Hey Winter! <3 I have promised you a review, and I'm actually making good on it, surprise XD yeah it's been like a year since I've done this, shhh >.>
First for the initial impression I got when reading! I was struck by how the subject of the poem was both so personal to you and yet relatable to readers (or at least to me) at the same time. It successfully captures the feeling of the thoughts you described in the title: fleeting and drifting, one idea quickly followed by another one, more flowing than structural due to the anxious nature of them. The lowercase formatting makes it seem like these are quiet whispers happening in the back of the mind that you can really only hear when everything is quiet too- such as when it's late at night, so I would have understood these thoughts are coming from a time where the narrator is feeling alone and kept awake even without that in the title, which means it was effective. Great technique for showing this!
(Also a note- I use "narrator" because although I do assume the narrator is you from how this seems to be based on your experiences, I'm also seeing this as a bit of a story, and some poets like to 'remove' themselves from the work/don't write from their perspective and don't always like everyone treating it as a direct reflection of them. If you don't mind being connected to it, you can always mentally replace "narrator" with "you/the author"! I use the term because I try not to make my assumptions about the perspective into a claim that can invalidate a poet that doesn't want to be forcibly tied to the "I" in their poem.)
The arrangement of the stanzas and lines was also a really important part of how I interpreted the poem. I loved the clever use of the question mark for all the lines that were questions, and the clusters of other lines scattered across the screen felt a bit like clouds floating around. To me, this made it feel like there was a night sky that the narrator was looking up at as they stayed up and wondered, each passing cloud coming and going with an idea. I have no idea if this was your intention or not, but it made a nice mental image!
Another thing I liked is that your poem doesn't rely on complicated wording or vocabulary to be beautifully poetic: you created wonderful and lovely imagery using more common words, which I think is a great thing in a poet. (Like that quote that's in the generator: "A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses." <-- this gets at the heart of it I think.) Some of my favorite examples of that were "wings of fragile starlight", "it is not a lie anymore", and "my obscurity is more permanent than anything I do".
For the poetic devices, I'm going to sound like an English Lit teacher congratulating you on a good assignment, sorry XD You also make great use of alliteration in "understood yet unmemorable, unrecognized, un-", and the repetition throughout the poem makes the reappearing phrases feel like recurring themes, which ties it together very nicely and makes it feel more connected. One challenge I encounter a lot in my poems is making it seem like everything fits and I don't accidentally go off on a tangent by the end or switch to an unrelated theme halfway through. However, you did a great job keeping the subject consistent and everything together, and I think the repetition was a very neat and subtle way of doing that!
With that, I'd like to do a couple paragraphs of personal interpretation, because that's always a very fun part of reviewing poetry and there is a lot to say here with this!
Like I mentioned with the cloud-like stanzas, the whole poem feels very evocative of a nocturnal setting in isolation, where the narrator doesn't have anything to break them out of their mind. Scrolling down is necessary to read the poem in its entirety, and this makes it feel to me like the narrator is spiraling down a negative train of thought, getting deeper and darker, the thoughts seeming to sink into a bottomless chasm of dread. It almost felt like a "text gradient", where the start of the poem is more pensive and mournful...
who am i
if i cannot be identified
by some love, some attribute, some creation, some-
if i disappeared and flew away
on wings of fragile starlight,
if i was gone, no one would say
...and transitioning to the final, harshest and gloomiest conclusion of the narrator.
and despite common sense,
i have recently learned
that i am attention deficit in more ways than one
and my obscurity is more permanent that anything i do.
This gradual shift made it feel like I was reading from lighter to darker (though it's more comparatively light, as this isn't meant to be a happy poem), even without the use of colors or values changing in the image. A gradient in the background could make the poem even more attention-catching visually if you tried it, but I'm really impressed that you achieved the same effect with text alone!
nobody wants to be reduced
but everybody wants to be remembered
and the contradiction is not lost on me
or maybe it is.
Oooh this is definitely my favorite part. You put it very clearly and in few words how desperate someone can be to just be seen, but how they couldn't bear to be simplified to just a couple words because it leaves so much out. Which is what people do when they're thinking of someone, they'll describe them in terms that can be fathomed and clearly pinned down, even though it might feel limiting to the person being remembered. Stereotypes have this problem, where someone gets a label and it suddenly becomes the focal point of their existence to others, causing assumptions to be made and the other traits they have to be overlooked or forgotten.
Seeing as this closely follows the question mark of descriptions that all only have one word to distinguish a person, it's a great way to deliver the meaning that we often fail to fully perceive others past a two-dimensional view of their identity. The narrator doubting themself and going back on their idea is also super meaningful, and fits the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty late-night musings so often have.
and despite common sense,
i have recently learned
that i am attention deficit in more ways than one
The mention of mental health and the struggles with it, especially at the end where the narrator's seemingly accepting of the way it is, was something I interpreted as the narrator knowing this isn't reasonable and still falling into the trap of a downwards fall into anxiety. Depressive thoughts are super hard to escape once you've gone far enough into them, and for me personally staying up too late can make them worse, so I can definitely see that happening to the narrator by the end.
For my overall conclusion and reflection, this was a wonderfully thought-provoking and so very human poem that felt like something I could connect to on a deep level. It was very honest about the reality of how we see others, how we want (and need) to be seen by others, and how we often fail to achieve a full and true perception of each other in our attempts to understand someone else, even inaccurately. I love how thoughtfully and effectively you did this, and the beautiful poem you created! It was a joy to read and review, and I'm so glad I got to see more of your poetry.
I hope you keep writing poems, and that you always feel like a valued and appreciated member here on YWS! <3
-silver
Points: 4325
Reviews: 135
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