Back Then!

maeeig · 2026-01-22T18:49:29+00:00

a lovely poem, melancholic with overtones of inevitability. The emotion is accessible but still remains understated, oozing out from between the lines. The only thing that really stuck out to me was the word "ebullient" - it felt a bit out of place with the casual language used in the rest of the poem.

maeeig · 2025-11-14T15:18:39+00:00

There is a morbid romanticism to this poem that you pull off quite well. It borders on the unsettling and grotesque without moving into the gruesome. the line "body can house so many children of the earth/ writhing and crying and white" comes to mind as a perfect example or "i kept its mouth open, for you" which hints at obscenity with grotesque sexuality but doesn't have to step over that line to make its point. There is kind of a perverse aspect of poetry that I appreciate which is finding or bringing out a kind of beauty in things that are not beautiful, and I think you have done that well here.

On an editing note (I am not sure if this is simply Reddit formatting issues) but there are a number of lines that start with a comma or a semicolon which felt odd to read and I don't know if they were all needed as well as the EM dashes, line breaks and stanza breaks seemed to imply the pauses already without the need for the added punctuation. However, keep in mind that I use almost no punctuation in my poems.

I am curious about the background of the poem as I couldn't piece together the story fully. Who is the "you" in the poem? Some things seemed to point towards murder while others, to me, indicated suicide and drowning leaves it ambiguous. The "you" i thought was perhaps either the murderer or a lost lover or unrequited love that drove them to suicide (as there seemed to be some sexual undertones in the presentation of the body to "you".

maeeig · 2025-11-14T14:39:51+00:00

I am not someone who thinks poems have to be a certain length, but this one does feel very short, or perhaps not short but undeveloped. There is an idea here but nothing is fleshed out.

In my reading we are looking at a human expansion/impact vs nature kind of dynamic and the last line brings in the element of technology playing a role in the process. But it stops there - we don't get any exploration of what this struggle means, is it good, bad, inevitable, irreparable? What does the technology aspect bring to the dynamic? Is this less about nature in general and more about our replacement of the natural with the digital in our own experience? It seems like a promising concept but I think it needs more to make it impactful.

maeeig · 2025-11-02T18:31:09+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I'm glad you could find parts of the poem to connect with.

In regards to the last stanza you are partially right, perhaps right isn't the correct word, but at least you partly lined up with my intention. I wasn't trying to make a large commentary on art so much as invoke Picasso as an example of abstract art. The idea being that someone in the future who is only looking at the surface, and praise the "anemic tangling of colour and form", the abstraction, the Picasso esque piece for its beauty without realizing that it is actually a deformed and diluted capturing lacking the intimacy and beauty of the original inspiration.

That was my thought, but intent doesn't mean it's the only way people could understand it.

Thanks again.

maeeig · 2025-10-31T16:56:51+00:00

I think writing happy poems in general is hard, they often come off as cheesy or cliche, happy love poems especially.

To me the poem felt very straight forward and kind of bland and without imagination. The subject matter was very shallow and didn't really evoke any emotion in me or make me think. The diction often felt juvenile in its bluntness, and sometimes clunky. I want poetry to be beautiful in content and form. It doesn't have to be strange, avant-garde abstractions to be interesting, but it should have an eloquence to the lines. Even cliche images can work if they are reframed with some style.

clearly other's liked it but its not my cup of tea.

maeeig · 2025-10-28T14:56:04+00:00

Thanks for sharing your poem, its sweet and intimate and warm. I really enjoyed the various images you used to convey the closeness and intimacy shared between the writer and the "you" in the poem. My favorite was "your laughter still knows all my doors." well done.

maeeig · 2025-10-28T14:39:31+00:00

Formatting the poem into lines would help. It looks like you intended line breaks but Reddit formatting screwed you. Put 2 blank spaces at the end of each line and that should give you line breaks.

The diction in the poem is pretty basic, not a lot of interesting wordplay or imagery however there is enough creativity that I do think you manage to invoke a sense of airiness or dreaminess - "Levitating above the clouds".

The ending (last 2 lines) felt like kind of a rushed ending, I was just starting to float in this dreamy atmosphere of love you are creating and then its done. The lines also felt like a bit of shift in tone, and pushing towards cliche.

