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Literature Text
There are two kinds of magic.
There’s the great, wild, larger-than-life magic all fire and brimstone and oceans crashing and tiger-dieties. It’s the kind of magic that feeds upon our desire for there to be something more than what we see. For power beyond mortal ken that exists in the tiny shadows beneath the vibrancy of the forest glade. For gentle voices, for thunderous voices that fill a room and roll over the expanse. For illimitable mystery, for a grand hope that can never be disproven or stolen unless you let it.
Then there’s the kind of magic that unfurls and flourishes from the quiet marvel of the ordinary, of the everyday and the overlooked. It’s the kind that stems from our need to be reminded that this is what you can be. That it is life itself that creates magic. And life is the rank underground, the air-conditioned air, the fading footsteps, the numb regimental morning rush, the looking back and the half-thoughts. The graffiti on the walls, the sugar and caffeine, the glinting light and dappled parks, the flowers against concrete, the rhythm of cars and drumming fingers and turning pages. It’s a great polluted place, but the music of the world is there.
There’s the great, wild, larger-than-life magic all fire and brimstone and oceans crashing and tiger-dieties. It’s the kind of magic that feeds upon our desire for there to be something more than what we see. For power beyond mortal ken that exists in the tiny shadows beneath the vibrancy of the forest glade. For gentle voices, for thunderous voices that fill a room and roll over the expanse. For illimitable mystery, for a grand hope that can never be disproven or stolen unless you let it.
Then there’s the kind of magic that unfurls and flourishes from the quiet marvel of the ordinary, of the everyday and the overlooked. It’s the kind that stems from our need to be reminded that this is what you can be. That it is life itself that creates magic. And life is the rank underground, the air-conditioned air, the fading footsteps, the numb regimental morning rush, the looking back and the half-thoughts. The graffiti on the walls, the sugar and caffeine, the glinting light and dappled parks, the flowers against concrete, the rhythm of cars and drumming fingers and turning pages. It’s a great polluted place, but the music of the world is there.
Literature
welcome to the real world
1. if someone invites you back to their place
for coffee, and you only drink tea,
don’t stress:
you probably won’t actually be drinking coffee.
2. when the creepy guy from work asks you out
again and you think about accepting for the first
time because you’re sick of going home alone and
you have never learned how to say no, don’t. learn.
stand in front of the mirror until you love yourself
enough for your skin to fit snug on your body. read
about the hundreds of millions of planets out in the
hundreds of millions of galaxies and feel so crowded
that you’re about to burst all over again.
3. you’re gonna
Literature
longing
i scuff at sidewalk bottle caps,
mouthing your name as i pass shriveled milkweed stalks and snuffed-out cigarettes.
once, the clock hands pointed north. they mock me now with each degree elapsed,
each angle pointing to a slew of compass-rose regrets.
mouthing your name as i pass shriveled milkweed stalks and snuffed-out cigarettes,
i hear the second hand’s advance tally my silences like rosary beads,
each angle pointing to a slew of compass-rose regrets.
if only i could pull your name from this unmerciful stampede!
i hear the second hand’s advance tally my silences like rosary beads.
every dull tock measures out those quinine
Literature
Small Talk
It's dripping with logic and reason
the question you let gently drop
onto the table between us,
“So, tell me about your life.”
And I'm watching it carefully
telling myself it won't bite
it's more scared of me than I am
and I can capture it with glass.
And I can't rest the answer there
because it's bigger and scarier
and this one will bite will sink
will tear apart the careful stitches.
It's too big for this table
and I can't put it onto you
so it weighs heavy on my neck
and the silence stretches further.
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This took me a little over an hour to write. I'm not feeling very hopeful or light or magical at the moment.
Some critique questions if you have the time please:
1. How did the piece make you feel?
2. Does it feel complete to you? Is the tone alright?
3. What do you suggest would help improve it?
Thank you very much! I hope you have a good day.
