This poem has been removed due to its self-imposed butchering and the fact that the author borrowed too much from it for other pieces. Thank you.
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello!
I'd like to take this line by line, but I actually want to do it sentence by sentence just so you might see how I see it when I try to decipher it.
"The forest winds its way from the wrist root to branches of fingers." If found this interesting, and confusing. I like the image of the forest on a body (if that's the image I'm supposed to be getting). But when you read this as a sentence, it doesn't make much sense. I think you might want a comma after "wrist" or something because I don't know what a "wrist root" is. With a comma there, it would read as if the forest blooms out of someone's wrist and slinks around their hand until trees are growing out of the tip of the fingers. I'm not sure if that's what you wanted that to read like, but that's what I got. Also, "branches of fingers" sounds awkward. I don't know how to tell you to fix it, but it just sounds wrong to me. If this sentence has anything to do with the rest of the poem, I feel like the meaning is that you are playing the piano with your fingers, the keys are wood, so it's like a forest. If that's what you're getting at, the symbolism is vague and weak, and I'd think of revising this.
"There is mahogany in my knuckles, hammers that echo in its frame." First off, "its" should be "their." I really love the imagery of mahogany in knuckles. Those two words are very specific, and not used a lot, so good job. When you talk about "hammers" (this might just be me because I've played the piano for a long time) I immediately think of hammers in a piano, and that fits very well with the mahogany, a wood out of which pianos are made. By this sentence, I feel like you're trying to tell us that you are a part of the piano, the music it makes. But this isn't very clear either. The symbolism is vague, but the imagery is beautiful.
"The law of dynamic conservation: reincarnation. Energy is neither created nor destroyed." I wasn't exactly sure what you meant by "dynamic conservation." I googled it, and these answers came up:
and
Somehow I felt like you meant neither of these when you said dynamic conservation. I decided to break it down and see it as "conservation of dynamics," since we're dealing with music here (and your last word IS a dynamic). I do not see how conserving dynamics is reincarnation, nor do I see how you can conserve dynamics. Obviously I am missing the subtle symbolism again. I also don't understand the part about energy. I do know that's Newton's (right?) law of energy, blah blah blah, but obviously you aren't using it as that. Honestly, when I try to understand what these sentences mean, the only thing I can think of is my choir teacher telling us that "just because you're singing softly doesn't mean you should sound dead. Put energy into the soft parts." That's the one thing that I think could make this line make sense to me. Sorry, I'm rambling. Moving on.
"It steeps into a certain kind of stillness, pines away into silence in fortissimo." First off, I like how you stuck another wood reference in there, even if you're using it as a verb. Okay, I'm not sure what "it" is that's steeping, and I don't know what you mean by "a certain kind of stillness" or how whatever it is can "pine away into silence." However, I do LOVE the duality/paradox of "silence in fortissimo." That's just a gorgeous detail. I don't even know how to translate the rest of this sentence though, so I'm not going to try.
I think you tried to cover up your convoluted meaning with a poetry format in which you just randomly press enter. Sorry if that's not the case, but that's what I'm seeing. You were vague, and I'm not sure what you mean by "the circle of life" (I know you said "reincarnation" but I didn't understand why that was in there either.) or "in the key of Em," unless this is a poem FOR or ABOUT someone who's named Em. You used pretty words, pretty descriptions, pretty metaphors, but They made little sense to me. Figure out what you really mean, what you really want to say and say it.
I actually really liked this poem, even if it didn't make sense. Not everything has to make sense, I just appreciate it more if it does.
Keep writing!
~fortis
Knight Malachi here to review for Review Day.
The forest
winds its way from the wrist
root to branches
of fingers. There is mahogany
in my knuckles, hammers
that echo in its frame.
In this stanza I think it should be re-done something like this for easier reading.
The forest
winds its way from the wrist
root to branches of fingers.
There is mahogany
in my knuckles; (either a period or semicolon here, but not a comma) hammers
that echo in its frame.
Now it may not seem like a lot, and shorten the number lines, but it helps me read much easier.
for the positive though, the double picture (hand and trees) was AWESOME! I really loved that a bunch.
Second stanza was pretty much good. No punctuation errors or grammar ones, either. I liked this stanza just as much, and you stuck with the tree and hand/life theme. Good job with the cool and awesome description.
Keep it up!
Happy Review Day!!!!
Well, I'm one of the only reviewers reviewing this piece who isn't a musician. But, that's alright, because this poem really conveyed a lot of emotion to me, even though, as the past reviews suggested, it was targeted toward musician.
Let me warn you, I don't usually review poetry, so you're going to have to bare with me here. I'm not sure if I've read much of your poetry, but, wow. This captivated me.
To me, as a non-musician as I've stated countless times, it really shows the circle of life in a way. In the first stanza, where you compared the branches of a tree and the roots of a tree to an arm really got me thinking: "So, the world's all connected in one way or another."
In the second stanza, as a person who relies on logic a lot, I see that a brief explanation of the law of conservation. This shows, to me, that whenever something dies, it's not really lost, because its energy is still there, living on. I loved it.
At the moment, I really don't see anything wrong with it. Keep on writing!
I like this because its subtle. Its something only a musician would understand.
I feel like you have nothing to do with sound in the forest, so I am confused how the second stanza relates to the first. I feel like it does not.
Hello! So I really like the poem and its flow, it's not quite the normal way to part lines in a poem, but it still works really nicely. My main concern was that I was led to expect a different type of poem from the title. When one is writing a poem title "Circle of-" something, the poem itself needs to be circular, you know? A few things to think about is making the poem circular in ideas. You have some really nice descriptions (really, really nice) in there, but there needs to be a definite starting point that evolves, eventually back to that starting point, if you are indeed going after "the circle of life" in some context or another. So lets say your starting point is the forest, what your first two words/first line was. What about the forest, and why does the cycle start there? What happens between the starting point of the first line and the conclusion of the cycle in the last line, and why is it important? There wasn't a definite idea, so I wasn't sure exactly what I was reading. Personally, and this is only because I'm a musician, I thought that you were describing music, and playing it, because in the first stanza you describe the wrist and fingers and knuckles, very important body parts to pay attention to when playing violin, for example (as well as a multitude of other instruments, of course). Secondly, I already had music in my mind when I read the second part of the title, and lastly, because of your closing statement, a dynamic marking in music. So whether or not that was what you were thinking of or trying to capture, that's what I got out of it.
It's a very beautiful poem, indeed. But it needs a little more fleshing out, you know? One it needs a more stable idea, and a more circular one, as well. If you're going for a poem about cycles, you usually need to end similarly to how you began. Also, when you have your idea, you need to relate it somehow to Life and its cycles, because that is what your poem is named. If you want a challenge on how to really keep the circular theme going on in your poem, think about structure. Make the lines short and simple in the beginning, then elaborate and describe more towards the middle, then gradually come back to short and concise (yet still beautiful) lines and stanzas until you end with your last concluding thought. Just a little challenge.
That is my review, thanks for reading the entire thing.
P.S.- Your descriptions really are quite beautiful, it brings vivid images of serene forests in my head (and I LOVE serene forest images).
Knight Dragon, here to review!
This is the only section that felt awkward and didn't flow well. "The law of dynamic conservation: reincarnation."
Now, the transition here off of the tree analogy to the energy is rather abrupt, and I was expecting you to continue the analogy in the second stanza. So perhaps a third stanza, a segue, in between the two? I don't know if you want to do that though.
Hope this helps!