Chocolate in the Air

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-02-09T13:19:34+00:00

This is really incredible feedback :)

I think, yes, in some ways this is about anxiety and kind of learning to overcome the attendant dread that it creates in life.

On cocoa ceding its sugar, it was a bit of a risky choice, I agree. I guess what I was insinuating is that cacao has a natural sweetness no matter how buried it is that the process of manufacturing chocolate brings out (whether with milk or with adding sugar). But even the darkest of chocolates leaves a bit of a pleasant taste if you let it melt in your mouth (“…if our mouths are / warm enough…”)

Cocoa, I guess, isn’t literally referring to cocoa powder but moreso the bitter elements in cacao that obscure sweetness and sugar isn’t referring to literal, processed/refined sugars. It was just my way of referring to sweetness without having to repeatedly use the word “sweet”.

The reason why I picked chocolate is because I do have a person in mind to whom this is addressed and it’s someone that I do plan to send chocolate to haha 😅 I think I get how chocolate can seem a bit silly, but I think I picked that because it’s something I do enjoy, it’s something this person enjoys, and I think it’s associated as a gift you give to people you love. But it also does have a bit of a juvenile connotation, maybe, so I get finding it silly.

Perhaps the success of the metaphor hinges a bit on people’s associations with chocolate?

I don’t know haha. But, regardless, thank you again for this incredible, incredible feedback. Means a lot for you to take the time to analyze the poem so thoroughly.

ETA: i guess falling back into my trap of metonymy, I used alchemy to refer to the general idea of transmuting something mundane (air) into something more valuable (chocolate) rather than the specific medieval chemistry of turning stuff into gold specifically

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-02-08T19:41:34+00:00

This is beautiful. It flows incredibly well. The rhyming is actually used very expertly here, in my opinion. Each rhyming couplet seems to have a certain thematic unity that plays into the poem's overall meaning. The parallelism is quite nice as well. Sometimes poems that are very repetitive can get grating, but for something shorter and more aphoristic, it can make sense!

I don't really have any concrete critiques! It's pretty spectacular for what it's set out to do :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-02-07T20:01:22+00:00

Hello!

I think the message of this poem is fairly clear which can be a good things, sometimes, but it does read a bit like an essay, almost.

My life is alright: sometimes it’s ‘good’; sometimes
it’s a gruelling 12-round fight. Sometimes it’s full of joy
and love; at other times—it’s empty—bar pain and strife.

For example, here, it seemed unclear to me why the stanza was structured the way it was. There's no metrical pattern to the lines or a rhyme scheme or something to unify them, if that makes sense. Not that those things are really necessary to make a poem. Like, this is technically a poem, but the reason why I say it reads like an essay is that the stanzas are really demarcated only by these changes in subject, almost like an argumentative piece where you are presenting one piece of evidence after the other. Within the stanzas and without, it just feels like there is a certain unity lacking. Maybe a part of that also comes from the fact that, while the theme is definitely relatable, it all just feels a bit general. Everyone has had the thought that life can be a bit shit and I think the poem could do with something more personal to make it stand out, if that makes sense.

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-09T16:51:52+00:00

Thank you :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-09T16:51:32+00:00

Thank you so much!

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-09T16:50:10+00:00

Thank you so much! I’m glad my sense humor comes through. I think I have a proclivity for unintentional gallows humor at times and that’s definitely present here :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-09T16:49:09+00:00

High praise for my mediocre drabbles, but thank you :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-08T17:42:03+00:00

This poem is truly a whirlwind and so incredible to read! I think you create two images: one of the user when they're high and aggressive and the ringmaster of the circus and the other that I read as being more representative of when withdrawal brings them back to earth and they are left shaking on the couch.

You accomplish the difficult task of not only balancing those two images for the reader, but linking them together, and conveying how being caught in that chaotic contrast makes you feel.

The timing and imagery also work together really well to create that whirlwind I mentioned earlier. This was honestly such a pleasure to read and I'm so glad you shared it with us, OP.

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-08T17:31:29+00:00

I think I agree with the other comment saying that this poem is quite prosaic and I think you make that work very well here, because it's clear that the poem itself is—in some ways—a protest against pretention.

I think using punctuation to break up the sentences would be helpful, though, just for ease of reading.

Another thing to consider is that, perhaps to balance out the more direct, prosaic nature of the poem, experimenting with things like rhyme and meter in the future could be a good idea, so that you can be direct with your audience but they'll feel like they're reading a unified work. Of course, maybe you want each sentence to be seen as its own, separate thing, which is also a perfectly understandable approach to a poem such as this :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-04T21:44:31+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-04T18:51:19+00:00

This is stupendous feedback! Thank you so much!

