rooted

Hia candy! Hope you’re having a fantastic weekend :3

Ohha I guess this heads into the territory of religion. I am left very confused by the first stanza. That’s what I get for only ever really knowing about one famous person who came from a river. But I didn’t think that he lied? Wasn’t he the one who led them away from Egypt… That said, I really like how this stanza tells a story and how it is worked in with the verses :3

I am stumbling a bit about this line tho:

and a touch fitter for a flocker’s crook than for a lover.

It might be because I have difficult reading out this part to myself, stumbling over the words?

I do like how you bring the poem back around to the title with the final verse.
That said … I think the poem kinda went too much over my head and I didn’t get out of it, what you intended ☹


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Hello!

the one lifted from the river lies,
tells the faithful that in canaan there’s no fig,
no honey, no milk, no cucumber.

Oooh, I really like "the one lifted from the river" as a way of referring to Moses!

I was a little confused by him being the one who lies, though, since Joshua and Caleb tearing their clothes makes me think of the spies returning from Canaan, wherein it’s the other spies who give the faithless report. You may be deliberately combining figures or making Moses responsible as the leader, but at the moment it feels a bit like the biblical roles have become muddled rather than intentionally rearranged.

then they cry
"if only we remained in egypt, in the wilderness!"

I think the wording here could be clearer because Egypt and the wilderness are two different places in the story, so "remained in Egypt, in the wilderness" sounds as though Egypt is located within the wilderness.

fresh, like raisin cakes; reviving, like the nile.

These images are interesting, but I’m not entirely sure what they describe. Is it the new king, the rumour, rural faith or God? You move quite quickly between them, so I think this needs a more clear connection. I like the sensory quality of the raisin cakes, though, and the Nile brings me back to Egypt in a way that makes the poem feel circular.

far or long,
religious narrative has this liking for the verges,
the neglected, those too rooted out here

I understand what the ending is reaching toward, but "far or long" feels unfinished to me. I wondered if you meant "far and long," or something like "however far or long." The final line is also interesting because "rooted" can mean deeply established while "rooted out" means forcibly removed, but the grammar makes it difficult to tell which meaning should land. Do you mean it in the sense of "out here" or "here"?

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There’s a lot I like here! I especially like the contrast between prophetic language and ordinary food, gossip and labour. It keeps the religious imagery grounded rather than making everything feel distant and ceremonial, which is something I think can be easy to fall into with spiritual poetry. The movement from Canaan to Christ works well, too, because both areas are concerned with promise coming from somewhere apparently barren or unimportant.

The first stanza feels more complete to me than the second. The second one has some excellent lines, but the connections between them are looser. I think you could make the city’s relationship with rural faith more specific. Is the city mocking it, desiring it, turning it into an aesthetic or claiming the figures who emerge from it once they become important? All of those ideas seem to be present, but they’re bouncing around a little at the moment. I know poetry is often open to interpretation, but I am curious what you intended!

I’d also look at the places where the language becomes difficult to follow. A few of the more elaborate phrases feel as though they’re obscuring the thought rather than deepening it, like with combining references. I feel that way about the introduction of the "lover" in particular, and that's where I felt the second stanza became tangled.

Thanks for sharing this poem! Cheers!

Lipton