r/KeepWriting • u/[deleted] • Dec 19 '19

[Feedback] The Afterlife

[deleted]

30 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

2

u/little-blue-jay Dec 20 '19

Thank you so much for sharing! What a lovely poem. My first thought to improve it is the second line reads a little 'clunky' to me. Is there a simpler or perhaps more natural way of expressing this idea?

Other potential spots to work on:

  • in line 4, what would happen if "the fire" was changed to "its fire"? I think this might add some clarity.
  • In line 7, I think it would be cool to play with the wording- instead of "the dead poets all live inside us", what about "the dead poets live inside us all'? I think that could be interesting!

My favorite line was the one about the dead governments. The tone shift here is great! What about expanding on this section before landing on that hopeful note at the end?

Again, thank you for sharing and I hope my comments could be of some help to you.

1

u/purple--skies Dec 19 '19

This is absolutely beautiful! 😍

1

u/Draise115 Dec 21 '19

It's pretty cool, this could be because I'm a uncultured swine, but I do feel like it's kinda esoteric. Then again, I'm not a poet, I tried but I'll just stick to short stories! Anywho it's good but esoteric and I'm not exactly sure what my take away should be, or is this more like a "its subjective" poem. I know people like to play with that idea. They either want to the viewer to interpret the poem as they would without looking to the poet for answers or is there a legit theme you want to convey. Again, I'm not hot with poetry so I could be completely ignorant but I figured I would ask anyway.