Some critique questions if you have the time please:
1. How did the piece make you feel?
2. Does it feel complete to you? Is the tone alright?
3. What do you suggest would help improve it?
Thank you very much! I hope you have a good day.
© 2015 - 2024 streetcamera17
Comments17
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Critique courtesy of 
“There are two kinds of magic” … excellent, I immediately understand you're going to describe the two
“It’s the kind of magic that feeds upon our desire for there to be something more than what we see” … where the first sentence of this paragraph gave me a small glimmer of the idea you were going for, the second paragraph dryly tells me what you were going for. I like the glimmer more than the dry textbook definition. I agree that magic is our wish for the world to be extraordinary (I would say that's all magic, but I like this idea of splitting hairs) but I'm hoping you will Show Don't Tell
“For gentle voices, for thunderous voices that fill a room” … why the gentle voices? For the distinction of magic types you are making, I like brimstone and oceans and thunderous voices for one type. Why isn't gentle voices of the second type? I haven't even learned what the second kind of magic is but I feel like gentle voices should be in it
“a grand hope that can never be disproven or stolen unless you let it” … now I like this sentence especially because it feels like you are going somewhere with it. The obvious idea of this piece is describing two kinds of magic; putting this sentence here as a bookend makes it feel like the subtle idea, the true meaning
“there’s the kind of magic that unfurls and flourishes from the quiet marvel of the ordinary” … if this second kind of magic is ordinary, why use words like unfurls and flourish? Why not show the ordinary-ness of this kind of magic by using ordinary words? Like, “the kind of magic revealed in the quiet and the ordinary”
“It’s the kind that stems from our need to be reminded that this is what you can be” … is there such a need? True, we need to be reminded of it. But is it our need? Do we have some internal desire to remind ourselves? Maybe “need” is the wrong word here, for being ambiguous between a human desire or a practical necessity
“And life is the rank underground … the rhythm of cars and drumming fingers and turning pages” … I enjoy this bit of life-sounds sensation-poetry stuff, but it feels like you changed the subject. This stuff is all real and grounded in reality, but it doesn't feel both ordinary and magic-causing. For example, the previous sentence said, “it is life itself that creates magic.” So why not give some examples of that? The fog which makes a daybreak mysterious, the child's imagination that hides monsters under beds, the fear and the hope our minds concoct; these are real things in life which create magic
“It’s a great polluted place, but the music of the world is there” … and now there's an environmental message for the piece? How does this relate to the final sentence of the previous paragraph which seemed to be getting at something? Now if you ended the paragraph with, “it is life itself which creates magic” then I would understand. The first kind of magic is everything larger-than-life which could be disproven if we let it be. And the second kind of magic is the ordinary facts of the world which life uses to create the first kind of magic. That would be sensible writing, you would have bookended your paragraphs with the bits which create your idea
What I want from a piece this short is a solid, beautiful idea. It's the same reason some people read poems, but personally I don't need my beautiful ideas to be packaged in rhyme and meter. And you did part of that, there is a lot of beautiful imagery in this short piece. But because you focused on the beauty, the idea feels forgotten and the piece feels less solid. For example, when you used fancy words in the paragraph about ordinary magic. Use all your big fancy words in the paragraph about bigness, and use your ordinary words in the paragraph about ordinary things. True, some readers will complain about the ordinary words … until they see why you used them. And with the two paragraphs together you will have a solid mixing of beauty and an idea
“How did the piece make you feel?” … some parts made me feel the wonder and majesty you were going for. But when I couldn't understand something (such as the gentle voices bit) I was taken out of that feeling
“Does it feel complete to you?” … definitely complete, no problems there. Writing does not have to be long to say something. The idea is there, just faded a bit
“Is the tone alright?” … those bits in the middle of the paragraphs where you stop showing me what the type of magic is, and just tell me what it is, those bits don't fit the tone. I liked the tone created by the first sentence of the second paragraph, but it's the opposite of what comes next
“What do you suggest would help improve it?” …
spend more than an hour on it? Curiously, I just spent an hour on this critique
I hope you have a good day too! Any more questions for me?
