequins; it was very vivid and created a picture in my mind. I'm a bit icky-picky with the use of the word 'swathes' because it's used for broad strips of [anything]' and I can't picture them as being wrapped in light, like the light's a cloth. It just doesn't work for me, because when the narrator uses the word 'sunbathe', I picture penetrating beams of light, light seeping, light flooding a space. Swath just constricts the image, because it centres on the mannequins being wrapped up in this light--while it's a clever way of telling us that the mannequins were 'trapped', their entrapment is not the narrator's focus at this point. Instead, the narrator is looking at them in awe.

tl;dr: some other word might fit better than 'swathes'.

I think the mannequins are supposed to be actual people. Like, people who live the high life and look quite glamorous from afar, but whose glamour fades when you look at their actual lives. It's a really great topic, a little dark, and I feel like it could come across as so much /stronger/. What I really like is your sense of line-breaks--you're really good at giving each line equal importance. I do think, though, that the line-by-line capitalisation isn't allowing the poem to flow as smoothly as it could, because the reader inadvertently pauses at the beginning of every line, assuming it to be a new sentence. I've also noticed that the capitalisation isn't consistent--that's something you can take care of in a jiffy ifwhen you edit. This article (on the subject of capitalisation) is fantastic~

those big, blue painted eyes,
will never look away.

Will never look away from what? The world//the material world//passersby? Why is this important? Is it because they're only looking at the world, that they're not really drinking in any of the truth it contains?

I like 'wild tales of twilight madness'--it's a line that really flows wonderfully and sticks with me and creates lovely lovely lovely images in my mind. A lot of your images are really strong; you just need to elaborate on them or twist them in a way that each part of the piece connects to another. That said, this stanza kind of stands out from the rest, in a way that is obtrusive--it doesn't entirely fit and I feel like it could combine with the rest of the piece better. Again, the narrator's own feelings have to be thrown in the mix as you go on about the mannequins.

So, at the end of the day, when everyone's gone home and the shop's closed down, the mannequins relax because they're not being stared at anymore? I think it's a really neat idea. The only thing I think this poem really needs is to be less jagged in its division, and for the narrator to be a little less ... objective? I can't really connect to the narrator or to the mannequins because the attention shifts to less important things, like the curtain and the 'feelings' which we don't really prod into much. Zoom a little into the scene, maybe. See how many ways you can write this in, how many different ideas you can explore.

I enjoyed this, Steg! There's a lot of potential here and I'd like to see more poetry from you! So keep writing; keep it up! Poke me if you make any edits, because I'd like to see what you do with this~

Hope this helped~ Cheers!

~Pomp c: