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139,719 Literary Works • 672,668 Reviews
hey there,I know this is a late response to your article but I just can't stop to wonder at how well you put together such words that are simply touching. It actually reminds me of a couple of pals who I lost this week in an inferno...my tears can't stop flowing within me. Cheerz and keep on writing!
That is so sad! You have really drawn me into, feeling strong emotions. It is touching and thoughtfull. I am very much imporessed. Keep going.
Hiya!
First off, I agree with Kitty that the title’s kinda meh.
Lack of capitalisation can be very powerful, but I always take it to mean a shrinking of self, a feeling of unimportance, especially when “I” isn’t capitalised. So I would expect that kind of feeling from this poem, but instead your imagery and language are very confident. You’ve got similes that are definite and concrete—bridges, birds, earth, golden. These are all very definite images, and I don’t feel like they fit with the tone of poem. You’re talking about being alone, but nothing in the language really says alone. I mean, you’ve got the words “alone” and “lonely”, but they’re just words, there’s no real lonely image that makes the emotion real.
Personally I think that metaphors work better in poetry than similes because they’re more subtle, and stronger. With a simile there can come distance—you’re saying “there are two things, and they are like each other”, but with a metaphor you’re saying “this thing is this other thing”. Does that make sense?
[quote[ lingering and longing just out of reach
too far to hold and too good to leave[/quote]
The subject is unclear in these lines. “Lingering” and “longing” are two different actions, and one seems to belong to the narrator (“longing” for something out of reach) and the person addressed by the narrator (“lingering” just out of reach) but you’ve got them together like they’re being done by the same person. You can’t linger out of reach and long for something out of reach all at the same time.
This image feels too vague. Is the distant forever a person, this person, a place, a time, death? Why are they reaching for it if this forever won’t bring together the narrator and the other person? Will it bring them together? If it will, then you should have a stronger verb than reach. Reach is boring and brings nothing with it.
The narrator says the other has gone, but they never seemed to be there in the first place. The narrator was pursuing the other and wishing they weren’t so far apart. There wasn’t any connection established between them, and they never seemed to meet up or come together to make this loss emotional.
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Overall, I feel like this poem is too disjointed. Some of the images feel wrong in tone and not strong enough in emotion, and there isn’t a smooth transition between images. I think you should find one image and stick to it, elaborate on it and build it up until that’s the thing that we remember, that we take away with us afterward. That way you should stay consistent to the tone and stuff should flow better. Right now everything's a little vague and I'm not entirely sure what the "alone" is. Is it death, a breakup, unrequited love, illness, madness?
But don’t get discouraged! It seems like you have a good idea of what it is you want to say, so tweaking to make that message more coherent should be easy.
PM or Wall me if you have any questions!
-twit
Ignore it's current state. I tried to edit it on my school computer which doesn't like the editor. I shall fix it in the afternoon.
And now the edit option is gone??!!
You said with urgency so I guess I'll do this now ^^
Title: I don't like it. It's dull, obvious. Doesn't leave much to the imagination or trigger any thoughts, images etc. Why not try thinking outside of the box? Okay so reaching for you= communication= different forms of communication? Telephone, conversation, walkie talkies, radio. Anything sticking? Just play with words and see what you like. I wrote a poem on a sort of similar line, except the character mine was reaching out to was dead so I titled it 'Crossed Wires'. Wires came from telegraph poles which came from telephones/ communication. And crossed because she was having difficulty getting through etc.
Specifics
Alright so I think you need a little more variation of sounds and structure. There are so many ing words here, it's crazy. Lingering, longing, rising, aching, singing. It's too many! Also, that last line trails on for too long and bothers me. It feels very off beat. I think it's also that all four of these lines are so disconnected. On the one hand I like that and how it reflects the subject, but on the other, it makes the poem difficult to connect with. Maybe if you at least added a 'like' in at the beginning of that last line. Also, I don't like the 'just out of reach' of the first line. Every time I read it, it bothers me. I'd suggest going for a more specific, solid image. Like - 'lingering and longing at my gate'.
