Young Writers Society

Heya whatcha,

Thanks so much for requesting a review! I'm sorry it took me so long to get to, but I am here now, and super excited to give you the fishiest of reviews

This is a fascinating structure to your poem! I dig it. When I first opened this tab I felt a little overwhelmed and was like "oh no how do I review this it's a list" and then my mind went "clearly the three things relate" and then fully didn't understand them and went "oh no" but then once I started reading I got super excited because this format works amazing for your topic matter and I'm just super impressed at how well you've pulled this one off! The more times I read this the clearer it becomes and I am really enjoying that experience. It's like a puzzle that's not /that/ hard to grasp and yet it makes me feel smart for understanding it xD And I really enjoy that in a poem. I see now why you asked the biologist for a review on this because it's making my science brain happy trying to figure it out lol

I don't know how else to review this so I'll ramble about all three pieces individually and then give my overall opinions at the end.

1)

I really like how you structured this. It gives us different bullets and sub-points and really lets you dig into option b and still be clear which images are building on each other.

I will admit I didn't fully understand the imagery between rational and irrational stars. Is that some sort of astronomy thing? It's entirely possible that I'm just missing something so take this with a grain of salt. This first part of the poem was the one that I had the most trouble understanding. It feels more like an abstraction than the other two, and yet my mind is trying to interpret it literally since you're using physical things like sight to ground it more.

Also the "small pinpricks skip against the black" took me several read-throughs to understand what you meant. Maybe adding a "that" before skip would clarify a bit? idk it might just be my brain being weird but I was kinda drawn out of the poem wondering if there was another meaning to "skip" because my brain wasn't processing what this line meant.

I REALLY like your option C here. I was able to understand the abstraction more in this bullet point and it gave me a vibe of the overwhelmingness that I think this part of the poem was meant to give me.

2)

omg I LOVE this one.

option a starts off so strong. Like, of course we know the old "needle in a haystack" expression, but the way you explain it makes it seem fresh and I enjoy the comfort? that you write into this option. It feels cozy and safe.

option b is then just as strong! I really love how you add in that danger of what if you put the needle where it doesn't belong. My favorite bit was the iii. as the child is wondering what happened. "a needle that lost its haystack" is such an interesting way to put it and I really enjoyed it.

option c AHH this is where the poem actually started making sense to me xD Because at first I was like "what do stars and needles have to do with each other?" and then you pulled it together like this and I was like *shocked Pikachu face*

This was done SO well and I am just so impressed with how you tied these things together and made such unrelated things seem like they fit together so naturally. It is amazing and I love it so much.

3)

I really like this one as well!

option a feels a teeny bit incomplete.

"hastily swish them across like eyelids" made me wonder "swish them across what?" and then you answer the "what" as being "windows"in option b so obviously you wouldn't want to have repetition there.

But what about like "hastily close them like eyelids" or something? Because like the closing would make more sense for eyelids than swish anyway. Or come up with another word instead of "swish" to fit here? I feel like you're trying to make the connection between it being super fast like blinking, it just feels a teeny bit off the way it is now since you're not also swishing them open like you would if it was a blink, you know?

I really love the way you use the "out of sight and out of mind" in conjunction with comparing it with eyelids though. That's just super well done ^-^

I also like how you tied it back into the starlight bit from the first part of the poem. So much artistry here and I am HERE for how well you're weaving this poem together.

I don't have anything specific for option b except that I really like your imagery here and think it fits really well with the vibes of this bit.

option c is also really nice! I like how you again use the star imagery here to tie everything together.

option x -- I was a teeny bit confused why you flipped from c to x. I'm sure it was an intentional choice, and it definitely did its job and got my attention, I'm just not really understanding the significance of having it be x instead of d? Although I really like how you used that to morph us into wrapping this poem up.

the last line "this is real life, after all" is... hm. I am conflicted about how I feel about this. On one hand, it kind of yanks us out of the fantasy world and is a decisive close to the poem. On the other hand, it sort of has starkly different vibes from the lines surrounding it, and I'm not sure that I love that? I almost think I'd like it better if it ended with the line above it? Or have another line that has more of that mood that comes before it?

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here. It just feels like you went from being really contemplative and abstract to a really jarring concrete reality and it just feels a little weird.

~ ~ ~

Overall! I'm sorry that I rambled so much. I hope some of that was somewhat helpful xD I am not entirely sure what I was trying to say for a lot of that, but overall I really liked this poem! I think it was a really interesting take on some contemplative topics and you did an impressively good job of tying such unrelated topics together into a single cohesive theme that fit really well with your poem.

It was really interesting to read and try to interpret and I had a really nice time reading and reviewing this. You are an insanely talented poet and that is exhibited so clearly in this poem.

AMAZING JOB!

~Shady

Hiyo! this is my review. I dont really tell you what you messed up like some I just say what was good and what I loved about it and what It said inside what words you actually put.

This is Actually nice. The way its set up Is cool and Makes it stand out more then anything I have seen before. Like Liminality said the last one got me. The 'Air' around this is so 'dream' like as she put it. I cannot come up with a different way to put that. Its Well put together in my opinion. I loved it and Want to say thanks for writing it in such a way that caught my attention. It was good so yep...

Heya, whatcha!

Just want you to know that ending punched me in the gut. It's a really haunting one, that's for sure. I like the dream-like atmosphere of this poem that quickly gets taken away at the end. With a second look, it's easier to see all the foreshadowing for that ending, which makes the piece very re-readable.

Language

The development of each image here is stunning and made me feel like I was seeing all sides (some familiar and some fresh and exciting) or each mental picture. Some of my favourites were "a soft-soled child is walking . . . grains of gold hugging at her heels" and "spilling starlight all over the porch". I loved how you connected each to the main image in the list.

Next: the poetic foreshadowing!

and hang suspended in the air for an imaginary moment
before sinking into the polypropylene bedding

but it's tried and true

slosh the sky so that suns splatter the void with messy light

classify each planetary body

irrational planets looping in ring-around-the-rosy