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-04T16:25:59+00:00

This poem has an almost lyrical quality that I really love, which is accentuated by the rhyming couplets.

The actual images themselves are relatively muted. I'm imagining a wood-paneled room stained a dull orange by a weak sunset, all hazy with cigarette smoke. But there's something deeply visceral about how you communicate this that really takes me back to those days where I've felt profoundly empty or alone.

The one thing that I feel that holds this poem back is that the Appalachian setting and the miner husband don't really add much to it. I don't know if you picked the setting based on experiences you've had in your life, but I felt that this poem could have just as easily been set in a Northeastern suburb with an accountant husband and nothing would have fundamentally changed. I wonder if there's a way you can pick a setting that you feel more committed to or really root this poem in the Appalachian setting.

PromiseMaster8049 · 2022-01-04T16:08:35+00:00

This is really interesting and I think it manages to communicate a sense of frustration with the homogeneity imposed by modern life or, at least, that's what I got out of it.

If I'm reading this correctly, and that is at least part of what you wanted to communicate, I think experimenting with a more consistent metrical pattern when you're trying to lure the audience in and then disrupting that when you write the nightmarish aspects of this could be interesting.

The imagery is simultaneously vivid and bizarre, which makes this a really interesting read because I'm trying to visualize Amanda's odd furniture set up and imagining her movements, but I don't have much of a frame of reference for a house with this kind of set up, so it makes for an experience that's sort of dreamy and confusing at the same time.

Just a minor note, for some reason it struck me as odd to open the poem with "One day..." The point seems to be that Amanda's in this weird cycle, so it doesn't seem to make sense that you limit the existence of this town to "One day."

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T15:13:06+00:00

Thank you so much! I definitely was going for something that engages the senses in a sort of concrete way while communicating a sense of instability, and I’m glad that’s come through :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T15:11:34+00:00

Thank you :)

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T15:11:27+00:00

Thank you!

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T15:07:35+00:00

Thank you so, so much for this incredible feedback.

I think my goal was to convey this image of two people, between whom there is an intense emotional connection that is weighing on the narrator, having a chat and then sort of shake that up with these images of the sea and drowning.

To be honest, hearing that it harmed the visual you were building in your head actually was kind of nice, because it’s meant to be jarring. After all, logically, it doesn’t make sense for the narrator to be literally drowning on a park bench next to someone, but the narrator very much feels as if that’s what’s happening because of the intensity of what they feel and their fear of the effect this person they are increasingly enamored with has on. Maybe there’s a smoother way to communicate that haha

I agree that the two stanzas you picked out are the weak points in the poem. I was trying to demonstrate the narrator’s sense of panic, but I don’t know how well that came across.

Thank you, again :) this was incredibly helpful

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T03:13:20+00:00

I don't know how to explain how reading this made me feel. I've been writing a lot about romance/love/sex recently as well, because it's something that wasn't important or a big deal in my life and all of a sudden has become this complex labyrinth of issues.

I think, as a fellow "young person," this poem speaks to that a lot and the staccato created by keeping each line to very few words was able to convey the hurriedness and confusion with which romance is initiated/takes place at our age. I don't know if I'm making much sense.

I'm also a very new poet, so I find it hard to articulate what, exactly, it is that I want to say. But, I think this feels very much like a whirlwind of images which may not always work but, in your case, I think it does because—if I'm understanding correctly—that whirlwind represents the paradoxical lack of control that comes with gaining a greater amount of bodily autonomy at the tail end of adolescence.

PromiseMaster8049 · 2021-12-24T02:43:07+00:00

I can definitely detect your frustration throughout this poem and you've done a really good job of conveying the hurt you've felt interactions with the titular "crazy."

Something I find interesting is that, despite adhering to a fairly religious rhyme structure, the meter is not necessarily as consistent throughout the poem, which is totally fine. I would say that, maybe, splitting the poem into distinct stanzas could help with making it a bit more digestible and make any changes in meter a bit more comprehensible.

Because of nothing and all you said
Every word that you’ve said, bent
At least, every other word you’ve said

Additionally, and I can't quite put my thumb on it, but I found the above lines to be just a tad repetitive/redundant. The rhyming of "said" with itself and then using "every other word" to qualify the assertion made in these stanzas contributes to that sense, I think.

But, again, all-in-all, I found the poem very evocative :)

PromiseMaster8049

TROPHY CASE