11-06-2025, 10:25 AM
This is fascinating and bizarre, both in a good and bad way. I want to start by saying I rather loved this, so I hope you take my criticisms as they are intended, because I do have quite a few.
First and most obvious, the formatting is not helping. In fact it is extremely distracting, and often seems unmotivated. The visual impression is of a partially preserved text, with most of the content lost to time and only fragments left to puzzle out the meaning, which is interesting without the additional size and bolding variations, whihc do not seem to add very much. The poem is interesting enough without visual gimmicks, in fact I think they detract from the poem itself.
In terms of structure, I cannot see any. There is no obvious rhythm or meter, it reads like a stream of consciousness scream into the void. There is nothing wrong with this, Ginsberg's "Howl" is one of the best poems ever written and it hates structure and meter almost as much as your poem does, but if you are going to forgoe structure you have to impart a sense of progression or motion in your poem, otherwise it becomes chaotic and static. You repeat the same essential point multiple times. The narrator wants love, but is afraid. It is fine to repeat, but you have to intensify to keep the readers interest, otherwise the repetitions merely blunt the effect and eventually bore. This may be intentional, but it is still exhausting. I would suggest trimming the fat and picking some emotional beats to escalate and advance as the poem progresses
The themes are deep and complex, love and trust, nihilism vs hope, self doubt and jealousy, all good fodder for a poem. Your imagery is striking and original. "her see-through stomach / Allowed me to envision something, / A tree / wrapped / in white string / In / Upwards / a / pattern / circular / Inside of her" is a horrifying and wonderful image, if rather awkwardly phrased, and there are many other interesting and unexpected images that I really enjoyed.
The poem's emotion feels real and raw, lines like "Is unity horror or beauty, or could it be / that I decide that answer?" go to the very core of the paradox of romance, of losing oneself inside another in order to be fully ourselves.
The literary references are unexpected, I am not sure if they are a positive or negative, they are certainly eclectic even if a little messy.
Speaking of messy, you have a LOT going on here. That is great, but you risk drowning out your own message. I would suggest picking a dominant metaphor and developing it, rather than moving between metaphors about trees, the wind, oceans, dreams, etc. A metaphor developing over time will keep your reader on track even without any structure to guide them, throwing multiple metaphors in quick succession is more likely to confuse
All in all I really liked this, once I copied it into a text editor and formatted it so I could read it without a headache. The best parts are when you anchor it in the personal, like the dream about the woman (that line about the see-thru stomach is the line of the poem), the part about the awkward rejected love letter, “And how I went home to bitter tears / Next to the light of my lamp / Wetting my pillowcase.” and the part about the tree needing salvation “I must find that tree and / Shield its leaves from the gusts. / Allow sunlight like a blessing / To be its salvation". Not coincidentally, these are also the most honest and most personal parts of the poem. More of this, please, and less of the airy philosophy and idiosyncratic formatting
First and most obvious, the formatting is not helping. In fact it is extremely distracting, and often seems unmotivated. The visual impression is of a partially preserved text, with most of the content lost to time and only fragments left to puzzle out the meaning, which is interesting without the additional size and bolding variations, whihc do not seem to add very much. The poem is interesting enough without visual gimmicks, in fact I think they detract from the poem itself.
In terms of structure, I cannot see any. There is no obvious rhythm or meter, it reads like a stream of consciousness scream into the void. There is nothing wrong with this, Ginsberg's "Howl" is one of the best poems ever written and it hates structure and meter almost as much as your poem does, but if you are going to forgoe structure you have to impart a sense of progression or motion in your poem, otherwise it becomes chaotic and static. You repeat the same essential point multiple times. The narrator wants love, but is afraid. It is fine to repeat, but you have to intensify to keep the readers interest, otherwise the repetitions merely blunt the effect and eventually bore. This may be intentional, but it is still exhausting. I would suggest trimming the fat and picking some emotional beats to escalate and advance as the poem progresses
The themes are deep and complex, love and trust, nihilism vs hope, self doubt and jealousy, all good fodder for a poem. Your imagery is striking and original. "her see-through stomach / Allowed me to envision something, / A tree / wrapped / in white string / In / Upwards / a / pattern / circular / Inside of her" is a horrifying and wonderful image, if rather awkwardly phrased, and there are many other interesting and unexpected images that I really enjoyed.
The poem's emotion feels real and raw, lines like "Is unity horror or beauty, or could it be / that I decide that answer?" go to the very core of the paradox of romance, of losing oneself inside another in order to be fully ourselves.
The literary references are unexpected, I am not sure if they are a positive or negative, they are certainly eclectic even if a little messy.
Speaking of messy, you have a LOT going on here. That is great, but you risk drowning out your own message. I would suggest picking a dominant metaphor and developing it, rather than moving between metaphors about trees, the wind, oceans, dreams, etc. A metaphor developing over time will keep your reader on track even without any structure to guide them, throwing multiple metaphors in quick succession is more likely to confuse
All in all I really liked this, once I copied it into a text editor and formatted it so I could read it without a headache. The best parts are when you anchor it in the personal, like the dream about the woman (that line about the see-thru stomach is the line of the poem), the part about the awkward rejected love letter, “And how I went home to bitter tears / Next to the light of my lamp / Wetting my pillowcase.” and the part about the tree needing salvation “I must find that tree and / Shield its leaves from the gusts. / Allow sunlight like a blessing / To be its salvation". Not coincidentally, these are also the most honest and most personal parts of the poem. More of this, please, and less of the airy philosophy and idiosyncratic formatting