Heya alliyah! Lim here with a review.
General Impressions
The first stanza reminds me a bit of Greek philosophy, maybe whoever it was that wrote about humans originally having four of each limb and then being taken apart, so that they spend their lives searching for their other half. I might be misremembering, but that was the gist of it, I think. And I kind of see that idea reflected in this poem as a whole, too. The repeated lines in handwriting kind of reflect how the figure in the poem does things repeatedly, repeatedly searching. I like the cut-up format of the second stanza, because it contrasts how the first stanza is formatted and helps mark a ‘turn’. Another part that stood out to me was the forcefulness of the final lines.
I think like a good number of your poems this one is open to many interpretations. The core theme I think would be ‘seeking’ or ‘searching’, and maybe completeness as well. The poem itself casts the other half of the bird as the target, but the title refers to it as “the other half of the universe”, which makes me think it was almost made to be generalised. Given the genre – I’m guessing one of the intended meanings could be to portray a defiance of the laws set out in science, via spirituality, since to do this the half-bird has to defy gravity, amongst other things.
Glows – What I liked
I like how you’ve made the form match the content at basically every instance. The way the white papers are arranged for “broken down” conveys the idea of something that is cracked, like a mirror. The use of the same font for all of the “and”s also does not go unnoticed. I think it creates this repeating pattern that carries the reader’s eyes down across the page. The bolded words also sound more stressed inside my head when I read them, which contributes to creating a tone for the speaker. I read the stress in “hopelessly” and “somehow” as suggesting the speaker’s pathos for the bird, whereas “sky” and “lives” finalise it as amazement and admiration.
The use of “you” in the first and last stanzas but not the middle one is also quite clever, because it takes the reader into the poem via illusion of direct address and then returns the reader ‘outside’ to observe the bird, having understood her struggle from a more immediate perspective.
Grows – Ideas to consider
I wonder what would happen if you developed this “mirror of the soul” idea a little more? As it is right now I found it a bit jarring of a switch from the first stanza (though certainly an attention-grabbing one) and I understand the idea of it to frame the bird as a representation of a person. I wonder if there could have been an echo of that in the final stanza? Alongside the drawing of the mirror being presented there?
The positioning of the “and” that’s on the mirror is between the lines “if everything as been whole” and “sure enough one wing will stir” so at first glance it was a bit hard for me to tell which it belonged to.
Something else that might be interesting to try would be to play a bit with diction. This suggestion comes from the interpretation that this is supposed to be some kind of narrative of spirituality defying science. I think usually poems with this aim have a need to evoke a strong passionate emotion, so I thought of some suggestions that might lend to that.
The use of the word “severed” feels a bit more clinical and dispassionate to me than say, a word like “ripped”, “torn” or even just saying “two halves of a bird”. That could be the intention, since it’s only the first stanza, but just thought I’d note it here. The two commas in the line after that I also interpreted as more methodical pauses, rather than an emotive crescendo. So as a whole the first stanza gave me the impression that the speaker is taking a meditative, rather objective tone. The word choices in the second stanza could be made more intense if you want for example by removing the function words and connectors (“despite”, “being”) and replacing them with pure imagery.
Some other interesting ideas to explore would be if the “laws of gravity” was given more description to place it in opposition to the bird. That could help create more of a consistent juxtaposition between the bird and her surroundings and emphasise her struggle, if that’s something you want to do.
Overall
Another interesting piece! I like the use of formatting techniques and combining visual art with textual art to make a new contribution to an old duality. And even without that particular narrative, I especially like the idea of a poem about the beauty of seeking something out throughout one’s life.
Hope this helps – let me know if you’d like more feedback on something specific!
-Lim
Points: 20490
Reviews: 436
Donate