What is the first and the foremost?
What reaches the stars and the holy ghost?
What topples nations and leads to prosperity?
What ruins people but leads to maturity?
Oh, my love, tell me what you think:
It brings a man back from the brink,
It wrings us free and keeps us in chain --
No matter the suffering or the pain.
'Tis the bounty of life, the grace of death,
All gratitude and annoyance in one faith,
Sacrifice and acceptance all in one breath,
The dying whisper and the embracing wraith.
A hint: the answer is hidden in this lyric
In plain sight with no veiled disguises;
'Tis beautiful, consuming, selfish and satyric --
Yet we live and die in its many prizes.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,021 Literary Works • 672,739 Reviews
Hey there, Rebel!! This is Alex, back to try reviewing your (rather too) awesome poetries. I did fall on my face the first time but I like to think that I've grown a lot as a poet since then and this does seem like a much more simple project. I noticed it has many poems, in between, that lie in the Green Room. While I initially planned to do them the last Review day, Tikaa's WoS left me exhausted and I was afraid someone will get to these before me anyways. No worries though, I'm here now! I'll be reading the entire thing now and might as well comment on every poem of the series while I'm at it, the points could never hurt, even without the GR perk. Without anymore idle talk, let's dive right in~
I like how you waste no time starting with the question being referred to in the title. It very much reminds me of the rhyming clues we have for some treasure hunts- tricky but fun!
Lord help me- I'll try an improvement suggestion again. (Fingers crossed I'm not absolutely destroyed hehe). There is a way I think that the first two lines can be structured differently to be more impactful and adhere to a common syllable pattern. Of course you don't HAVE to agree and use it, like always-
What is the first and the foremost?/-
What/That reaches (the) stars and the holy ghost?
Either the version before the slash or after (later being my personal preference) and 'the' in parenthesis being optional.
I'm a little unsure about the use of 'and' here. 'Toppling nations' and 'leading to prosperity' are opposite actions, which are poorly explained by 'and' in such a close reference. Perhaps you meant a 'but'? I can definitely see a bigger picture though, where you could be talking about a tyrannical nation or maybe referencing to the 'life after death' idea. But my opinion stands- if you need to explain outside of the poem itself, it probably needed more clarity.
My absolute favourite lines! Very well summarised, given the answer I accidentally peeked from Tikaa's review.
For such close phrases to appear so close almost looks like idea recycling or accidental convergence in an attempt to meet the rhyme requirements. Maybe 'and a cause of scathe' is a good alternative?
Okayyy this line felt like breaking character from Lavender's POV to the writer's. How about a little flair in it like 'Say dear, the answer's in my lyric!' sound to you?
BEAUTIFUL AND BEST line!
That's all I have for now. My pleasure reading and reviewing, until next time ~
Love,
Alex
Hey there, Alex, it's been a while since you wrote this review and I am sorry for not replying since then 😔
I think I'll take the suggestion to remove 'into' in the 2nd line, it doesn't really ring right in my mind when I say it out loud. I think I would also change the 'embracing death' to 'the grace of death' to make it not sound repetitive. However, I will keep the 'and' because it represents simultaneity that other conjuctions like 'but' or 'yet' don't. Having the opposite traits at the same time is one of the themes of this series, so there's a reason behind that 'and'.
Thanks a lot for your review!
Yours sincerely,
The Rebel
Hia Rebel! There we go, April 3rd review and the dice chose the Green Room one. The dice do be knowing me very well =D
Let’s see, idk if you have a NaPo theme so it will be fun to figure out the theme of this poem :3
Ohh the first stanza feels like a riddle. Like something that would stump a DnD party for an entire session =D I actually love how grand and mysterious it sounds :3
I especially wonder what the line about ruining ppl and bringing maturity is abt!
I love the rhythm and word choice here:
Spoiler
Thanks for sharing and thanks for bringing this to my attention. I think you are my candidate for this year's “best poet” in the best and most awards :3
Join the fight! Write more reviews!
Thanks for the review, Tikaya!
Also... DING DING DING!!! Correct! Check out the follow-up poem by Jasmine in the next one in the series if you wanna know how she answers!
ALSO, JUST READ THE LAST LINE: AWWWWW THX A LOT <3
Wow, this is a great piece!
I kinda went line by line with this, just to give you my interpretation and a little bit of feedback for each stanza.
"What is the first and the foremost?
What reaches into the stars and the holy ghost?
What topples nations and leads to prosperity?
What ruins people but leads to maturity?"
Very riddle-esque. Each question hooks the reader, and urges them to read on. The phrasing is also very poetic.
"Oh, my love, tell me what you think:
It brings a man back from the brink,
It wrings us free and keeps us in chain --
No matter the suffering or the pain."
The colon at the end of "Oh, my love, tell me what you think" could be replaced with a semicolon or a period. Colons are often used to introduce lists, explanations, or examples. If you think the lines that follow fall under such, than ignore this.
Although "chain" directly rhymes with the "pain" in the following line, it causes the reader to metaphorically stumble (if that makes sense). You could maybe change it to a slant rhyme and make "chain" plural (chains).
This stanza is very evocative, especially "wrings us free".
"'Tis the bounty of life, the embrace of death,
All gratitude and annoyance in one faith,
Sacrifice and acceptance all in one breath,
The dying whisper and the embracing wraith. "
I noticed here that the rhyme scheme changes here from aabb to abab. I don't really have any notes on this, just pointing it out.
"The dying whisper and the embracing wraith" is a really great line!
"A hint: the answer is hidden in this lyric
In plain sight with no veiled disguises;
'Tis beautiful, consuming, selfish and satyric --
Yet we live and die in its many prizes."
Just a little spelling error. "satyric" should be spelled "satiric"
The phrase "yet we live and die in its many prizes." I know that it's hard elaborate in a rhyming poem, but could you possibly add a bit more clarification to that line? It's a bit vague, and although it leaves the reader questioning, its more confusing that thought provoking.
Overall, this was a really great piece that immediately drew me in, and had me hooked from beginning to end.
Hey there, sophie, thanks for your review!
As it's a series of examples, the colon is intended as it is. Also, satyric is a different word, it means having wanton lust or lasciviciousness and it's related to Satyrs (followers of Dionysus) from Ancient Greece. The final line is intended to be riddling, as the entire poem is a riddle between two lovers (Lavender and Jasmine) where L asks J weird questions and J replies wittily in another poem.
So yeah, thanks again! :p
Sorry about my mistakes, my grammar isn%u2019t always the best lol. Also yes, the riddling thing wasn%u2019t intended to be feedback, just an observation of a quality that I liked.