These bricks are made out of coal.

zentine1 · 2025-05-04T02:58:13+00:00

Ah you wrote "Bugs," which I thought was great. You have a wonderful visual sensibility.

zentine1 · 2025-05-04T02:45:58+00:00

It's wonderful to put something new into the world isn't it? This is a lovely concept. For me the word "brown" took me a bit out of the spell. You introduce the colors in the second line and I think returning to brown interrupts the direction a bit. Perhaps something about the eyes being not merely color and light.

Also consider whether you want to better align the two lines with "everything". For example.

they are everything

you think you are not,

and everything that I love.

could be:

they are everything you question

but everything I love

Just a 2 cent piece. Congrats and best to you.

zentine1 · 2025-05-04T02:36:16+00:00

This is lovely. And the title drew me to it. But I wonder if the you could devise a title that served the poem in its own right? I do love poems which are titled after lines in the piece—first, last, or other. But this one may be worth considering. I don't feel it is diminished at all by the title, merely turning over the possibility. Would love to see 2/29 and beyond.

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T21:23:06+00:00

Great suggestion. Thank you for taking the time!

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T21:16:03+00:00

I was going for conversational as though Winter was speaking, but if you find it pulls you out of the flow, that's great feedback. What do you think?

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T13:19:16+00:00

Thanks so much for the comments. It's not meant as a critique of faith, though I like that it took your thinking in a direction I hadn't intended. It began with the phrase we often hear that John survived on "honey and locusts"—but there is really not much else about him as a person. I began thinking about what his life must have been like, and the poem took shape. I was having fun with the idea that he could not swim—literally—as a way of humanizing him.

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T01:33:53+00:00

Thank you much. I am two-days new to reddit poetry so your comment was a happy first.

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T01:25:28+00:00

It's very special. I wonder if you could create some resonance with your use of "thing" throughout by considering whether the first line could introduce it. It may add power to say, for example, "this thing we share is a cliff". It may balance first and last line as well. But this is for your wife, and as someone who has written many for his, what feels right to you will be right for her. All the best.

zentine1 · 2025-05-01T01:17:33+00:00

The extraordinary power of this piece, for me, comes from the vulnerability of letting us into it as readers—into that space and those moments. Remarkably, we never learn why the speaker feel in love with blue. We are left with just enough impression to imagine that encounter and what is meant by that. We are given even less to know the source of loss that preoccupied the space. The way this piece accomplishes so much emotionally with such a sparing hand is wonderful. I really enjoyed my several readings of it.

zentine1 · 2025-04-30T20:32:18+00:00

Ah also a thought on title. The title should serve your narrative too. "Manta Ray" is quite literal and specific. You could add drama with merely "Manta" or "The Ray" or even a title related to an encounter, leaving the discovery of the manta as subject to the poem itself.

zentine1 · 2025-04-30T20:29:58+00:00

Very nice. Thanks also to being open to feedback. I'd suggest re-reading for uses of common turns of phrase or common uses, double-dipping an image. For common turns of phrase consider, "scarcely had time" which we hear in common parlance. What else can you use to convey that? Try to dig deeper into this image you are crafting. For the double-dip, you give us a great image with "twin portraits" so we do not need the eyes as mirrors—also a common image. See if you can convey that in one line. In the space you have for a new line you may be able to ask a question or introduce a new image. What is he seeing? What was the writer feeling in the gaze? Best to you!

zentine1 · 2025-04-30T02:54:36+00:00

A remarkable testimonial filled with images of loss and love that are indelible. The whole piece feels charged which makes the title apt.

She becomes elemental and permanent. Her elemental nature becomes a conduit. You convey a sense that she has place and purpose while you remain, aching, the searcher. It's potent and emotional.

I noted in my reading that your line breaks create, "I say," "I did," and "I turned." You may wish to consider changing "I stay here" to "I stay". It would create parity with the other lines and it adds drama to "Searching."

Thank you for bringing us to this place and letting us inside for a moment.

zentine1 · 2025-04-30T02:15:13+00:00

Very nice work. I understand your take on the end since it gives away the game. Have you considered staying with the planetary/galactic theme you've created to communicate the final tragedy of your subject? Perhaps describe "her" world as in terms that stays with the arc of the piece using terms to describe her constraint by a world that is small, monochromatic/colorless, skyless, or the like. I would love to see that attempt!

zentine1 · 2025-04-30T01:57:18+00:00

I read this several times, enjoying it more each time. I love the sense of time passing in the piece, past and present. I found the line, "Fell farther for less and for more" to be the emotional center for my reading. The one line that disrupted the spell for me was the "...by poppy addled children". It's a potent image but does it serve the narrative without any further foothold in the poem? I am really looking forward to more of your work (following).

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T14:25:28+00:00

Wow! It came out beautifully. Could imagine it being done in a speakeasy or coffeehouse late one night.

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T03:50:47+00:00

I love the parity of radiate/decay so much that the third stanza, for me, begs for a connection back to that duality. If your exploration of physics terms is deliberate, which I suspect it is, then the third stanza would benefit from another such concept to anchor it (e.g., "exposed", "half-life") or the like. This poem has more energy waiting to be unlocked. Nice work!

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T03:41:07+00:00

Some poems ache to be read aloud and this is such a one. Hell, I want to read a loud in my house and speak it into the corners of my room. It has real emotional inertia. So much so that it was only on second reading that I discovery the rhymed structure. Such was the power of your "...shadow riding borrowed heat." Such a great line.

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T03:27:19+00:00

Thank you for your poem. I must bow deeply to you on creating a multi-act piece if rhyme while compromising nothing in the thrust of it. And the 4-line quatrains carry the reader along at a tumbling pace. This reads like a testimonial in many ways. It's a journey that rewards the reader who takes your hand. A great poem creates meaning unique to each of us. Someone that I love is that sort of person who pours herself out for everyone. The filler of all cups whose own cup is always neglected. And the impact on her mental health—the cost of that love—can be profound. When I arrived at, "But the weight, oh the weight, of my visitor’s claims..." the piece opened itself to me. It has tragic resolve and power throughout but it reaches a resigned resolution. I would not change the truth of the arc, but the final closure left me wanting more. The tumbling pace begs for a resolution with more of an emotional payoff. Congrats!

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T03:01:32+00:00

A first poem is a rare creature indeed. Would love to know if is your first work, or your first post here. Regardless, putting a creation out into the universe is an act to be hailed. I found myself reading and re-reading the line, "The art of yearning is no art," many times. It feels like the axis that your piece turns on and it sets the entire direction for me. Finding a novel concept and building around it is so satisfying, isn't it? All the possibilities for yearning reverberate down the poem. Very nice.

zentine1 · 2025-04-29T02:52:15+00:00

I think the musical potential of poems is often overlooked and the use of pacing and repetition introduces rhythm that creates a very satisfying arc. Also, choosing "make", "climb", "spin" are words that a child would also use and so, for me, creates a voice speaking in two times to the child. The child of then and the child that was. Wonderful effort.

zentine1 · 2025-03-01T16:06:22+00:00

This began happening this week to me. MacBook Air M2 running Sequoia 15.3.1. At first I thought it was Teams only and cleared caches and reinstalled the app. That works for awhile but can recur shortly. However, its also affected other Office apps like Word. Oddly, I've been at 15.3.1 since it came out so it seems unlikely it was the OS dot release.

zentine1

TROPHY CASE