Yesterday, 12:46 AM
Hello
You have written a poem here speaking of the loss of a (lover?) and the effects on the narrator. The title is excellent although I think you could have just used the word "Catalyst" and trusted your reader to understand
I have read through it a few times and there are parts that are quite good while a lot of it gets washed out by the narrator's solipsism
all of this is just tired flat statements from a narrator that the reader doesn't really know and has no investment in. There must be a way to convey these statements to the reader because at this point it isn't really a poem so much as listening to a friend bitch about her problems at Sunday brunch while you awkwardly attempt to signal the overworked waitstaff that your mimosa is empty and it was a bottomless mimosa special today but it ends at noon and it is 11:05 now and you would really like to get this one and then maybe one more before the time runs out if you know what I mean.
ok, the first interesting thing we have so far is "your mast is a deception". It is an intriguing thought, a thought that you could build a poem around. Please say it is not just a mis type of "mask" because in that case, I would have to quote Ezra Pound when he spoke about " Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol." in which case, the mask is the object'
my abdomen cramps from the plan b you bought me
and my heart cramps from the knife you buried deep
with your words this part here gets kind of interesting because you use the symbol as a metaphor for the reality. Think of this - " my abdomen cramps from the plan b you bought me" - think of how much information you just gave to the reader without telling the reader anything. I learned more with that line than in the rest of the poem. That is economy.
unfortunately, it gets bogged down with cliche talking of burying knives with words, etc. - that has all been done to death already.
those words meant more than you could even imagine
they are eerily similar to the words i heard at seventeen
the words that made me empty a bottle of vodka down my throat
now i choke and choke on those memories
cough them up
cough up blood and pain and loneliness and misery
and oh the misery i sit in
a cold puddle of my actions
and your words
and what could have been
and what's not.
It kind of continues along those lines with very little real imagery (the bottle of vodka) and very lot tired language and solipsism. you have the bones and teh ideation of the poem. you have a couple key facts and images. You have a lot of work to scrap all of the tired language and abstraction and "woe-is-me-isms" and build it into a poem where you give the details that show us the relationship but you never tell us - just let us figure it out - trust your reader.
Thanks for posting
and just to try to clarify what I am saying, this line here would make a better poem all by itself than the whole poem:
my abdomen cramps -
from the plan b you bought me
because it conveys so much with a few words without ever "telling" the reader what to think
You have written a poem here speaking of the loss of a (lover?) and the effects on the narrator. The title is excellent although I think you could have just used the word "Catalyst" and trusted your reader to understand
I have read through it a few times and there are parts that are quite good while a lot of it gets washed out by the narrator's solipsism
(02-01-2026, 03:01 PM)shady Wrote: God is everything or God is nothingso, I get what you are saying here but there are 2 problems: The first line points to the religious nature of the narrator so it is what we call a "red herring" and in poetry that is dishonest. The second line is just a flat statement, is there anyway you could give the reader an example and we could decide how importatnt th eperson was?
you were everything now you're nothing
Quote:and nothing makes sence
i can't make sence of how empty i feel after just four days
but those days made me feel
significant and seen and loved and wanted
all of this is just tired flat statements from a narrator that the reader doesn't really know and has no investment in. There must be a way to convey these statements to the reader because at this point it isn't really a poem so much as listening to a friend bitch about her problems at Sunday brunch while you awkwardly attempt to signal the overworked waitstaff that your mimosa is empty and it was a bottomless mimosa special today but it ends at noon and it is 11:05 now and you would really like to get this one and then maybe one more before the time runs out if you know what I mean.
Quote:and oh how fucking badly i wanted to be yours
but your fear crept in and you pushed me away
now the memories i pushed down resurface
and prove that what's at my surface is a mask and i'm not okay
just like your mast is a deception and a hidden figure of sickness lives deep down in you
i feel sick literally and figuratively
ok, the first interesting thing we have so far is "your mast is a deception". It is an intriguing thought, a thought that you could build a poem around. Please say it is not just a mis type of "mask" because in that case, I would have to quote Ezra Pound when he spoke about " Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol." in which case, the mask is the object'
Quote:
my abdomen cramps from the plan b you bought me
and my heart cramps from the knife you buried deep
with your words this part here gets kind of interesting because you use the symbol as a metaphor for the reality. Think of this - " my abdomen cramps from the plan b you bought me" - think of how much information you just gave to the reader without telling the reader anything. I learned more with that line than in the rest of the poem. That is economy.
unfortunately, it gets bogged down with cliche talking of burying knives with words, etc. - that has all been done to death already.
Quote:
those words meant more than you could even imagine
they are eerily similar to the words i heard at seventeen
the words that made me empty a bottle of vodka down my throat
now i choke and choke on those memories
cough them up
cough up blood and pain and loneliness and misery
and oh the misery i sit in
a cold puddle of my actions
and your words
and what could have been
and what's not.
It kind of continues along those lines with very little real imagery (the bottle of vodka) and very lot tired language and solipsism. you have the bones and teh ideation of the poem. you have a couple key facts and images. You have a lot of work to scrap all of the tired language and abstraction and "woe-is-me-isms" and build it into a poem where you give the details that show us the relationship but you never tell us - just let us figure it out - trust your reader.
Thanks for posting
and just to try to clarify what I am saying, this line here would make a better poem all by itself than the whole poem:
my abdomen cramps -
from the plan b you bought me
because it conveys so much with a few words without ever "telling" the reader what to think