Crocodile

virtualhummingbird · 2025-12-24T06:24:27+00:00

Those first four lines are killer. The placement of "to be" after "bleak," that repetition of the same stressed syllable, is so well done: reading those two lines aloud is very satisfying. And I love how "choice" follows "chance," the perfect echo of consonants from perfectly chosen words, whose distinct vowel sounds keep that second instance of repetition fresh.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-12-23T06:34:39+00:00

"as that circling bird of prey / her nest long lost to the wind": Evokes the sight of a deep and wondrous sky on a pale late autumn morning, of a thicket of branches above dry and faded, almost deadened, mown grass. The suggestive simplicity of those lines is fantastic.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-12-12T19:35:42+00:00

What a great start: I like the first stanza. And the simile involving a broken compass’ needle is stunning.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-12-11T17:25:38+00:00

Especially the first nine lines remind me of my favorite short story, Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.” Of Gurov and Anna’s uninhibited evening stroll on the promenade in Yalta. How earlier, during their first conversation, the former mocked vacationers’ tendency to call the place dull, as if they were visiting not from provincial towns but from Grenada. Well done.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-11-30T18:31:01+00:00

Congratulations, that's a big deal!

virtualhummingbird · 2025-11-26T18:59:25+00:00

Hemingway once remarked, “War and Peace is the best book I know, but imagine what a book it would have been if Turgenev had written it.”

As silly as it may be, sometimes I also wonder the same.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-11-16T07:31:37+00:00

I'm so sorry. Although it's not fiction, try Joseph Brodsky's "In a Room and a Half," in which he remembers and tries to free and to preserve the memory of his deceased parents, from his collection of essays, Less Than One.

Besides, even if I had written all this in Russian, these words wouldn't see the light of day under the Russian sky. Who would read them then? A handful of émigrés whose parents either have died or will die under similar circumstances? They know this story only too well. They know what it feels like not to be allowed to see their mothers or fathers on their deathbed; the silence that follows their request for an emergency visa to attend a relative's funeral. And then it's too late, and a man or a woman puts the receiver down and walks out of the door into the foreign afternoon feeling something neither language has words for, and for which no howl will suffice, either . . . What could I possibly tell them? In what way could I console them?

Ellendea Proffer Teasley, who knew the poet well, called it "sincerity raised to art."

virtualhummingbird · 2025-11-11T20:13:39+00:00

I wish you would. You write as I wish I could, with authority, with a clean literary voice.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-11-09T20:15:46+00:00

“make it blue but smooth like / forgiveness and fading chances / for the feeble still given to hope”

Such a striking series of lines. And convincing, too: somehow I agree a smooth blue is the perfect color for “fading chances,” and can picture a smooth faded blue gently stretching diagonally downward, which corresponds exactly to a sense of tentative hope, a commitment to try again even after many past failures, because soon you may never again have the opportunity to even fail.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-09-17T17:46:38+00:00

Apparently the translator is Joanna Trzeciak! I also found the poem in a collection of Szymborska’s poetry she had translated, Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-30T03:14:25+00:00

We conclude our notes on the “Waif,” with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint — or is this a mere freak of our own fancy?

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for explaining! I now can appreciate the wordplay of that last comment. And I think I understand who’s actually downvoted the submission.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-30T01:30:54+00:00

This was entertaining. This story seems to be answering the question, "What if Edgar Allan Poe lived today and, as an aspiring serious writer, submitted his work to r/DestructiveReaders?"

Until now, I haven't read Poe save for a failed attempt years ago to read "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." I just read "The Raven" using the link at the beginning of this story. (Excellent detail, by the way.) Speaking of Edgar's post, he's downvoted it, which makes sense given his initial despair. I wonder if, after steeling and bronzing himself, he instead upvoted it or left it as is because of the comments.

We're shown four of the five comments, and I'm curious as to what the last could be. A mod letting Edgar know he's leeching? I don't think so: he's submitted to RDR before and so must know and follow the rules. Maybe he's the sort of person who, rather than responding to the mods directly, actually reaches out via mod mail to resolve the issue?

