Hello, WakeUpAndLive️~🚬🚭2024

What I liked

While reading, I felt there were two levels to your poem. On the one hand, the majority of your poem is about the obsession with writing and the need to express oneself. It kinda made me think of Elizabeth Gaskell's comments about the Bronte sisters wandering around the kitchen table in the dark in silence, just thinking, marching, thinking, marching, and Charlotte Bronte's pupils commenting on how she closed her eyes and spoke to herself sometimes in the middle of a class, classic signs of madness. That led me on to think about Madwoman in the Attic, the classic feminist critique of nineteenth century womens' novels, and Gubar and Gilbert's expansions on Virginia Woolf's notions of how a woman deprived of the necessary tools to express herself (education, writing materials, opportunity, financial support, a room of their own) may be driven mad by their inability to freely express themselves and all that they are. So, it was about how sometimes in the middle of the night, you wake and you cannot return to sleep because there is a seed growing inside your mind, an idea that must be expressed, and once it's out there, you feel euphoric, if only for a moment, though, of course, you then have to face the world and its critiques. And, of course, the emphasis of the poem was that this was a return to writing, an end to the writer's block.

The other level, I felt, was inspired by more personal and close to home health issues, ie. the notion that fear could make you believe in magic/miracles is an expression of your joy, your feeling of release when certain recent events unfolded. I may be reading too much into your poem at this point, but Freud argued the idea that a person's subconscious revealed itself in 'dreams', and even though he's not popular today, I think it's clear he was right that a story or poem often says as much about the writer as the subject matter. And, indeed, in his introductions to the new revised editions of the Dark Tower series, Stephen King expresses his firm belief that the most serious writers are "selfish", which is to say that there's more of themselves, of their inner being, expressed through their writing than in the writing of inferior writers (in his opinion, which I actually often disagree with).

But, anyway, I ramble.

I believe I understood your main aim, ie. what you intended to express through this poem. If I got it wrong, I'd love to know.

What might need work

The following comments aren't so much a list of problems as a list of questions from me to you as I read through your poem. They are points during which I stumbled while reading because I was unsure what you meant. You may have meant exactly what you wrote, but I just wasn't sure, so I've listed them out:

Concurring that fear is/magic and makes you suspect miracles exist. - 'concurring' means to agree with someone or a group of people. Is that what you meant, or did you mean 'concluding'?

Does/the future reveal itself in the present and
wherefore? - the end word, 'wherefore'. I was curious why you chose that word. I'm sure you understand it's an archaic word for 'why' and you placed it immediately in front of 'why', which begins the next sentence. Is it there to avoid repeating 'why' or did you mean 'where'?

Why the lingering for centuries/that will not change? - 'lingering' means to hang around waiting. Is that what you meant, or did you mean 'longing'?

The child learned how to walk, learned
biking. - I'd personally say 'learned to cycle'. To me, biking implies motorcycles rather than peddle cycles, though you might ask an American what they think.

Is there a reason you use 'grown up' rather than 'adult' toward the end?


Thank you for sharing!

Best wishes,

Bob




My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .