a slow, warbling sax begs the air,
don't take the sunshine away, but here
there are no such promises, where
the mountains cleave the light
into two seperate entities–
existing and not
the air here is too cold
to taste truly of jazz, but the sharp fizz
of bitter ginger glassed up in my fingers
does taste like winter
(in the same way, it hides the bite of cold
behind the golden panels of fall.)
metallic warmth of
his instrument of choice is just
cold truth in the players chapped hands,
once you pass sad scraps
of worn, fingerless golves
I drop some change in the halved skeleton
of the instrument case that lies
propped open in ritual at his feet.
I feel bad
that he hasn't heard the news—
his sunshine is already dead
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,020 Literary Works • 672,733 Reviews
Oh. My. God.
I would have seen this earlier, but I was gone on a trip when you posted this.
This is the best poem I've read in a long time. Especially the second stanza is wonderful. I was thinking that ginger ale does taste like winter, except it's golden, and you addressed that. It's wonderful.
All right. I don't have that much criticism for this, so I'll have to put on my nitpicking hat.
I notice that you capitalized the first word of the second and third stanza (though the first stanza starts with I, so that's a little iffy), but not the first stanza. I'm not really criticizing it, I just didn't really see a reason for it to not be capitalized or the second one to be capitalized... I just wanted to let you know in case it was a typo.
I really like the first stanza, but the first line feels a little clunky to me. There are a lot of short words in there that get tangled up in my brain. Perhaps reword it to say "a slow, warbling saxophone begs the air". Similarly, the second line seems clunky, but unlike the first line, I don't really have a suggestion to change it. I know that it's the "not take the sunshine" bit, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
I like the idea of light still being an entity even though there is none.
The capitalization of jazz is nice, but I'm not quite sure about it. Yes, Jazz, but also, jazz. Maybe it is the lower case here. While the poem is about jazz, this stanza is about ginger ale.
The last line would feel better to me all snuggled up with the previous stanza. Now, as it is, it feels like the poet is trying too hard to get a dramatic response out of her audience.
As a whole, I love your imagery, but something feels a little disjointed. The ideas of things being hidden in the music and nostalgia is there, but maybe put a little more focus on the singer and the song. Especially in the second stanza, though it pains me to suggest change in that stanza. Perhaps liken the sax to the ginger ale. That would be a nice thing to do.
I hope that this review proves useful to you! Happy YWSing!
Ironically, I wrote this review in my history of jazz class :p
Ahhh I'm so glad you liked it! I tweaked and added accordingly, hopefully it's an improvement.
I love your second paragraph- don't cut it. Just insert between the first and second paragraphs one expanding the player. I feel like this poem could be two as you seem to have two different concepts. You could use the sun as a smaller reference in this and amplify the player or cut them off completely and have a poem expanding on the sun and one about a sax player. I really like the way you mask the cynicism. I don't really expect anyone to get the sad message as it is wrapped up in a pretty little bow of wordplay. I love that. It reflects something about the world- the real message encoded in word shenanigans.
Would like to know more about what your saying with this poem ,like how you say "the mountains cleave the light- But I find ending the poem with a sun reference unoriginal .
I have read way to many poems using the sun as a point for concept.Your second paragraph could be more simplified. Could have used the sax more in this. and expand on your concept
maybe make the poem longer using the sax performer more.How does he feel?what else did he not knew?