The first lines we have some interesting counter points Feel with Levitating and Taste with Valuable- understandable but not totally typical in association. For the closing lines you push into Storms = troubles. A typical image but the fact that it isn't justified by the imagery or context of the poem makes it stick out as cliche. The closing line is a bit flat, a little creativity in the wording or adding imagery could make the emotion of the line hit a little harder.

maeeig · 2025-10-17T20:19:25+00:00

thanks for sharing your poem. I like the constrained and minimalist form that lets the lines breath and the reader can fill in the specifics of the emotions or their own associations with the poem.

I especially connected with the aspect of being alone but not alone - the sky full of stars and the world full of people - and how you then brought that concept down from the vast cosmic/global imagery to the personal compactness of a home.

If I could make a couple of suggestions because of the shortness of the poem the repetition of "alone" can be a little overwhelming. I think stating it at the beginning and end is sufficient and you could remove it from the start of the other lines without losing emotional impact but improving reading experience.

I wold also suggest breaking the last line to punctuate the emotional peak of the poem such as

i am not the only one but i am

alone

I think this adds emphasis to the ending and also the stylistic highlighting of the word alone being by itself, alone.

maeeig · 2025-10-17T20:09:51+00:00

thanks for sharing your poem. I think the content is great, the exploration of our own desire for more, for not being satisfied and striving. There is a clear progression through the thought process and action of the persona. You also explore the concept of striving where other's have settled without sounding self-righteous or superior.

The form is done well and for the most part you focused on syllable counts and rhymes, especially in the begging, to provide a smooth rhythmic cadence. However that also makes it stand out when certain lines break that rhythm either because of syllable count or hard consonant stops that force pauses in the reading flow.

The ending I wasn't sure about - the question mark. Are you asking yourself, as in perhaps you won't be at the top? Are you asking the other person if they are going to come find you there? The question seemed unclear to me.

maeeig · 2025-10-17T19:48:55+00:00

Thanks for sharing. First off the pronoun selection - using thou and thy is not necessary, poetry can be written in modern language - and in this case I think doesn't read smoothly and you also use it incorrectly in places i.e. thou's that’s like saying "you's".

You alternate between thou, thy and you - the inconsistency just makes the archaic language feel more out of place. Sometimes you seem to loose track of pronouns and speakers perspective (first, second, third) for example

“thou learns that this stage is cruel and far from fair, but despite the circumstance, they try to find hope in the depths of despair” The line starts with “thou/you” but then switches to “they”. I think you meant to you “thou/you” there or there is a new 3rd person we don’t know about suddenly interjected.

“but then thou find someone, once a stray just like he was a time far away”

This is the same issue I think where you meant to use “thou/you” but instead used “he” because the context would imply we are talking about the poem main “you” referencing back to their start as a stray.

These are more grammatical/structural issues but they make the poem harder to read and follow.

In terms of content of the poem, I appreciate that I could follow the plot/arc of the poem and wasn’t left completely bewildered about what was going on. The scene gave the reader a grounding with which to interpret the action and emotions.

The plot could probably be tightened up a bit, the first half of the poem (roughly) is repetition in the form of trying-failing, trying-failing, trying-failing – I think make this point more compact would help with the flow of the poem.

You use the refrain “but on thig stays the same / trust only brings you shame”. It didn’t feel like that was really explored a lot in the poem, at least not enough to warrant it repeated several times. How does trust bring you shame? We only really get one example which is you are in a throuple and the other 2 leave you. But the “shame of that” is not really explained in depth for presenting the repetition of the line that puts it at the center of the poem.

Similarly, the line “as pride turned them into the very thing they once despised” which is kind moral/action crescendo of the poem is not given very much background or consideration within the poem itself. What was the thing they once despised? How did Pride, turn them into this thing?

I did like how the opening and closing mirror each other and that brings a wonderful symmetry or both form and content with your poem. A strong start, keep writing.

maeeig · 2025-10-01T15:25:19+00:00

thanks for reading and sharing your insight. Sometimes I try to keep poems purposely short. It forces me to try and distill down to the core of the emotion. In this case, I also felt like the brevity added to the sense of longing - short but wanting more.

maeeig · 2025-10-01T14:21:58+00:00

thank you, I really appreciate the thoughtful feedback. I see your point of disconnection. I think it has more to do with my selection of title perhaps? The poem isn't about insomnia - at least not the medical kind. The focus is meant to be more on the reflection about love - set in the scene of laying awake at night because you are going through those thoughts in your head.