Stanza two: I agree with Audy that you need to loe 'sands of time'. Unless you're doing something new with the wording, throw it out. I love the first line of this stanza though, I'm not so sure about the third or fourth. They're very vague. I think that's something about this poem which I'm not quite getting on with. Take a read of 'Because I could not stop for death' by Emily Dickinson if you get a chance. It's a beautiful poem and she covers all these big themes but manages to put images to them and turns all these gorgeously abstract thoughts and ideas into something almost solid enough to touch.
Stanza three: I don't like 'scape' and deceiving feels misplaced. How can earth be deceiving? You don't build up the description enough for it to stick. Maybe you could play with the image of the core of the earth here and falling through that? Something more solid to give these words some grounding. The last line I'm not fond of either. In prose we'd call that telling instead of showing. I'm not sure what it would be in terms of poetry, maybe the same, but it basically feels too much like words instead of pictures, if that makes sense?
end: Does it need to be stated so simply? This is where you might want something more vague to leave your reader thinking, asking themselves what really does happen after death.
Overall
It may not seem like it, but I do actually like this. I like the themes of time and I like the subject, but I think your use of imagery and your word choice could be stronger in places. At the moment, there isn't enough voice behind this so I can't feel the impact. It doesn't leave me with a firm grasp on the story or the characters or even on the theme of death. It's all very vague and nondescript, to steal a word from Audy. The structure works to lull us and then the words wash over us and we're left thinking 'well that was nice' but none of it sticks in the head for longer than a minute.
Hopefully this will give you a few ideas and send me a pm if you've got any questions,
Heather xxx
Noninjaspresent,
Ooh, beautiful piece and well put together, particularly the streaming images and your experiment with time. The structure here works splendidly with the piece and I definitely feel a set-up and closure by the time I get to the end. It was a nice, bitter read and I think you've captured the experience of loss quite nicely. The interesting bit though, is I'm more captivated by your portrayal of time and the speaker's perception of earth than I am by the emotions of loss XD but that might not necessarily be a bad thing!
So the nit-picks.
I notice there's no punctuation in this piece. Try playing with capitals as well - see if you like having no capitals, I feel it'll put more emphasis on the content and tone of your piece, if you were trying to go for a "pure/naked" quality. I feel as though my brain automatically plugs a period in after each line, since the beginning of each line is capitalized, and so to that end, I'd have to ask, why not include the punctuation? My suggestion would simply be to leave everything un-capitalized. See if that works for you.
Mind your tenses (I make this mistake a lot, too)
There is something about "sands of time" that just strikes me as cliche. The way that you wrote it: dusty, copper, and then you talked before of a hard-lived earth -- all of these descriptions already give the sense of something ancient, so I'd scratch out "of time". You can add anything else to balance the meter
Oooh, love this line. It actually brings me chills with how effective time is slowed down almost to a halt. It's a real interesting technique you did here
So after taking a closer look at this work, here's what I noticed: the words you use here repeat this "time motif" over and over. For example, in the first stanza, there's: lingering, fall away. In the second: hard lived earth, dusty sands, eternity. The third: as I come to finish this first step, untimely end.
It's almost like time is being skewed as I read this poem, it's slowing down, it's speeding up, and then it just goes away (untimely end?) -- I find this super interesting, but then vague. There's bits and pieces here and there that need to be expanded upon.
The emotions meanwhile, take a backseat in this imagery. We don't know who the speaker, or the subject (you) are, and we never really get to know them, but I feel as though they are minute compared to this expansiveness of earth, so the lack of emotion might actually be effective.
In any case, it's quite a puzzling poem and a joy to read
Hope this helps.
~ as always, Audy
Okay, I just want to commend you on a job well done. You did amazing on this poem, and I can't personally find anything to do to change it. It's a beautiful piece and it seems like a professional wrote it. The imagery was kind of vague, though. With that said, the metaphores (I think that is the one) are amazing. They really give me a sense of the poem where the visuals where lacking. All in all, it's a great piece, and there is little to nothing that needs to be worked on.