“There are two kinds of magic” … excellent, I immediately understand you're going to describe the two
“It’s the kind of magic that feeds upon our desire for there to be something more than what we see” … where the first sentence of this paragraph gave me a small glimmer of the idea you were going for, the second paragraph dryly tells me what you were going for. I like the glimmer more than the dry textbook definition. I agree that magic is our wish for the world to be extraordinary (I would say that's all magic, but I like this idea of splitting hairs) but I'm hoping you will Show Don't Tell
“For gentle voices, for thunderous voices that fill a room” … why the gentle voices? For the distinction of magic types you are making, I like brimstone and oceans and thunderous voices for one type. Why isn't gentle voices of the second type? I haven't even learned what the second kind of magic is but I feel like gentle voices should be in it
“a grand hope that can never be disproven or stolen unless you let it” … now I like this sentence especially because it feels like you are going somewhere with it. The obvious idea of this piece is describing two kinds of magic; putting this sentence here as a bookend makes it feel like the subtle idea, the true meaning
“there’s the kind of magic that unfurls and flourishes from the quiet marvel of the ordinary” … if this second kind of magic is ordinary, why use words like unfurls and flourish? Why not show the ordinary-ness of this kind of magic by using ordinary words? Like, “the kind of magic revealed in the quiet and the ordinary”
“It’s the kind that stems from our need to be reminded that this is what you can be” … is there such a need? True, we need to be reminded of it. But is it our need? Do we have some internal desire to remind ourselves? Maybe “need” is the wrong word here, for being ambiguous between a human desire or a practical necessity
“And life is the rank underground … the rhythm of cars and drumming fingers and turning pages” … I enjoy this bit of life-sounds sensation-poetry stuff, but it feels like you changed the subject. This stuff is all real and grounded in reality, but it doesn't feel both ordinary and magic-causing. For example, the previous sentence said, “it is life itself that creates magic.” So why not give some examples of that? The fog which makes a daybreak mysterious, the child's imagination that hides monsters under beds, the fear and the hope our minds concoct; these are real things in life which create magic
“It’s a great polluted place, but the music of the world is there” … and now there's an environmental message for the piece? How does this relate to the final sentence of the previous paragraph which seemed to be getting at something? Now if you ended the paragraph with, “it is life itself which creates magic” then I would understand. The first kind of magic is everything larger-than-life which could be disproven if we let it be. And the second kind of magic is the ordinary facts of the world which life uses to create the first kind of magic. That would be sensible writing, you would have bookended your paragraphs with the bits which create your idea
What I want from a piece this short is a solid, beautiful idea. It's the same reason some people read poems, but personally I don't need my beautiful ideas to be packaged in rhyme and meter. And you did part of that, there is a lot of beautiful imagery in this short piece. But because you focused on the beauty, the idea feels forgotten and the piece feels less solid. For example, when you used fancy words in the paragraph about ordinary magic. Use all your big fancy words in the paragraph about bigness, and use your ordinary words in the paragraph about ordinary things. True, some readers will complain about the ordinary words … until they see why you used them. And with the two paragraphs together you will have a solid mixing of beauty and an idea
“How did the piece make you feel?” … some parts made me feel the wonder and majesty you were going for. But when I couldn't understand something (such as the gentle voices bit) I was taken out of that feeling
“Does it feel complete to you?” … definitely complete, no problems there. Writing does not have to be long to say something. The idea is there, just faded a bit
“Is the tone alright?” … those bits in the middle of the paragraphs where you stop showing me what the type of magic is, and just tell me what it is, those bits don't fit the tone. I liked the tone created by the first sentence of the second paragraph, but it's the opposite of what comes next
“What do you suggest would help improve it?” …
spend more than an hour on it? Curiously, I just spent an hour on this critiqueI hope you have a good day too! Any more questions for me?