falling for your bluff.

[wasellajam]

hi wasella,

thanks for the welcome !  

i can’t lie i did get carried away with repeatedly editing haha, i have a habit of doing that with my written pieces lol. i’ll definitely give what you linked a read for the future.

thank you also for the valuable feedback . in terms of the “cranes in our sky” part, it was sort of a nod to one of my favourite songs, Cranes in the Sky by Solange Knowles (i’d recommend giving it a listen if you haven’t already!); i felt like the meaning behind the song tied in well here and i often like to reference songs i enjoy in things i write, but can understand how it would be confusing without that context.

you’ve given me many things to consider, i’m sure i’ll be making more edits soon (properly this time lol)

So I listened to Solange's Cranes, turns out I had known but forgotten it. It's an interesting lyric:

Birds vs the cranes on top of buildings that hover threateningly. When I read your lines now it's lovely and makes perfect sense but initially I just pictured the birds, no knowledge of the the song and what it is about and was lost.

yess i figured you may have heard it, but glad you’ve rediscovered it now ! love me some Solange, but yeah i definitely understand the confusion now, wasn’t thinking of the birds initially.

don’t want to rush into another edit, but im now thinking:

“the cranes hanging / suspended / stationed in our sky”

i’m leaning towards “stationed” because i like how it sounds in that stanza and suggests a kind of militant permanence, but i’d love to know your thoughts!

Glad to hear you're not rushing to edit, many a poem has had the life edited right out of it trying to use all the good suggestions. You can trust me on that because I've done it myself more than once. That's why it's so important to keep all the past versions, if the poem moves too far you can always go back to the original and start again more gently.

So Solange: I am not the best person to advise you on this because I often miss allusions and have to google from any clue I'm given or just be lost. So for me the sound of "solange" would be lovely in there but someone else might say "Fuckem if they're so out of touch they don't get it."

at last, began to grasp
the cranes in our sky
would only deepen my fall.

“the cranes hanging / suspended / stationed in our sky”

IMO you should keep the line "The cranes in our sky" whole for its bird image and for "our". There's not much togetherness in the poem so it seems important. Looking at duke's crit now he also thought the "shared sky" was important. Maybe you can work stationed in after.
So I'd recommend writing it out a few different ways and then put it away for a few days then take a look and see what you think does the best job for the poem as a whole.