11-11-2025, 04:25 PM
(10-18-2025, 10:41 PM)aschueler Wrote: Nothing is wrong with Five.I'm going to try to make a moderate critique of this, aschueler, but let me start by saying I really loved the concept of this poem. And I loved the punchiness of the language. To me, that made sense - bouncing around like numbers in a schoolroom.
Five is an early, good
prime, adds nicely to
itself giving us
ten. It is three then
two. Even numbers can
count off in pairs. And,
in those pairs we find
strong attachment. Three
we know in cliche, "cliché" is the correct spelling
where "two is company"
but the third destroy
one or two because
it is not one or
two. These last four lines get a bit muddled in my reading. I expect to see "three's a crowd" if you're following the cliché theme.
Two against three. Who
wins? Three against two.
Remove one (or two) Could the "(or two)" be removed here?
from the Five, and turn
it out. Give no anchor.
As one, and slender,
it sails and harbors
in occult, narrow
clear springs of truth, old
made new, learns that three
yearns to hold the two.
The three, still three, kills
one of the three. Again, this gets a little confused. I like the image of a 1 sailing through narrow spaces. Where did the three come from here?
Five is now four. Two
pair, which pairs with which?
Four cannot a circle make, I loved this part because I started drawing pictures in my brain, which is exactly your point. And I thought the concept of no goal was interesting - why does 5 have a goal? And why does this make it lose 1?
thus four has symmetry
but no goal. As such,
It loses one. The last,
the three, the radicals
unstable they break.
Still the one, first and only
prime remains. I would love to see it end on the 5 again, to be honest... but perhaps that's my own numerical preferences coming in!
Brief explanation: was written during a writing exercise, meant practice iambic syllables. Also to try to explain to someone what synthesia with numbers feels like, when I was a kid learing math each number had different personalities. Don't trust seven. Longer story there.
I also found myself understanding on a second read why you capitalized Five, as Five is clearly the main character in this poem. This does get slightly lost later on in the poem - where the one is set free, but it then moves to three and it ends on one again.
Please edit this - I'd love to see where it goes.
And tell the story of 7 through poetry.

