Christiana Lloyd-Kirk's Review of Katherine Victoria Lutz's "Heartbeats"
(Katherine Victoria Lutz's "Heartbeats")
It's not a bad poem, but it could be better.
(1.) If you're talking about an individual person, heartbeat is singular, unless the person has a heart murmur that is about to kill them. While the speed of someone's heart may change depending on factors such as stress and exercise, it doesn't change beats. The beat is constant, like a metronome. Do you see what I'm saying? If someone's heart beat like a Dizzy Gillespie number or Beethoven's 5th Symphony...They would be dead within a matter of seconds. If you want to talk about the heart's over all speed changing, there's a reason why it's called heart rate and not beat.
(2.) I kinda agree with what the professor said in class regarding the Jack Daniels. You're talking about this heartbreak as a matter of weeks...so I'm thinking maybe a month or two months tops....Nobody talks about months in the form of weeks after that unless they're pregnant or selling puppies. Let's just be really generous for a minute and say you drank a bottle a day for eight weeks....That would still only be 60 bottles. Even a completely wretched/seasoned alcoholic (which I used to be) couldn't get away with drinking that much for that long without serious consequences...That's 39 shots a day. If you want to play with hyperbole but make it a little bit more believable....You could come up with something far better and more creative than an arbitrary number. For instance, when I got hit with the worst trauma of my life and spent a year after as an addict and about as bad a drunk as it gets...I could say I imbibed Vodka like it was holy water and seasoned my meals with pills like salt and pepper. There is a lot of graphic imagery you could come up with to describe your own experience of drowning in substances...or dealing with mental devastation...whether it's depression from a breakup or PTSD. Simply saying you drank a 100 bottles just doesn't get at the heart of your own personal experience...And also because it comes across so trendy these days, people's brains will automatically melt towards pop culture references...like Kesha or country songs...or anything else. Just some food for thought.
My black lipstick is smeared on your sheets
The sunlight is poking my back
I can hear the thumps of your heartbeats
I’ve been shredding through these countless weeks
With the knowledge that you aren’t coming back
And that my lipstick is smeared on your sheets
The sound of your name is bittersweet
And every night I wonder if you know that
I still hear the ghosts of your heartbeats
And sometimes I find myself filled with conceit
As I smile at the fact that despite what I lack
My black lipstick is still smeared on your sheets
And though I’ve remembered how I can breathe
Without you always having my back
I still miss the sound of your heartbeats
I’ll keep walking this life that’s never complete
As I down this hundredth bottle of Jack
But my black lipstick is still smeared on your sheets
Do you remember the sound of my heartbeats?
It's not a bad poem, but it could be better.
(1.) If you're talking about an individual person, heartbeat is singular, unless the person has a heart murmur that is about to kill them. While the speed of someone's heart may change depending on factors such as stress and exercise, it doesn't change beats. The beat is constant, like a metronome. Do you see what I'm saying? If someone's heart beat like a Dizzy Gillespie number or Beethoven's 5th Symphony...They would be dead within a matter of seconds. If you want to talk about the heart's over all speed changing, there's a reason why it's called heart rate and not beat.
(2.) I kinda agree with what the professor said in class regarding the Jack Daniels. You're talking about this heartbreak as a matter of weeks...so I'm thinking maybe a month or two months tops....Nobody talks about months in the form of weeks after that unless they're pregnant or selling puppies. Let's just be really generous for a minute and say you drank a bottle a day for eight weeks....That would still only be 60 bottles. Even a completely wretched/seasoned alcoholic (which I used to be) couldn't get away with drinking that much for that long without serious consequences...That's 39 shots a day. If you want to play with hyperbole but make it a little bit more believable....You could come up with something far better and more creative than an arbitrary number. For instance, when I got hit with the worst trauma of my life and spent a year after as an addict and about as bad a drunk as it gets...I could say I imbibed Vodka like it was holy water and seasoned my meals with pills like salt and pepper. There is a lot of graphic imagery you could come up with to describe your own experience of drowning in substances...or dealing with mental devastation...whether it's depression from a breakup or PTSD. Simply saying you drank a 100 bottles just doesn't get at the heart of your own personal experience...And also because it comes across so trendy these days, people's brains will automatically melt towards pop culture references...like Kesha or country songs...or anything else. Just some food for thought.
My black lipstick is smeared on your sheets
The sunlight is poking my back
I can hear the thumps of your heartbeats
I’ve been shredding through these countless weeks
With the knowledge that you aren’t coming back
And that my lipstick is smeared on your sheets
The sound of your name is bittersweet
And every night I wonder if you know that
I still hear the ghosts of your heartbeats
And sometimes I find myself filled with conceit
As I smile at the fact that despite what I lack
My black lipstick is still smeared on your sheets
And though I’ve remembered how I can breathe
Without you always having my back
I still miss the sound of your heartbeats
I’ll keep walking this life that’s never complete
As I down this hundredth bottle of Jack
But my black lipstick is still smeared on your sheets
Do you remember the sound of my heartbeats?