I liked this poem. The style of this one is unusual, but it worked for me.
I kinda suck at reviewing style and stuff like that, but I like looking at meaning, and discussing what a poem means to me.
I guess I'm a narcissist. Terrible affliction.
Anyway, I guess for me this poem hits some pretty deep questions.
Are good and evil absolute? Many religions accept evil as a necessary part of the growth of the universe....so perhaps some evil actually works out for the best.
Is life an unwinnable game? If we take the whole gamut of opinion, then certainly yes. To generalise horribly, Christians think everyone else is going to hell, Buddhist monks think everyone else is "further from enlightenment", fundamentalist Muslims think the unbelievers need to be cleansed from the earth.
All in all a pretty grim picture. However, I look at it this way. Is anyone else's opinion on the nature of reality, or the afterlife, above anyone else's? I think not.
I guess I'm an idealist, but I would hope it really is all about belief. If you really believe you can't win, then you can't. I worried about that for a long time.
Then I noticed the opposite. If you really believe, in the grand scheme of things, you can't lose, then maybe you can't?
If I had to choose a God, I'd choose one who wasn't bothered about the little things. People always say God is all-loving, all-forgiving, but then they forget about that when it comes to the specifics of Heaven's dress code.
Why have a vengeful lunatic in charge of the afterlife? We have enough of them in charge down here.
Why even have a pretentious, elusive guy in charge who wants you to realise something but won't explain it properly?
Heck, why even have anyone in charge?
Anyway, thanks for sharing, this one made me think. Best thing anyone can do for someone else.
The lines are quite long, but I still felt it flowed well. The parts describing the usual problems people face are simple but put the message across well. I guess everyone worries about how they look, in one way or another. Takes a while to come out of that. Not everyone's shallow, believe it or not.
Ends on a good note, bit of grit and determination. Best thing to get you through tough patches.
My favourite line?
The path to insanity, I feel I'm on the brink
Because that's what I feel like half the time. I'm not too sure it's a bad thing, really. Keeps the idea mill spinning.
Anyway, thanks for sharing, I wish you all the best.
I've read quite a few of your pieces now. I like your style, your use of description is excellent, and the language is brilliant. Complexity for the win.
You do the dark stuff really well too. I like this one in particular because it's a nightmare, and dreams fascinate me. Never really have nightmares though. Only the "running through water" from time to time while getting chased, but that's not so scary, compared to a bad trip.
This dream is pretty grim though. The hopelessness, the searching for meaning is conveyed perfectly. You carry the reader through your thoughts with ease. I guess this one seems a little like a question about the afterlife, to me anyway.
I like the fact you find some help at the end. Always a bright spot I think, if you look for it. I'd like to see what happens afterwards, what Joseph has to say for himself.
I guess everyone is thinking about the whole heaven/hell issue right now.
A scary one with judgement day apparently due any day now. ;)
The piece is well-written, flows well and I didn't really notice any spelling or grammar errors.
I always used to worry about the whole "where will I end up?" thing.
I'm not really releigious, but I read a lot in that direction, and eveything seemed on the right track, butt just a little out for my taste.
I abstained, and that got pretty painful after a while.
Eventually I got to the point that was probably obvious to everyone else before.
There is no perfection in this lifetime, and life is all about finding a way to reproduce yourself, and ideally to help your species reproduce.
If you fail at that, then I guess maybe that's a failed lifetime for that person.
So yeah, I suppose what'ss really been worrying me is that while I've been considering these things, my chance of finding the right girl has been slipping away.
Funny how you can spend half your life looking for an answer, then get all of them at once.
Reality's great, but it doesn't last forever down here. At least, not until the world figures itself out a little.
I guess that's about average. But I really hope that the piece doesn't represent the view of the average 13 year old alive.
I mean, we are assualted all the time by images of corruption and wars and so on, and everyone knows there is terrible suffering in the world, but look at it this way:
Imagine living in any of the ancient times. Throughout the whole course of history we have seen slaves flogged to death to build the pyramids (although they are cool, probably not worth the suffering that went into making them....but still, what's done is done), witch hunts, the Spanish Inquistion, wars with actual swords and axes a thousand times more horrific (person to person) than today. I could go on, but it really is too sickening.
Women have only just been given the right to vote in the last couple of hundred years. You want to end the world now?
Sure, there is corruption. Their is death, famine and war.
But there are a thousand good things happen every day.
Destroying the world because it isn't perfect would be like killing your cat because it had fleas.
The world only ever moves forward. Things only ever get better, no matter what the rose-tinted naysayers will have you believe. Short-sightedness can be infectious.
Although we are utilising the wrong fuels right now,but all the techology is in place to make that obsolete. Cars will be a struggle, but once people understand they can save money by generating their own electricity (wind/solar/hydro/geothermal you name it we got it), we can take a significant load off.