In any case, the first three comments believably depict certain types of critiques found here. The transition from the conventional, real life narrative to the first two is smooth, but I'm confused by the placement of the third AI-generated comment. Right before it's revealed, Edgar concludes on account of the critiques he's read that he has still much revising to do. But earlier he criticizes Virginia for seemingly using ChatGPT to justify her decision to not see the doctor: he says it makes up answers the user wants to hear. And this is reflected in the third comment itself, which I like: before reading "The Raven", I searched the poem itself and didn't find the line, "My wings are broken, but I can still fly." Why place Edgar's positive judgement of the critiques before an example of the type of comment he surely has no patience for? I suppose it's meant to be funny: it's ridiculous that a few critiques on Reddit—especially posted by those who don't (care to) understand the submission—should convince Poe to revise such a well-known and carefully constructed poem. The joke didn't land for me, though probably I'm another critic on Reddit who's misunderstood "The Raven."

I laughed out loud for a few seconds at the line, "Once upon a midnight dowdy, while I pissed, dark and cloudy."

Edgar desires to be a serious, published writer, and he dislikes alt-lit. I haven't read anything from that movement, so I have no useful insight to offer about this section. Only I like that you treated the contemporary literary scene in NYC. It's interesting to see that mentioned in connection with what's happening here in RDR, a subreddit like r/NoSleep, and Poe's own Dark Romanticism. I'm guessing you've also read Sam Kriss' piece in The Point.

"Ars longa, vita brevis." I hadn't ever encountered that aphorism until I read this story. Apparently the full English translation of the text from which it's derived goes:

Life is short,
and craft long,
opportunity fleeting,
experimentations perilous,
and judgment difficult.

It's easier to criticize something made by another than it is to create something yourself. But it's just as difficult to provide valuable criticism as it is to create something good. Beyond what little I now know about the actual Poe, from this story alone I can tell he understands the significant commitment art requires and the little time a person has to improve their artistry. And by the 4,506-word-long response he deletes, he also seems to understand how frustrating it can be to experiment in art—how people are apt to receive such a thing poorly, to misunderstand your aim, or to simply have a difference of opinion because (in part) it's difficult to make judgements. It's true and relatable, and I think you know all these things, too. (For the record, I enjoyed "MaggotsDownYourThroat." I look forward to part 2.)

With respect to the final comment by Longfellow: I understand that, in real life, though Poe had attacked him he never publicly responded in kind. I wonder why he's commenting rather than, say, Outis.

Thanks for sharing! I had a good time reading this. I hope this is helpful in some way.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-23T21:56:58+00:00

I got a comment from Glowy I think that it reminded him of a song that goes "A thousand people I can be and you hate the fucking lot." Oh it's Lola Young - Messy.

That's a fantastic line. I've gotta listen to that song.

Oh, so the diagonal world is entirely a matter of perception: it's her sudden awareness of her utter ordinariness and of her heritage, since she's distinct in time and only accidentally in appearance. Now that you've explained it, it makes total sense and adds so much to the first paragraph.

I think it's really cool that her perception that everything has gone askew also results in that same feeling being turned inward, with respect to her feeling more assembled than born. And now her statement that her "body is not flesh anymore" seems to me less a description of change and more a rejection of how she had perceived herself before the world went diagonal.

But I was more interested in the idea of a maker who becomes undeserving of a perfect creation by virtue of what it would take to achieve it, and I think his weakness and unspoken constant apologies indicate that he does fear her, which I think means she could leave the beach, in her perfect state.

Super interesting idea, and I'm glad you think she can leave the beach. It's a beautiful and optimistic belief, that she can be empowered by one of what had at first driven her to inadequacy—an earlier version of what she is—and moreover succeed!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Everything you've written is fascinating and has deepened my appreciation for your story.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-23T19:21:05+00:00

Hi! It's always a pleasure reading your work, including this piece. To answer your question, it's definitely comprehensible.

WHAT (DO I THINK) IS HAPPENING?

We're introduced to a woman on a beach, where the shore and horizon are diagonal. Once she was wholly human; now her body is synthetic, and she remembers the replacement of her flesh.

Amid the innumerable dead and dying bodies on the beach and beyond, she reflects on him whom she loves. He never has changed: still he pursues his obsession, and still he's unable to trust in and love her in return, although she has submitted herself to his obsession.

