What is this despair which you
so readily
drown yourself in, surfacing
now and again only
to exhale "this is love"?
There's things you've missed in those
five months,
thrashing about beneath the weight, but
the sun still shines, if only
you'll come up from the dark
Though, since you so surely love
keep drowning
I'll find love in the way birds and leaves flit
they do that still
a lovely dance, not a deadly dive
Let yourself be borne upwards on swells
you'll see
why confine yourself to this lonely possession?
The world could be your lover
as words are mine
Still, you choose to stay in the murk
watery lungs
waterlogged burden growing heavier
throw him off your back, quick
let him sink instead.
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140,533 Literary Works • 673,403 Reviews
Hi LLZ here for a quick review for the day ( number 20).
I love this poem, it's been told beautifully.
I can imagine the tale being told.
It's so sad yet beautiful and it couldn't be told any other way.
The ending wrapped it all up perfectly.
I noticed that the second line of every verse only has two words in it, which has a great flow to it. Except to some of the other lines are a bit off.
"waterlogged burden growing heavier
throw him off your back, quick
let him sink instead." - The perfect ending sentence. I also liked how you used waterlogged to describe your burden.
"The world could be your lover
as words are mine"- another one of my favourite lines, it was worded perfectly and put in so much on you writing.
It felt like it was naturally written and not forced. The words spoken felt as those truly were spoken.
Great job and keep on writing.
From LLZ
Beautiful poem Rhiasofia! Lovely, lovely work.
I found that the flow was a little off due to the lines being such different lengths. But due to the short line always being the second line in a stanza I wonder if this was intentional? Where you attempting to give the poem that short clipped feel one gets when they are dragged under the water? If so I think that's a brilliant idea, having a feel like that for this poem would greatly enhance it, but in a way most people may not be able to put into words. But if this is your intention, then I believe you could have made some better choices on where to put the short lines. Try making the short lines about drowning, like you did in stanzas three and five. I believe that you did a very good job in creating the aforementioned affect in those two stanzas because we(the readers) had our mind on water and drowning, so we had a natural tendency to want to imagen the feelings that go with it. So in those two stanzas you took advantage of that natural tendency and made us feel those things. But "so readily," "five months," and "you'll see" do not bring up those slight emotions, and you can't take advantage of what's not there. I think if you changed those lines to something about water, or moved the short line in that stanza to one of the lines about water, you would create a wonderful feel to this poem that would help readers visualize it even better then they already can.
Now, you will probably hear some people complain about this clipped feeling. But that is mostly due to how poetry usually is smooth, so a poem like this one is out of the ordinary and most people will assume that it was an accident which you would like to fix. Don't let them get you down! They're only trying to help out.
But that does bring up a good point. I could be assuming you meant something you did not. In which case to create a slightly more even flow to the poem you just need to even out the lines a bit. For this I recommend taking the last couple words off of the previous line and adding it to the beginning of the short line. For example the first stanza could begin like this...
"What is this despair
which you so readily"
And that would give it a smoother feel.
Whichever path you take, just make sure you use it throughout the whole poem. If you try to do one for part of the poem and the other for the other part of the poem it will make the poem feel lopsided.
Regardless of the above, this poem still was amazing when you look at how it made me(the reader) feel. In my view poetry is all about making someone feel something. The only thing that changes from poem to poem is who the poet wants to make feel something, whether or not the poet realizes who they're aiming at, and how good a job they did at it. Some poets write for themself, some for their friends, some for a specific group of people, and some for just people in general. I believe that whichever one is your goal is you will have succeeded. There is enough emotion and general feeling behind this poem that it will stir everyone at least just a little (although some people may not show it). So kudos for that. Because that is one really hard thing to accomplish.
I wish I had time to talk about something other then just the feel of the poem. But alas I must go. Wonderful work here. I hope that this poem helps your friend. And I hope that my review has helped your poem. It was lovely to both read your poem and to review it.
