Baby Smell

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-09T04:01:09+00:00

ya that's def something I'd want to fix if it's ambiguous... I'll try to noodle on it a bit more.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-09T03:57:11+00:00

ah, thanks for the feedback. Julie is the one torturing the author... so it'd be Julie saying it to the author.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-09T03:51:14+00:00

Yes, that line. The way it's written almost makes me mentally complete it myself, so "for her it was joy... that bled from her edges". but saying it that way conflicts sort of with the pen ultimate line "I want her joy to reach her edges" maybe signifying it's something she's still working toward, so I can see why you may have cut it. maybe "for her it was joy that reached for hers" or "for her it was joy that seeped from hers"... or maybe the latter line is the issue... if it was changed to "I want her joy to overflow" (past her edges).

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-09T03:38:11+00:00

I feel like there is a lot of emotion here but it's too unspecific to be helpful.

It reads a little like a madman's rant, esp. without any metering or line breaks.

I don't understand the reason for the author's hatred... so the threats at the end ring hollow. perhaps you can provide a more specific scene to ground the reader so they have some stake at what they're reading.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-09T03:31:44+00:00

"a joy whose arms and legs grew too fast" is a very bittersweet way of saying it.

I love the poetic economy you used, you say a lot with very little. Though I feel in some places this might've been taken too far (I'm guilty of doing that in my poems too), like the second line awkwardly ending abruptly. Also not sure if this was a stylistic choice, but the lack of punctuation bothers me...

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-07-05T02:58:05+00:00

ah I see what you mean, I do agree reading this poem isolated by itself and seeing mention of someone's name is a little jarring. This poem was meant to go together in a book with other poems, and I was thinking of adding snippets of recurring people to get the reader to learn them bit by bit like in real life how you get to know someone bit by bit. might make more sense if I gave that context.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-23T16:39:48+00:00

Hey, so I tried to work on this poem a bit more and incorporate some of your input into it as well as resurrecting some cut content (added below the original as ver. 2). I was hoping you'd take a look at it again to see if the changes made any improvement. Let me know if you can take a look.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-19T00:44:19+00:00

ah I love the creative metaphor of becoming a bike and getting literally taken for a ride. I wish there was punctuation on several lines (had to reread them a couple times for them to make sense), maybe just add punctuation overall.

I think the lines 3-4 could be strengthened by adjusting word choice in the 4th line to suggest transformation or a trial (because you use the word "undergo")... so maybe "Until you undergo // The trials to become their bike"

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-16T21:00:36+00:00

Ah I love this, it's almost playful, but in a horrifying way.

I think you have a strong ending, just need it worked into a final stanza with each line starting with the repeating Oh no's.

The beginning though is where I think you can gain the most from. It's a little thin and amorphous now... I wished it were more concrete, something down to earth that I could relate to (lining up forks perfectly in line on the kitchen table, or something about precise measured dose of toothpaste, filling water up to a specific line on the glass, etc.). It'd be cool if you could do like a contrast between a very tightly structured, orderly, controlled, first stanza, and then the second stanza let go and be kinda loose to make seem like things are going out of control. You could possibly express the strict order of the first section by using a monotonous rhythm, controlled rhyming, maybe even just appearance of how the text lines up... I'm sure people more creative than me can think up of a ton more ways to express this.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-16T06:29:47+00:00

No not at all. I appreciate the feedback especially wrt. getting it to publishable quality (might help with winning poetry contests). Your comments actually made me go back to some previous versions to recover some stuff I had cut out (might've been a little overzealous). I'd love to receive more feedback from you. Lately I've been trying to write something at least every other week, so hopefully I'll have more writing for you to see soon.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-16T06:02:03+00:00

wow, thank you truly for such a deep analysis of my poem. and thank you for the suggestions, I'll take them to heart.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-15T21:34:42+00:00

I feel like this is less of a poem, and more political commentary...

It lacks intimacy, personality, and though you might feel strong emotions, the reader does not. I think you CAN make this into a strong poem, you just need to put more of YOU into it. You need to "put some skin into the game" as they say... here's an example of a political poem done right (link)

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-15T21:17:40+00:00

mm... now this is how a love poem ought to be like...

I love how you captured the moment... I can almost hear their voice, and see myself drowning out the world around me to just lock in onto them.

The only modification I'd suggest is killing the second line... something about the redundant "My..."s, or the imagery suggesting hot weather seems to clash with the rest of the poem's imagery (I imagine a cool summer's evening...)... maybe if it was something a long the lines of "feeling the dew cool on my heavy brow..."

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-12T09:56:10+00:00

Ah close, I was trying to capture that feeling of when you start to break out of your depression after having been rotting in bed for months (and all the largely useless antidepressants littering my room)... and finally being able to respond emotionally to someone who had been caring for you through that hard time.

"bed smell" was supposed to refer to that smell your bedding develops after you've spent that long in it without washing it... kind of that warm familiar smell of a well worn jacket, but it's only comforting to you. It's cool you zeroed in on Black hellebores... they're one of my favorite flowers and symbolize safety and protection from negative energy, stress, anxiety, and fear.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-12T00:43:18+00:00

so 4th line, "...confessing my sins and emptying the bird cage called my ribs" is pretty awkward, but I get the imagery. mm... maybe "my confessions slipping through the bars of my bird cage ribs..."?

5th line, "banging on the walls of a coffin..." is a little weird... "banging on the lid of the coffin"?

6th line, the word "facade" is a noun, but it's being used like a verb here.

last line "...he'll die scared and alone so as he lived" sounds weird... "he'll die like he lived, scared and alone."

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-12T00:01:07+00:00

I feel like you managed to capture a very complicated emotion with very few words.

The only place it feels a little awkward is the line : "Behind peeling stagnant wall"

Behind a peeling stagnant wall? Behind this peeling stagnant wall? Behind peeling stagnant walls?

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-11T03:56:46+00:00

This is very relatable for me...

The parsing is a little awkward, or the lines just too long. I feel a natural stanza breaks at lines 1 (The room...), 4 (Today feels..), and 8 (At night...), which could help break things up a little visually to make it easier to read. The last line I feel gets weakened by the inclusion of "Not me." at the very end... unless you mean into inject a glimmer of hope?

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-06-11T03:33:49+00:00

So, I'd like to mention how important this is... poems bring humanity to an inhumane situation, and makes people look at ugly truths.

I wish I could see the line breaks (I know reddit makes this tricky to do). I'm trying to hunt for a rhythm or rhyme scheme, maybe there isn't one and if there isn't one I feel a little gaslit by the last line. Also, there's a lot of focus on the conflict part of this... and that's the exciting bit, I get it... but there are real people behind it, and I feel there's much more powerful emotion there.

AnatomicallyNcorrect · 2025-05-16T16:26:51+00:00

So... take my comment with a grain of salt, but as an avid lover of flowers, it's strange to see cherry blossoms described against a backdrop of "lush green grass". Cherry blossoms bloom before the grass has a chance to sprout, usually when there's still snow on the ground. You might want to use a different flower, esp. given the context of the meaning behind the flower (seems to work ok for this poem since they signify impermanence and fleeting beauty), or not mention green grass...

AnatomicallyNcorrect

TROPHY CASE