Young Writers Society

Heya rida! Incoming review!

My first impression of this poem is "This feels like something from Christmas." I don't celebrate Christmas myself, but no one is exempt from hearing those holiday songs. This particular poem makes me think of the "Deck the Halls" song.

I found your use of "~~" interesting. I usually use it to signal I am saying it, "iN a WHacKy waY," or in a sing-songy voice. If this is the song I think it is, I think the use of "~~" was a great choice. It signifies more than if you just had the words/lyrics.

Hmmm, I just skimmed some of the comments/review and I can see you've changed the poem. But, I'll still try to scalp some meaning out of this and maybe make it funny.

While trying into the title and description, I can still see some meaning. Words can mean something to someone even if it makes no sense. It reminds me of the song "Lift Yourself" by Kanye and the last 30 seconds or so are a very strange rap. I don't think the whole song would be on my favourites but the funny rap at the end brings me joy. Your poem can mean something to someone, even if it might not mean anything to the general public.

This could also be somewhat of a brain-dump. You could have thought this was a beautiful, thoughtful, and original work at 2 am and you come back to it in the morning and saw it was very much a late-night-thought-you-made-while-hungry-and-tired thing. It happens to all of us.

But that's all I have for today. I hope this was fun to read, and don't take this review too seriously. Have a good day. Anyway byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <3

Hi rida! Lim here with a review.

First impressions
The tone of the speaker seems to begin being quite quiet, wondering and ponderous, but gets louder towards the final stanzas, especially with that rhetorical question. The mood seems to be a complex mix, kind of ambiguous in the beginning. Stanzas like iii convey a sense of hopelessness, while v has a sense of grief.

Some of the lines and parts that stood out to me immediately were:
1. /The slashes/ -- these isolate individual images, even though the images were all connected – so it reminded me of a bunch of scenes flashing by in some of those modern experimental films where the ‘story’ is kind of non-chronological.
2. “fireflies that twist into children’s ears” – I’m not sure if this could be a cultural allusion like the belan, but to me this image stood out because it’s somewhat unexpected? The “fireflies” aspect kind of makes it a very ‘bright’ vivid image, as opposed to something like a housefly or a mosquito.
3. I like the stanza about the old man and prophecies. Words that are “too heavy to be heard” make for a poignant image, and the lines in that part just seem to flow well to me.

Subject, Themes, Interpretations

The subject of the poem starts off being broad (people who are “alive”) and then narrows down from stanza iv to being about women in particular. The specificity of it being about Indian women and girls appears explicitly in the fourth stanza, though I guess it carries over to the rest of the poem as well. I could just as easily see some of the stanzas like the last and first ones applying more broadly, though.

One of the main themes seems to be silence and the unspoken. The repetition of “heavy” “unknown” “unsaid” all throughout the poem hammers this in, as though the unspoken things pervade the world of the poem. What I find interesting I guess is how this is contrasted to the things that are actually said, which I noticed after reading some of the lines a few times. The things that are spoken are all described as “(something)-flies”, i.e. “like dragon-flies or fruit-flies our syllables” and “fireflies that twist into children’s ears”. My interpretation is that these words, like that of the parent in the poem, are ‘small’ and irritating. But then the flood of these small irritating things seems to make what is important impossible to convey – as seen in how the “syllables” can “swallow the night”. So the way this applies to women seems to be that it highlights who gets to speak and what they get to say, showing the power dynamics in society. (e.g. parent vs child, man vs woman)

Language and Structure

Something else I like about the first stanza is how the slashes divide the lines into phrases rhythmically. Reading it aloud, pausing at those slashes just seems to emphasise each phrase in just the right way.

Another thing I liked is how the last line of one stanza is linked to the first line of the next, for example:

broken pottery. broken poetry. broken pottery & broken poetry.
-
if words let us suppose are really so heavy then

words were too heavy to be heard anyway.

(iv) -error:unsaid-

when exactly words and their meanings evolve from
the confines of sound and syllable
to become ghosts ever-lingering
on the tips of our hearing

I've read this 1,000 times now; it is just so, ahhhhh <333 I agree with everything alliyah said. I really love this poem, and I really just don't know what else to say :')

This is astounding - genuinely really fascinating poem I hope to return to review. I really like this poem and also I think keeping in those culturally specific details like the "belan" reference allows this to have more depth and voice, so I'm happy you left that in even though people may have to look up. So excited to read along with your NaPo this year rida, I am so in love with your experimenting in your last few poems and see a style definitely emerging here that's fun to read along with.