~WW
Thanks! The clipped effect was being used to mock drowning, and it's much more noticeable in the way I have it formatted on my blog (missmetaphorical.blogspot.com, in case you were wondering). However, the way the publishing center here is doesn't allow me to make use of indentations, so it's stuck like this. I'm glad you noticed that though, it works much better with the indentations of the original one
You have done it again! I love this poem! Sure it was dramatic, bit in a realistic way not TV drama way. I enjoyed it very much and it caught my attention! The speakers voice, well you can almost hear it! Really brings it out to me! This practically screams TOP FIVE or basically says SPOTLIGHT PLEASE well with all that said well done! I liked it, honestly I read it twice just for fun! Mind if I quote it in a YouTube video?
Note: I am typing is on an ipad so bear with me!
-Laina/cherrycanwrite160
You are free to quote it, may I ask which bit you're quoting out of curiosity, though? Thanks so much for all the positivity, I'm really glad you liked it
Rhia
sofia,
I like your poem-ia.
No, seriously. I do.
The speaker's voice is right there in my ear, and she (it's definitely a she for me) is sassy and smart and funny, and I like the imagery of the water nymphs turned upside its' head. Normally, when we see water nymphs in poetry it is about love and enticement -- here though, it's almost working in reverse -- we're repulsed. How and why would someone drown in their own misery?
Well, I mean, they call that misery "love" Or at least in this poem, the two is used interchangeably. It's almost like what the speaker is objecting to is not the relationship between the two people, but rather, the "old" idea of what love is, versus her own idea of what love is. The idea of obsessive love in our culture still sort of hangs tight around us, very much suffocatingly so. A more free-er, uplifting kind of love does sound much more appealing and make much more sense. While not a new idea, still a refreshing one. What I like is that the speaker sort of is still searching though, like she's still got some discovering to do, and that new-ness and that discovery is the tone here -- in juxtaposition to the berailing of the "nymph", a good metaphor, frankly. It just so happens those 18th century poems where nymphs are so prominent were also *obsessive* with obsessed love xD For good reason, those poor people were so oppressed.
So! With all that gushy stuff said, let's talk about improvement.
I'd suggest re-writing the latter part for clarity. It took me a read or two, to realize that what is "surfacing" is the "you--person" in the poem. With the way that you have it structured in this line, it sounds like you're saying that the "despair" surfaces again and again, which is a completely different meaning!
You can make a change so simple as "...so readily drown yourself in, you who surfaces now and again..." But if you ask me, I think that you can leave out that part completely, and still be all the stronger for it. I don't think you need much elaboration, the rhetorical question does its job here.
I would also suggest- since in this first stanza, you've used proper punctuation, you might want to comb through the poem for your punctuations. We don't get any respite after that stanza, it's one giant run-on sentence up to the very end. If you wanted to go for a "can't breathe" effect - break up your lines to reflect that. For example, your poem can look like this:
You'll notice I've changed it a *tiny* bit, I've added some periods and commas here and there, but through the line itself you can get that sense of claustrophobia and that sense of freedom, I mean -- you can literally see it! Don't just think that it has to be done a certain way or anything, the freedom is all up to you. You can play with shorter line breaks like what you have here, but you single-space and justify the words so that they look "boxy" and then with your freedom lines, you can keep the stanza, if you're not a fan of the indention, and you can double-space the lines instead to indicate space. The page is your playground. Use your document software to its fullest!
This line also:
I suggest just nixing it. Your first rhetorical question works well to bring in meaning, your second one only serves to elaborate, and we don't really need elaboration. We get it from the opening lines already c:
Hope this helps,
~ as always Audy
Thanks, this is really helpful. You pointed out some things that I didn't really even think of, so I appreciate that. I've tried playing around with indentations in the past, and know that the publishing center on this site doesn't preserve it, so I didn't even bother trying here. Is there a trick to getting around that? Cause I would really like to give it a more aesthetic format. Thanks again!
I usually make it look the way I want in a word document and either prnt scrn to save it, crop it later, or copy and paste it into paint and save it as an image file. The publishing center does let you save images, which is what I did above. If you want more detailed help on how to do that, lemme know and I can send you like a step by step.
Okay, thanks!