Young Writers Society

This poem had a really interesting beat and rhythm that kept it moving very well. It had really great flow and never felt choppy or unnatural. As dearestdeli explained, it's very sensual which is great! Finding the sensuality in a poem can be really hard and you tackled that pretty well. I do wish the poem had more levels since it feels like it like it kind of has the same emotional platform up until the last stanza.

The metaphors were beautiful, the poem had nice flow and this piece was an overall gold star. (Side note: I absolutely LOVED the line 'run rivers down my spine'. It just... sounds nice, you know?)

Wooooooooow, Lareine,

Just wanna say: one of THE most sensual poems I've read in a very long while!!

I don't know if I can call this a review! More of a praise!

The poem structure is one of my favorite parts. There's a bit of struggle with structure of some poems I've read but a clever one you are! Reminds me of a puzzle with the way the lines are placed.

Imagery is most definitely one of your strengths! I can feel this poem, smell it, hear it--everything! I love the way you immediately entered the poem too! Straight into the sensory.

I also learned a new word by the way haha!

I have nothing else to say other than great freaking job! I am also sorry for using so many exclamation marks. Just very excited about great poetry.

Hey love.

I like the concept of this. The way you describe events with entries in a dictionary that is very obviously out of order, indicating that it's because of a progression of time.

My biggest thing with this is how you seem to have the middle of a poem. It took me a few reads to pick up on the entries of a dictionary, and there doesn't seem to be an introduction or closure. Because this is so narrative-heavy, I feel we need something at the start and at the end to really tie everything together and explain just a little, introduce the metaphor before the entries begin, and maybe end it with something to show what the entries mean.

I'm also going to pitch the concept of tension, where there is a tiny grain of conflict in the poem that keeps us reading. This could be fixed with an introduction, or maybe some edits. But you have so much potential for tension and it's not really there. It was hard to pick up on the entries because of it, because it felt list-like.

Overall, this was beautiful. I feel like I might borrow this metaphor to explain lives, because it's just so fitting. Certain parts of our existence feel very defined by certain words, and this feels like such a good coping mechanism. It just needs something to tie it all together, and maybe a dash of conflict, for it to really sing.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hey there!

Specifics

1. Interesting title - it's unusual and caught my attention so nice work there.

2. I don't think of stones as being hot, in fact quite the opposite. My experience of them is that they're cold and smooth so I'm struggling with the comparison of a hot shower to stones. Maybe if you began with the image of coals and then worked to stones from there?

3.

the part I break down every day,

atoning for my sin—commiserate
is entered in my dictionary
somewhere in the middle, it's

every whisper aimed at faces turned
away from wind—incinerate

and turned to rain in kind