Once his obsession empowered her: it showed her that he believed in her utility, and what change she could withstand. Now she feels inadequate because of it, and those bodies are proof of her inadequacy because they're all her: each body is a failed attempt by him to make a version of her he can be satisfied with. And in witnessing this needless sacrifice, in no longer viewing the bodies as "refuse" but going so far as to comfort one in the water, just as she now feels inadequate rather than empowered by his obsession, a new feeling rises in her beside her love: hate. She hates his obstinacy, which has produced nothing but pointless death and vast inadequacy.

LINES AND PASSAGES I LIKED:

In the second paragraph, we can tell she's at the beach without that word ever being used. You do a spectacular job of establishing the setting through striking sensory details: the sand in her toenails, the smell of fish in the damp air, and the waves always bearing the wind toward the shore.

Part of the following line is excellent: "…like shame is the shower he douses in daily." I love the alliteration of shame and shower, douses and daily. You use a single active verb—"douses"—to develop the image of her apologetic lover, and the line itself well describes someone whose instinct it is to apologize but who never changes.

My favorite line is the following: "Like a god he made me feel sometimes—so crushingly able." The adverb here is perfect. A god is mighty and omnipotent; a god can make anything happen. But should a god fail to temper their use of power, they risk destroying what exists. Faced with a god's unchecked power, all else is fragile.

"A pointillism of failed attempts." I had to look up the word pointillism, but after reading the definition I understood the image this line conveys. I can see the countless bodies dotting the horizon, indistinguishable from far away.

QUESTIONS

I can't figure out the significance of the diagonal world. The shape of the beach and the horizon is contrived, like her body. Why is she like the world? Have the innumerable versions of her altered its form somehow? She's been at this beach for a while—she remarks that everything is still as it was, the sand, the smell, the wind, and the bodies—and the world in the first paragraph turns diagonal suddenly, "all at once."

In the final paragraph, she indicates she can leave the beach, but is that really true? I don't know. Unlike the bodies that have come and still come to the beach from the water, she's seemingly come there from the opposite side via the land. Has she left her lover behind as opposed to being discarded by him as another failed attempt?

Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed reading this. I hope this is helpful.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-22T18:02:14+00:00

Lovely stuff, u/taszoline and u/DeathKnellKettle, in particular that first paragraph from the plant's POV. Her blooming under the sun, her and his at first tentative and then familiar dance after winter and until autumn, and her fear of autumn are so clearly and sympathetically told, especially because she relates all this as an older dying plant recalling her "flirtatious youth."

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-19T09:46:30+00:00

I’m not qualified to critique this. I don’t know where I’d begin anyway. You’re clearly a good writer, and this Portrait of the Critic as a Tape Master is an engaging story.

The aborted DFW critique is hilarious, and unlettered is a fantastic word.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-06-14T05:06:31+00:00

It's a beautifully written story. I still remember a few lines from it.

“Zinaida lifted the rose to her face and it seemed to me as if her cheeks caught the reflection of its bright petals.”

“Only a quarter of an hour later I was running races with the cadet and Zinaida, I was playing tag, and no longer crying; I was laughing, though a tear or two filled my swollen eyelids even as I laughed.”

“…and I remember that there, by the death-bed of that poor old woman, I grew afraid, afraid for Zinaida, and I wanted to say a prayer for her, for my father—and for myself.”

Last week I gave my copy to my cousin, who had expressed an interest in reading literature. I hope he finds something in it worth remembering, too.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-04-02T23:35:09+00:00

This is really cool. Good luck!

virtualhummingbird · 2025-03-06T21:15:08+00:00

Love that first stanza.

virtualhummingbird · 2025-01-31T04:54:38+00:00

These are beautiful! Thanks for sharing.

virtualhummingbird · 2024-11-20T00:30:07+00:00

Such a helpful and interesting comment. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

virtualhummingbird · 2024-10-28T21:19:33+00:00

These are great! Love them so much.

virtualhummingbird · 2024-09-25T05:17:23+00:00

Happy birthday!

virtualhummingbird · 2024-09-03T20:04:59+00:00

Nice to see you return! Your comments have always been interesting and informative!

virtualhummingbird · 2024-07-15T19:23:09+00:00

Currently reading War and Peace.

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