Cushioned comfortably in my seat, I glanced at a couple in front of me.
Two men, presumably in their mid-20s, slightly angled towards each other and a strange aura that surrounded them. It was not malicious, it was not benevolent either. It was an array of emotions that had been splattered onto a canvas, only those who paid attention could see.
It was in the way his eyes remain fixed on the man next to him.
It was in the way the other man hunched over the seat in front of him and his eyebrows were scrunched and his lips pursed into a thin line.
It was in the way his arms slowly and carefully rubbed his shoulders, then quickly retreated them back onto his lap.
It was in the constant wandering of his eye to check whether their actions have been noticed by those around them.
It was in the small smiles they shared in between and the last sigh that deflated his body, before they stood up and got off the train.
And, I noticed another old couple in front of me.
His arms were wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and absentmindedly gave them a little squeeze as if he was used to this small display of affection.
Their smiles held no secrets and their eyes proudly sought each other’s over and over again.
Their laughs were not cut short by the loud clattering of people that surrounded them and they shared one last kiss before they got off the train.
And I questioned whether the silences which filled the air after the small actions of the men were deliberate or not. Whether the loud and joyous mood of the train when the old couple was present, was deliberate or not.
I remembered when I was 14 and I was surrounded by crosses and I had to read the bible each day to search for meaning within them. Between the struggle of finding more about God and my sexuality, I knew what it felt like to be enveloped by that silence on that train all my life.
And I cried,
For change,
For understanding.
That the same love, would be received with the same love.
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139,794 Literary Works • 672,771 Reviews
Hey there! Shey here for a review!
I'm not used to this type of poetry, which, as the previous reviewer stated, it's more of prose-poetry. Of course, just because it's foreign to me, doesn't mean I dislike it. In fact, I quite enjoyed this piece of literature.
Definitely the strongest part of this piece was the message. It was powerful, and while not a particularly novel topic, you worked it into the piece well. The way you delivered the message was unique, and so it didn't feel like a rehash of similarly-themed works. While I don't personally relate to the issue this piece confronts, it feels like I can. That's the magic of poetry, and while not everyone can successfully accomplish this, you did a great job with it.
The ending, where you drop the extensive lines in place of short, quick lines, is extremely powerful. The lack of length should mean the lines aren't very meaningful, is what most people think. However, short lines often are the strongest part of poetry, especially--apparently--prose-poetry. You seem to not fall prey to the mindset that short is bad, as evidenced by the beauty of the last lines.
I usually like to leave some comments on negative aspects of the piece, but nothing really sticks out to me from this specific poem. Overall, you did a wonderful job. I look forward to seeing more from you!
Hey @summerlove, Stella here, how are you getting on?!
So halfway through this poem, I had to double-check that this was, indeed, filed under poetry. I guess it's more what you would call a prose-poem, yes? I wonder what made you decide to write it as a poem and not as an observational piece of prose?
What you've managed to do is capture a very particular moment, and I really enjoyed how you managed to create an atmosphere, and to me, that's the most important part - the criticisms below are more to help you achieve that feeling more roundly.
I think my main issues were with
a) wording (which feeds into b) which is)
b) flow.
Wording
I want to first look at this passage:
Now, a lot of the issue probably with this is the issue you have whenever you're writing an extended scene with two characters of the same gender/using the same pronouns. It gets very confusing as to which "he" is which, which is why you've had to resort to "the man" and "the other man" because obviously the speaker doesn't know what their names are. Which is a tricky thing to do and make sound natural. One suggestion might be to have identifiers - is one tall and one short, one bespectacled and one not, one bearded and one clean-shaven? Or even the window and the aisle, or the left and the right. I just think that if you could use some identifier, it would make the whole thing more natural.
Also, the last sentence in that passage was really hard for me to imagine - he reaches up, slowly, with both arms, to rub both of the other's shoulders? On a train? Then quickly stops? Why go slowly in the first place? I also just can't imagine that particular action - maybe a singular squeeze of a singular shoulder, or putting an arm around shoulders, but the only way I could imagine this was them sitting at perpendicular angles and one giving the other a back massage which... I don't think is what you're going for. I'm going on too long about this, but essentially, I think you can do better describing this action
So those are two examples of where I think your wording is letting you down. I think you need to read through this and try and remember that your readers just don't have the same mental images you have - you really have to teach us to see what you're seeing. And at the same time, let your language relax, and let it...
Flow.
Prose-poetry is hard - certainly not something I've ever tried or achieved!
But if we're going for the poetry side of things, you need to let it all flow together. Again, as an example, let us use this paragraph:
This is the culmination, the climax of your poem as we reach the end. And it didn't flow for me, the sentences were too long and technical, and that comma after "present" broke it up for me. If you were writing this as a poem, without any prose element, how do you think you would phrase this?
I'm not sure what advice to give to you on this particular point, other than to try and make things a little more lyrical, a little less technical. If it has a poetic element, remember you needn't necessarily follow ordinary rules of sentence structure. You can vary your sentence length, you can use new paragraphs and line breaks and stanzas and really draw us into your words. You have so many tools available to you to make this really beautiful, and make it honest-to-goodness poetry, and I'd love to see you use them
Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!
-Stella x
powerful, clear and true. you do what hemmingway does-tell the reader what the character does rather than says, appealing to the subconscious to decide the mood. this is moving.
Woahhhhhhhh