I just don't uderstand why everyone thinks the world's going to end right when we're getting to the good part? At least, that's how it seems to me.
The most important thing to do in life is to look at the big picture. When we focus on the small things, we get lost.
I had to go and look up the biblical reference, then realised how well known it is, even for professed flexible atheists like myself.
Once I read that, I got the poem straight away.
It's well written. That first line "returning the stone", I didn't get it at first, but now I see.
The narrator has been attacked, probably verbally. He has retaliated, and this retaliation makes him question his place in reality. Is it he who is reflecting the others action? Or vice-versa?
Poetry is always subjective, but from what I read our views are quite similar.
I personally like religion, although I follow my own path. It's the actions of a small (and usually vocal) minority that give the whole thing a bad name.
Judging this, judging that. Who are we to judge another, especially when we are all imperfect ourselves, and even more so when really our understanding of the motives and thoughts of others is always incomplete, always subjective?
Funny that we know we shouldn't judge, but when we feel someone judging us, we feel obliged to defend ourselves.
Is this a bad thing? I suppose turn the other cheek is another relevant Biblical phrase.
But who ever learned anything when their opponent just shut up and walked away?
Leaves the guesswork to them as to the motivations, which means they are no nearer the truth than when they started.
I suppose the best route is to hold calm and put your point across concisely. Hardly a retaliation, just an attempt at dialogue.
Most people who are busy judging others are doing it to avoid having a long hard look at themselves.
If you can nudge them in that direction, maybe the whole confrontation wouldn't have been in vain?
Who know, just thinking out loud really.
Anyway, thanks for sharing, a nice simple piece that gets the thoughts flowing.
A decent poem, flows pretty well. Bear in mind I don't really review poetic form, I just like the meaning.
That probably makes me a bit of a rubbish reviewer. but I soldier on regardless.
Anyway, I like the emotion in this one. Feelings of isolation are something I'm fairly used to, I guess writing both helps and causes it. Some stuff you can't say in real life.
The first step in losing it always tends to be communication. Funnily though, i've often found if you get too honest, too open, then it's counter-productive. But then, I am pretty strange overall so that doesn't help.
Thing I like about life is, it always gets better. No matter how bad things get, there always seems to be some
ray of light that pokes through and makes sense of all the tribulations.
Anyway, thanks for getting me thinking, and sorry about the utterly useless review.
I just picked your portfolio from the Rising Stars list, and I particularly liked this piece so I'm going to award you the somewhat dubious honour of a review.
Obviously anything I say is entirely my own opinion and should not be taken at all seriously.
What I liked
The whole thing, really. Your use of emotion is great, everything flows well. It's a simple but highly effective little piece. Even better that it's real too.
Style
I love your use of language. No fear of running off into unusual double-digit words, beautifully descriptive. Something that I suppose is frowned on by some, but I think it's brilliant Exercises the brain a little. You're not dependent on flowery language though, some of the most effective pieces are wonderfully simple.
Plot
The story pulls the reader a number of different ways, building a state of slight agitation to begin, competing demands assaulting the lead. We move into a momentary melancholy as we look back to regrets, but the real clincher is the last piece.
I really felt that moment, that pure sensory pleasure. Rare we get a chance for that in the city. I'm sitting here with the TV on, planes going overhead, a lawnmover across the road. I've experienced similar things in the mountains, so silent everything is magnified.
Typos
“ Ok I am here, but I am not coming out.” I pout only to myself.
An extra space there. I had to hunt though.
Suggestions for Improvement
None at all. Well written and engaging, puts itself across clearly. The variation in style and feeling keeps the attention well. An enjoyable read.
I tend not to be able review poetry very well. It's all about the feeling for me.
This one was a little too dark for my taste today, but I still enjoyed it.
Very emotive, melancholy. A little touch of hope, but I can't help but feel sorry for the tree, and the grave. Time, though a cruel mistress, is also apparently the healer of all wounds.
This one I do like. It's an interesting glimpse into your head.
To be honest with you, I'm pretty new to writing, and poetry isn't really my speciality, although I may start to explore the possibilities after seeing what you are doing with it.
The imagery is great, and you really are hitting on some key issues here. A lack of a feeling of control, the importance of sleep in the cosmic play, the tendency in all of us to focus on the negative aspects sometimes.
The only piece of advice I can give you, and it's hardly new but I think for a lot of people it's becoming more easy to accept, is that the world is largely controlled by your own preconceptions. I for a long time thought things were impossible, that people didn't care and that I couldn't move forward. Eventually though I saw the world for what it is, a thing created continually by a combination of my own thoughts and those of others around me. Once you change your own feelings of despair and helplessness, the despair and helplessness of others becomes more easy to deal with, and you start to see solutions where before there was only the impossible.
Anyway, as I say, great perception, keep hammering at those questions and feeling and eventually you will see the other side. Have fun with the journey.
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