Young Writers Society

Hello TypoWithoutCoffee, I hope this finds you well.

First I would like to mention that Greecian cultures and art is a favorite of mine, so I was by all means definitely intrigued. The mention of your "wax-winged brother" pulls me to the story of Icarus and the rashness he possessed to fly towards the sun, laying to the reader the means of saying you could never be so adventurous. This flows towards what I perceive as you trying your best, sometimes achieving what you deemed impossible, and then being handed even more responsibility from a man who you could have seen as more capable.

It is always hard to ask for help, waiting until you feel like you would break from underneath all the pressure and seeing the torment of others so carefree while they watch you shatter. From all of this though, one could maybe learn from that lesson and be free from such burdens, "the world hits the ground swiftly I start running". There will always be an aftermath from when one unsheathes all the burdens that bear them down, but as long as you run away from the shocks, you can leap over any obstacles in your path to find where you truly belong with the feet that help you run.

I did not necessarily find any grammatical errors in this poem, and it was well thought out, played like a story or maybe a dream that you had in fragments.

Keep creating art, and dance in the rain when things seem hard.

Hey Typo! Glad you've posted this through the publishing center because it's a really fun poem! I enjoyed seeing you write it and am excited to review it ~ so let's dig in!

Interpretation
This poem is very narrative - it doesn't seem like as an author you're trying to drive home a singular image / emotion / moral, but more-so a story. There are certainly emotive moments in it, but the story was my main take-away from reading.

My interpretation of the poem was, the speaker thinks they can fly [could be a metaphor for they think they can do the impossible / really hard things / reach something important in life] but at the same time they also feel weighed down by something that is impossibly heavy the world [metaphorically the burdens of the world] and so they cry out to help from the gods, and they start to feel their confidence in themself is fading. They they look at their sandals, and are lifted up by hermes, and then in line 15-17 I have a tough time understanding what's going on, but the speaker is inspired somehow and realize that they don't have to hold all these burdens and they drop the world and start running.

I find it very interesting that the narrator started out on this flying goal but ended up decided they didn't need to fly but rather could run, and maybe the burden of flight was one of those troubles they dropped. There's a lot of different directions you could interpret this story as a metaphor, but the main message of "you don't have to hold everyone's burdens, and you don't have to do the impossible" seems to be the main message.

Strengths

> Sound Devices
A real strength of this piece is the sound devices throughout! You've got very solid alliteration in so many places like "sandals - soft swishing" / "he had hair / he handed' and "wax-winged" this makes the poem feel a bit more elevated and makes the lines really stick too.

> Mythology References
The mythology references through-out definitely link the poem up to a world beyond what's written and give more depth to the piece. They're definitely fun additions and also give a mysterious, spiritual, other-worldly vibe to the whole poem too.

> Imagery & Mood
Overall the poem (like so many of your poems!) is very emotive - especially in the reptition of begging the gods to help with "help me atlas" /"hermes please look down" - this added a real prayerful, lamenting, longing vibe. I also liked that the imagery you used all really seemed like it belonged together, with a lot of nature and contrasting feeling moods. My favorite imagery was probably the contrast between the stumbling over rocks at the beginning and then the "running swiftly" at the end, it's a small note, but the contrast is nice and shows narrative development / growth from the speaker which is cool!

Suggestions

> Form
I'm never against trying out strange or unconventional form techniques, but I usually say, if you're going to do something odd once it better be the most important line of the entire poem, or else it's better to do that technique at least twice so that the reader can get a sense of the pattern of how it's being used. For instance if you have just one pink word in a whole review, your eye automatically gets drawn to it before you even read the whole review, there's no way to avoid it, you risk it seeming random or dramatic for drama-sake. But if you have a couple blue words, here and there and maybe also here then the reader can look for patterns and even if it's unusual it starts to create it's own internal order that the reader can discern meaning from it. In the same way in this poem, I would probably advise not having the final two lines bolded, unless you're going to use that technique somewhere else. or if you really want to emphasize just those two lines, put them in a couplet all by themselves. For me, I'm not understanding why they are bold or what extra meaning that's supposed to give.

I like the variety in line length though as it was enough variety to keep the poem interesting, but not so much that it disrupted the flow.

> Narrative Continuity
As mentioned in my interpretation line 15-17 gets a little confusing for me to see how exactly those lines connect to the rest of the story, there is some nice imagery in stanza 4, but I think it needs more explanation of how it connects with the rest of the story. There could be some mythological reference that makes those threads make sense, but as written, the story doesn't quite logically flow there, like a piece of the puzzle is missing from: "I want to fly. I'm burdened by the world. I call for help. I am lifted up and see land and see Atlas. My throat is dry. I drop the world and run." If the point is that atlas dropped his burden of the world, so they knew they could?

> Punctuation
I usually quite like minimal punctuation, because it lets the words flow through without getting impeded by grammar, there were a couple places that I thought adding the natural commas would help for understanding the piece though - and you were a bit inconsistent where sometimes you left out all punctuation and then sometimes you added a comma. If you're really sold on having no punctuation I'd take it all out everywhere except the ending period. I think this piece could benefit from more punctuation though - For instance, "but sometimes i could swear i hovered" this line takes different meanings depending on the comma placement, so I might add the commas in just to add clarity.

This line too, really made me stumble a bit reading it through the first time -> "i called help me atlas as i leaned with its weight" because it can be read so many different ways without the punctuation it's reads a bit sticky / awkward. I would add the commas or quotation marks or put the dialogue out of italics.

Last punctuation note -> I would maybe make "free-handed" or "freehanded" one word for clarity, so that the reader doesn't interpret as "I saw his golden-apple was free, and he has hands (ie. was "handed")." or "I was handed a golden apple".

Overall
Overall, there's a lot of layers in this poem to work with and it's definitely one worth saving and keeping in your portfolio, it has a lot of narrative + emotional interest. My main suggestion is since this poem is so narrative-heavy that it's important that the narrative has clarity, so maybe consider it as a short-story and see what can be done to boost up the plot / continuity a little bit. Your imagery and sound-devices give the poem a lot of character and for a short poem, helps this piece pack some punch.

Keep writing forever please! <3 And let me know if you had any questions about the review!

~ alliyah

This is a lovely poem about the Greek myth of Atlas carrying the world.I’m familiar with the myth.People force others to carry the weight of the world when they themselves don’t want to carry the weight,they want to hurt others.It’s best to let go.This has a worthwhile lesson to it.I liked reading this.I hope you have a lovely and wonderful day and night.