[brigits_flame] prompt - ember

[1stmate]

Alone/Together

It never gets dark here.
The city is full of people
but is completely void of life.
That fire burned brightly once,
a lifetime ago, it seems:
everything in its path was consumed,
more than we can know.
Yet the cinders still glow
hotter than they have any right to.
Our flames burned
uncoupled. Across millions of lives,
the fight never ends.
Sentiments will always travel
without hope.
We are nothing.

We are nothing
without hope.
Sentiments will always travel;
the fight never ends.
Uncoupled across millions of lives,
our flames burned
hotter than they have any right to,
yet the cinders still glow
more than we can know.
Everything in their path was consumed
a lifetime ago, it seems:
that fire burned brightly once
but is completely void of life.
The city is full of people;
it never gets dark here.

---

author notes: truc_d_ouf's poem for week three of august used a similar reflective pattern which was shamelessly stolen for this entry, though something different came of the reflection in this piece. credit for that idea! dedicated to my platonic partner, who rambled at me over the phone for half an hour while i scribbled ideas and muttered incoherently before the poem itself would deign to be written.

Comments

[ribcagerebel.livejournal.com]

Primary editor
[[I'm new and still figuring out this site, and this is my first edit for it! I'm so sorry for the delay and hope I don't get cut for this. I just found out yesterday, so here goes!]]

Grammar
first stanza: "hotter than they have any right to." ends in a preposition. Not a big deal for me unless you care.

second stanza "our flames burned
hotter than they have any right to," This must've been a tricky negotiation. It makes sense in the first stanza, but when you move the punctuation around, the tense doesn't match here. Ad lib the nouns and verbs in my suggestions, of course, since my examples miss your effect: "hotter than they should," "hotter than would be decent," "hotter than virtue would allow." I like the effect of "right" and its connotation so it's up to you to accept or adjust.

I am so thrilled to see this applied appreciation for punctuation.

Content/My Feels
The details are dim and sparse, which I'm reading as intended because of "more than we can know," which has the nice chill of being forgotten or trimmed by the many retellings of history. The first stanza is bleak!, and I wasn't sure what was going on when I started reading, but then I finished, and I loved how the second stanza mirrored the first. I haven't read many poems of this structure, but I find the structure to be fun and am glad you chose to experiment with it. I'm assuming experiment since you credit the idea to someone else. I like how by the end I can see how the title plays into the poem. We are together in the struggle of the first stanza.

I'm intrigued by the suggestion behind the last lines of both stanzas and the contrast of their mirror roles, "We are nothing" and "that fire burned brightly once / but is completely void of life. / The city is full of people; / it never gets dark here." I'm imagining a cannibalistic fire. I'm intrigued by the motif of fire here. There's so much light to the point of destruction so that it never gets dark yet is void of life. I really like the feel of the last two lines, a fact, that's loaded with the connotations leading up to it.

[[That's all I have to sayyy. T.T I read your piece over 20 times. I like that this was inspired by listening to your platonic, it does sound like recalling a distant story. I feel like I haven't yet bled all the meanings and implications yet.]]

[1stmate]

Haha! I'm an acknowledged grammar lover, so I did pause at the ending-in-a-preposition bit, but I decided that the voice of the poem (and the structure!) really demanded it in that case.

Second stanza: I changed tense once from first to second stanza to make it fit, or I changed something grammatically that was a pretty minor adjustment, so I should have changed that one, too! I just overlooked it, is all, and probably would have continued to do so. Many thanks for pointing that out! (You can read something a million times and still miss the big obvious mistake. *headdesk*)

applied appreciation for punctuation
YOU ARE SO RIGHT. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS. Flipping the lines changes the meaning a bit, but it's the punctuation that really brings this poem together. I ... am a giant nerd :D You have no idea how happy it makes me to see that someone else gets it and also appreciates it. Punctuation: it's there for a reason, everybody! Look what it can do! One of the most powerful tools in a writer's arsenal!

Giant experiment, one I look forward to repeating. As I mentioned to Blue, I'd like to play with using this sort of flip/repeat in a formal framework. I imagine that'll be even more difficult and time-consuming, but how much fun!

You're spot on to what I was thinking with much of your comments! Not sure how much you'd like to know of an author's thought process, so feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not interested! I was imagining a sort of past-lives eternal soul mate sort of situation, so in the first stanza, these two people are hearing about a story of some past incarnations of themselves that struggled in different places to find their mates. It's distant and hazy and forgotten no small amount, but then the second stanza! Oh, joy, they have found each other finally, after millions of lives apart. And, really, I could break this thought down line by line, but it's a sad author who says their interpretation is the only one. I think this poem is actually very open, and I'd love to hear what other people thought!

So! In conclusion, thank you very much for this thoughtful edit! Helpful suggestions, but more than that, I really like seeing what people are thinking as they read. I think I need to put as much work into all my poems as I did this one, but I don't often have the time. (Or the inclination, in honesty.)

Welcome to you and whatnot!

[ribcagerebel.livejournal.com]

I love contrasting my own inspiration with what others can read from it as well. I read it again with your backstory in mind, and I'm now feeling this intimate distance that your two are groping through, a transcendental privacy. :] When I first read it, I was thinking civilizations littered with fleeting gasps of meaning.

I'm glad my first edit was good! :DD Hello to you!

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

hope I don't get cut for this
Oh, don't worry! I am editor #2, I am horrifically late some days, and no one cuts you from the team! You might not get assigned anything more until you talk to the editor coordinator though. Welcome to the editing team!