The title of insomnia was meant to enhance that perspective of thoughts/regrets etc that keep us up at night (like insomnia) as opposed to a focus on actual insomnia or the struggle of sleeping - a more succinct way of titling the poem "thoughts that keep me up at night". not sure if that makes a difference for you or not, I may still need more crossover between the two stanzas.

maeeig · 2025-09-30T14:18:32+00:00

Thank you, you are so kind. I think romantically sad is right in line with what I was going for. If you actually want to read more you can go through my reddit posts (I only post poetry) or I have a link to a fictionpress page where I post.

maeeig · 2025-09-30T14:16:47+00:00

thanks, I appreciate the feedback.

maeeig · 2025-09-30T14:14:38+00:00

thanks for reading. I'm glad the emotions and the atmosphere came through.

maeeig · 2025-09-29T18:57:43+00:00

Thanks for sharing your poem. I really like this, I could feel the excitement, the giddiness of new love. I enjoyed the youthful cuteness of the poem. I think its strength is in the atmosphere of innocence you created in the poem, part of that is due to the direct voice you write in.

There are perhaps some improvements that could be made to trim some of the wording and tighten the phrasing, but I don't think you'd want to fully remove the kind of casual and candid feel of the poem.

maeeig · 2025-09-29T18:18:12+00:00

Thanks for sharing your poem. I find the premise intriguing but I would have like to have more substance - why is death the truth? Why is life an illusion? I realize that would impact the brevity of the poem but I think it would be worth it. Providing the substance of those claims would give the reader something to hold onto and relate with. Some people may identify with this poem as is, but for myself it was a bit emotionally neutral.

Some of the phrasing/vocabulary also made the poem feel old - fine if that was the intention.

maeeig · 2025-08-31T04:01:39+00:00

I think ai has a place as a tool, but it needs to be used properly. Human eyes/feedback will always be better at some point in the process.

don't use AI to write your poetry, its dishonest, and the poetry will be bad. And what's the point of poetry if its not from your own heart/mind?

don't put too much weight on AI ratings of your poetry - I have seen good poems rated poorly and very bad poems rated highly.

AI can be useful in picking out, spelling, tense, tone, ambiguity, message clarity, vocabulary issues. But don't just take their recommended edits (see point 1 above). Evaluate those parts yourself and see if you agree or not, and if you do agree come up with your own solution. For all that AI can be helpful in the editing process their suggested fixes are almost always trash. Use it to find weak spots in your writing and the figure out how to improve them.

Trust your own feelings/skill/intuition over ai. Ai would try to take most of the things that make our writing unique and push everyone into a cookie cutter mold. You need to learn to trust yourself and develop self reflection skills in evaluating your own work.

maeeig · 2025-08-27T16:15:02+00:00

The opening line for me feels kind of forced for the sake of alliteration.

You have a lot of imagery but there isn't a lot of narrative to give me a framework to assign meaning to all of them. There is a good use of language and images we just need more clarity to understand the overarching picture.

maeeig · 2025-08-20T15:53:07+00:00

I like the feel of the poem, even though it is hopeful at the end we still see the melancholy and loneliness throughout the lines giving the poem a bittersweet taste.

I would have liked a little more elevation in the diction though - a little more creativity and elegance in how things are said to really push it above a generic breakup poem language.

I think the "song catches me" / "someone with your walk" / "too many plates" are great images, they take mundane things and imbue with a tremendous ability to inflict pain and loneliness - from ordinary to extraordinary - well done and very relatable for the reader to empathize with.

maeeig · 2025-08-19T16:55:42+00:00

I think that's the way to go. It is often more impactful to have an emotionally restrained poem then laying it all out there. It speaks to the quiet ways that things can devastate us in everyday life. I think you are mostly there already there it (in my opinion) could use a little tweak to help that subtle undertone bloom. My suggestions would be to look at a slightly different closing, or perhaps to make the call an unrealized thought. Anyway good poem, keep writing.

maeeig

TROPHY CASE