#A Spring Garden's Love

16 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

distant isleBOT
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@unkempt loom has sent a notification! - @dapper crest @chrome abyss @stoic parcel

fallow jetty
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fallow jetty
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wait there was mistake T-T

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So what I wanted to comment about the poem is that it is really nice, it’s playful, it’s kind of self-aware, and it’s linguistically agile, which is something I really like. But it’s also a bit uneven, at least for my taste. It feels like you are enjoying the language here a lot, like I can tell you are having a lot of fun and letting the dictation and rhymes lead you rather than having a singular purpose or to serve an emotional through line.

And I think that’s also good, right, and it has a payoff even though it’s softer and it’s not bad or weak in any way. It’s just that I personally enjoy poems that have a purpose, that go into one specific direction, and I feel like your poem is something that we could take into that direction rather than just having the words play onto each other and create the feeling of playfulness. Just that you could develop it more into something better.

And these are my suggestions.

What really works well here is that you have this ironic and slightly cynical kind of charming intent to you. Like when you say “there are only tacky sweets and scented papers stored up sentimentals for this holiday tax,” it’s kind of very smart. The way you critique the idea of Valentine without sounding like this bitter single person is something I really enjoy. And it’s very weary and kind of passively observant and almost conversational in a literary way, you know what I mean.

And it has a lot of lexical kind of sound play as well, like you really enjoy internal rhymes and consonants and synthetic tumbling, which is something I can see when you say “crescented to cookies cutting sharpers,” and the other one “roses rises by hot air dish.” It shows that you have a good kind of writing style. You have a good mouthfeel. You can like sound it out, and I like that. I like when a poem sounds good to my ears, and that’s what I really enjoy.

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And the garden metaphor here is something I enjoyed. “I am a garden’s Valentine,” “friend solitude sunshine,” and “from which love will bloom.” These are nice. These are very conceptual, right, and they’re solid, and they’re a good framework you can develop.

But on the things I do think you can improve on, I think that some of the poetic devices that you have here overcrowd each other. Like the rhymes and the enjambments and parentheticals and rhetorical questions and tonal switches, all of these all at once, without any person, I can’t see a clear structure that they are all following, right.

When you say “but switch it’s only one scene / 1/ 2/3 of fear / don’t we all feel a little green behind the ears,” this is quite energetic, right, but the meaning here is not quite clear to me. And meaning does not have to be in every poetic line, but the reader is attempting a little too hard. It’s not abstracting meaning for the sake of projecting a feeling, it feels abstracting for the sake of sound play and energetic kind of feeling vibes, right.

And with that being said, it can’t go, it can’t be read as a deeper thing, but because it’s extremely busy with all of these sound words, I think that there is something you can’t pinpoint, right.

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And there is a lot of register here that just jumps inconsistently, in my opinion. Like the elevated diction of the cantons and sadly affairs, and the casual speak “don’t we all feel,” and the whimsical sides that you have as well to these beers. Individually they are fine, right, they’re tones individually, they’re okay, but together they don’t form a lot of coherency into one voice.

So I would ask you to decide between archiness and depth and literary kind of feel, or this breezy kind of conversationalism. Or you can blend them, but right now I feel like it’s half and half, not fully well blended, and that’s my opinion.

And the ending concept is pretty nice, but it feels a little rushed, right. You could have given the garden more room to breathe and grow and be in this kind of nice pool that you were going for here.

And I just think that that’s my issue. Like it could go somewhere, right, but I feel like there is just an overcrowding of decorative phrasing. It’s too, it’s not like ornamental in a lush sense, it just feels ornamental for the sake of beauty. And that is also a good thing, but it also challenges the quality of the poem, in my opinion

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I think you should just, in here, in my opinion, take one dominant register and stick to it, or just let the garden metaphor appear earlier and reoccur, right, when it is repeated and the meaning evolves over time. I think that is very good for the poem’s development.

And I think that you should let a few lines be shortened, have fewer pivots, and let the reader feel more in touch with the poem, right.

And all that said, it’s still a very good poem. It’s very clever, it’s likable, and it’s kind of intelligent as well. And you have a good facility for language and dictation. But I feel like you could push it, right.

And that is just me.

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so sorry for that but here it is

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I wrote two versions of the feedback and I sent the wrong one</3

unkempt loom
fallow jetty
unkempt loom
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Eitherway, I'l probably redraft it from scratch. Honestly didn't mean for it be the half baked version.

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I'll figure it out later. Too pooped.

unkempt loom
fallow jetty