Source
r/OCPoetry•
blackandwhiteenvelop

June

Feedback Received!
...

The day does not feel
We feel for it—sliding our fingertips over
its smooth, curved lock latches,
that if we grasp for a pin,  
dissipate completely
in the cold, weathered mood of 
fanciful desperation.



June will never mind the guest room memories;
how liberated once it made us all. 
Or mind how we long it to make love to us
as it once did not too long ago. 




With ease, June weakens my chest. 



I make time as much as it does me. 
There’s more to a minute these days. 
I only see June for what it has given,
not what I’ve taken away.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/8ifxp0/comment/dyrim3g?st=JH0SFG2V&sh=a50a319d

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/8i1blr/comment/dyripva?st=JH0SN859&sh=94ffc4e6

Posted May 10, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC · edited

34
ThatOneHomie•

Complex poem here, I appreciate the effort to push yourself.

The first stanza is very strong...perhaps "fanciful desperation" is a mouthful of imagery that you could get across in another way. Otherwise no feedback there.

You're losing me a bit in the second...I'm personally not a fan of "yoda speak" in poetry, even though I recognize that poems are a great place for language experimentation.

June will never mind the guest room memories;
how liberated once it made us all.

Any reason to mix up the second line? Does it take anything away from the poem to say "how liberated it once made us". Feels like forced "poetryness" rather than natural language.

Or mind how we long it to make love to us
as it once did not too long ago.

"We" don't long "it"...you need a conjunction.

In the final stanza, I'd recommend stripping the first line out completely...much more effective without that relatively vague and, again, perhaps forced image.

I think you have a strong emotional message buried by needless complexity. I would push you to access the same emotion or memories, and write a completely different poem that is more tangible. Then the hard work is in finding the balance between the ethereal "poetic" elements and the more concrete images that the reader can hold on to.

Go for it!

1
blackandwhiteenvelopOP•

Wow, thanks, really do appreciate the response and I will come back to it for sure! It does seem a little too strained in some areas and since in bed ridden for a few days, I might as well work on that!

1
hazyraindrops•

I really enjoyed this poem, it actually gave me chills. To be completely honest I'm in the midst of finals week at college AND a brand new relationship so my brain is functioning at a relatively low capacity - it was a little bit hard for me to make sense of the imagery, but that's on me, not you.

I know you might not want to, but could you speak a little bit in literal terms about the image or message you're trying to get across? For me, I pick up a sense of a longing for not necessarily good memories themselves, but the source of those memories, the time or the situation that made those memories possible, as if that which you now cherish was created by the time in which it happened, and searching for that outside catalyst again but knowing it may not come. Am I on the right track?

As far feedback, I really don't have anything. I feel like I'd be grasping at straws if I tried to make something up. Great work.

1
blackandwhiteenvelopOP•

Yes, haha! Thank you. You are on the right track completely and I loved how you worded it. It’s really to me about longing and wanting to go back to experience things new again. I find that thinking back on memories that are supposed to be “good memories” is more painful than looking back on “bad memories”. Every summer, I feel jealous of my past summers and who I used to be. I feel like I have so much hope to become more experienced, more happy, more free... but I’ve already had perfect times in my life and it would be almost impossible to top them as the years go on.

Most of my writing is inspired by true love I feel I’ve had, and losing it. It’s like an old part of me dying, or an earlier version of myself.

1