Intro:

Melodies in Moonlight was written by KanhaiyakiSakhi9112. It is an anthology of poetry that talks about a variety of topics. These poems cover many deep feelings and experiment with different formatting, emphasis marks, text alignments, and more.

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Detailed Feedback

What Worked:

The thing I want to start with is the awesome attention to detail and small things that made the poems feel more alive. For example, in the "Orange" poem, I loved how you capitalized "Orange" all throughout the poem to make orange feel like a person, not a thing. I wouldn't even call it personification, more you telling the reader "Yeah, Orange is a person and important to this story, deal with it." And I mean that in a good way since you make the Orange feel so alive that I don't doubt it: Orange is absolutely a person and I am onboard with this idea.

And that's another thing: it feels like Orange was being used to describe life. It starts with color, then descends into life experiences through the lens of the shade of orange. Poetry is extremely subjective where countless interpretations can be made, so maybe none of my interpretations are "correct," but either way, it's cool to be able to think about these kinds of things and wonder what orange really means in terms of this poem.

Okay, I got a little sidetracked there, so let's get back into the core of it.

I like how you cover a variety of topics throughout the book. There's the variety of emotions I'll go over later, and also things like historical references to Kaliya and Krishna. I appreciate the deep insight into Hindu lore since I'm not familiar with it and it gives me a great educational moment while I'm also appreciating great writing. While on the topic, the writing is solid and I didn't notice any major grammatical or spelling issues, so that made the poems even more immersive for me.

Another thing I really like is how you experimented with poem structure. I'm far from an expert on poetry formatting, but even I can recognize the different ways you went about structuring your stanzas, rhymes, figurative language, etc. Every poem has a different format to digest, even if it's as small as the different types of figurative languages you use or as big as different rhyme schemes or stanza structures. I can always appreciate it when an author experiments and does different things. Beyond that, it works. I think your experimentation paid off since the different formats and styles blend together well with the stories you're telling in these poems.

This may seem like a small thing to praise, but I saved it for last since it's my favorite thing: I love the emotions you chose to write about. One thing I always appreciated about poetry was how it takes emotions and makes them abstract. As humans, our emotions are super abstract and sometimes impossible to understand, so to take them and make them beautiful yet terrifying is a great idea, and I love how you presented them here. For example, obsession in the "Red Rose" chapter, or the short but sweet comparison of life to math in "Life is like maths." Notice how both of those chapters are so vastly different. That shows you're not afraid to cover a variety of emotions and challenge yourself to write about more than most authors are willing to write about.

This is all leading into how I think you do a great job capturing emotions. I can talk about that Orange poem all day since I love how you use oranges as the main symbol, or the roses as the main symbol in red roses, or math as the symbol in the life is like maths poem. Every poem has its own symbol. I'll talk a little bit about potentially even more symbols later on, but I think you do a great job giving us strong emotions in ways that are pretty clear. Like I said, poetry is normally abstract, but you give us clear descriptions and imagery that make it more accessible to general audiences. It's great for people who are scared of poetry because they think it's too complex. Yours is complex without being too complicated, which strikes a fantastic balance that will draw in more readers.

All in all, Melodies in Moonlight pleasantly surprised me. I'm not the biggest poetry person, but I found myself enjoying these short poems since they were all so unique, experimented with the formatting, and covered interesting emotions I found myself drawn to. I had a fun time reading this, and I loved getting a chance to think deeply about these poems.

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What Didn't Work:

I'm not the best at poetry formatting, so I'm going to try to talk more about word choice and transitions instead.

Let's start with word choice.

I overall like your word choice and think you did a good job with it. I only have a couple of suggestions. I'd recommend tightening some areas to make the words feel more impactful. For example, from the poem "Mukunda," let's look at this: 

In my life, the greatest thing is you, my Murari,
In your smile, I find my peace, in your eyes, I see Sanctuary. Oh my dear, now rest and sleep...

Here's a possible alternative:

In my life, my greatest gift is you, my Murari,
Your smile brings peace, your eyes offer sanctuary...

I altered the "thing" to "gift" for more direct and active word choice to paint a clearer picture of the narrator's meaning, then tweaked the second sentence to be a bit shorter and clearer. It has the same meaning, just in more direct and active language. So the language could benefit from being a bit more direct at times (I'll show another example below), is what I'm saying. I'm not saying that alternative is perfect or even good, but it is something to consider playing around with when writing future poems!

Let's also look at this:

A tired look on your adorable dark face,
Doesn't suit you, sleep my dear, in this peaceful place...

Here's a possible alternative:

A tired look rests on your gentle face,
Find peace and rest, [my dear], in this sacred place...

I put the "my dear" in brackets since I think it works with or without it, though I noticed a "my dear" pattern in that poem, so I kept it in since I think it'd appeal the most to what you're trying to do with this poem. I altered the "Tired look on your adorable dark face" to make it a bit more concise and the word choice a bit stronger with the "rests," and it's also a use of an oxymoron where tiredness is resting on someone's face. The repetition of the "rest" in the next line could also be thought-provoking since the "rest" has a different meaning in both lines. I'm not saying that's perfect or there's anything wrong with the original text, but it is an alternative to tighten the word choice a bit. That's just one possibility, but I encourage you to play around with it!

Speaking of tightening, I have some suggestions for tightening the transitions. Here's an example: 

You've destroyed the venomous serpent Kaliya.
I've always listened to you...

Consider:

You've destroyed the venomous serpent Kaliya.
Ever since, I've always listened to you...

I added "Ever since" to add more throughline between stanza one and two, and it also gives a bit more weight to the last line of the first stanza. I'm not saying you have to do this, especially considering what you have in mind for the meaning of the poem, but it is something worth considering to give the stanzas more fluidity with one another with direct language. Poetry is absolutely more abstract, so when I say "direct" language, I don't mean "tell us everything," I mean more active language where the text feels like it's more alive and active instead of passive, if that makes sense.

The last suggestion I'd like to make may sound a little strange, so I ask you bear with me while I explain. Your poems cover a variety of topics, so my suggestion may seem contradictory. I'd suggest considering including different descriptions and central symbols in your poems to make the individual poems feel more diverse. Like the "Red Rose" poem, for example. It's a great poem—all of them are, really—though maybe consider some more symbols outside of the rose and expanding on some more of the emotions, like the "call me crazy, call me mad" line is really good. Maybe expand more on that and give more diversity to the emotions by going more in detail about craziness. This is just a long way of saying I encourage you to write longer poems. Not by much, maybe just 50-100 words tops, and definitely not for all or even half of them, but I think you have the room to expand a bit and play around with different emotions and metaphors. You have great foundation and ideas, and the poems themselves are overall very good, so that's why I suggest expanding upon them since you have the core ideas and language down. Please don't force more words if you don't have anything else to say, but if you have room to expand and you want to, I encourage you to go for it! I hope that makes sense.

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Summary:

- Good attention to detail

- Cool topics + nice variety

- Great job experimenting with the formatting

- The emotions are strong

- Consider more conciseness

- Consider tweaking the transitions

- Consider more diversity in the poems themselves

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Overall:

Melodies in Moonlight provides a variety of poems covering a variety of emotions everyone can relate to. With thought-provoking ideas and a lot of interesting interpretations readers will take from the text, Melodies in Moonlight is a fun, engaging read that won't take too much of your time. If you're someone who enjoys poetry or is looking to start reading strong poetry, then this is the perfect book for you.

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Thank you for submitting your book. If you have any questions or would like any additional reviews when the shop reopens, please let me know.

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I'm going to start leaving this new note at the end of all reviews since Wattpad removed pms.

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