the eternal fire

Hello! I enjoyed this piece of yours - thanks for sharing. I have to say: I really like your use of the words 'empyrean' and 'stygian' to connect with the title. It also helps that they each represent opposites in a sense - heaven and hell.

However, here are a couple of things I've noticed.

1. The way you use tenses is a tad bit confusing. In stanza 2, you begin with present tense, but switch to the past perfect and then back to present. By right, the second line should read:

"Months have crawled by as I SCRUBBED this place of you."

Meanwhile, in stanza 4, you set up this expectation that this part will be about the present by starting with 'today'. Thus, when you switch to the past simple in the very next line, it sort of disrupts the flow of your poem. Perhaps you could try something like this:

a) switching the 1st and second lines, so it's chronological

"I burned shadows and boxes - a life waiting on a shelf
Today I cut flowers, and voices, and myself:
all these things that are making me
grieve."

b) changing the tenses
"Today I cut flowers, and voices, and myself.
I burn shadows and boxes and a life waiting on a shelf.
All these things that are making me
grieve."

2. Another thing is that I feel you're not choosing the best places to cut off the sentences. If you read the poem out loud, pausing in between lines, it sounds rather awkward in some places. For example:

"It’s bare now, the dark basement, the ((walls
cleared)) and the floors untouched. The ((empyrean
memory)) turned wasteland. "

Splitting apart noun phrases like "empyrean memory" and noun + verb combinations that carry the same image in the reader's mind might make things feel a bit broken up - or even cause your expressions to lose their meaning. I'd suggest keeping the noun/ verb phrases together for your verse:
"It's bare now, the dark basement, the walls cleared,
and the floors untouched. The empyrean memory
turned wasteland."

Reading out the poem as you write it really helps with this, as you can get a feel for how it's going to sound in your reader's head as they're reading it.

Overall, I love the concept and imagery you use; it really creates a cohesive picture. Hope you find this helpful!

Hello! I enjoyed this piece of yours - thanks for sharing. I have to say: I really like your use of the words 'empyrean' and 'stygian' to connect with the title. It also helps that they each represent opposites in a sense - heaven and hell.

However, here are a couple of things I've noticed.

1. The way you use tenses is a tad bit confusing. In stanza 2, you begin with present tense, but switch to the past perfect and then back to present. By right, the second line should read:

"Months have crawled by as I SCRUBBED this place of you."

Meanwhile, in stanza 4, you set up this expectation that this part will be about the present by starting with 'today'. Thus, when you switch to the past simple in the very next line, it sort of disrupts the flow of your poem. Perhaps you could try something like this:

a) switching the 1st and second lines, so it's chronological

"I burned shadows and boxes - a life waiting on a shelf
Today I cut flowers, and voices, and myself:
all these things that are making me
grieve."

b) changing the tenses
"Today I cut flowers, and voices, and myself.
I burn shadows and boxes and a life waiting on a shelf.
All these things that are making me
grieve."

2. Another thing is that I feel you're not choosing the best places to cut off the sentences. If you read the poem out loud, pausing in between lines, it sounds rather awkward in some places. For example:

"It’s bare now, the dark basement, the ((walls
cleared)) and the floors untouched. The ((empyrean
memory)) turned wasteland. "

Splitting apart noun phrases like "empyrean memory" and noun + verb combinations that carry the same image in the reader's mind might make things feel a bit broken up - or even cause your expressions to lose their meaning. I'd suggest keeping the noun/ verb phrases together for your verse:
"It's bare now, the dark basement, the walls cleared,
and the floors untouched. The empyrean memory
turned wasteland."

Reading out the poem as you write it really helps with this, as you can get a feel for how it's going to sound in your reader's head as they're reading it.

Overall, I love the concept and imagery you use; it really creates a cohesive picture. Hope you find this helpful!

Hey birk. This is Arpan to review your week.
The poem is good, and the title is catchy, "Eternal Fire", although i found that the poem was hardly linked to the title. The meaning and the theme is obviously scattered.

I didn't understand the line, " Last week a sunflower....... wouldn't leave", and didn't find any link between the different stanzas. The poem starts with an expression showing the pain of hiding love for someone, and ends with i don't know what.
To conclude, i would say that the lines individually had their unique meanings but when it's read all together, the link is missing.
Thank you.
(Note, if i hadn't got the meaning of the poem right, then just let me know. Otherwise thanks)

Hey there birk,
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review

First of all I would love to say that I found this poem to be very beautifully written. I love the imagery you used and the idea you created throughout this piece, good job. That said, there are a few things I would like to point out that I feel could use some touch up on or some improvement in one form or another.

1) I don't particularly like the fact that you have centered this poem. This is just more of a personal nit-pick but it just seems off to me. However, since you are the writer you may choose to align your poem any way you please.

2)

last week a sunflower burst through the concrete,
and before that a voice that wouldn’t
leave.

All these things that are making me
grieve.

And the staircase creaks beneath me as I leave this place within myself, sound again making
waves in my head, but I see it, from the corner of my eye,
just as the door closes behind me, in the middle of that
stygian abyss;