Featured Reads on the Literary Fiction Network

Untitled

Untitled by NeonNebulae

Recommended and reviewed by T.

This is a more unconventional review as the collection contains poetry and experimental prose and everything in between. Though we usually don't often include poetry on our network, it's hard to resist adding this one. Much of it is indeed literary poetic prose and phrasing, concrete details, imagery, sensory experiences, and bits of narrative. It has literary and artistic poise, and doesn't read like lyric, and pushes past boundaries, so I hope you'll entertain me on this.

Perhaps lately, we have been recommending work that are so incredible our focus has been on the soulful qualities of it - because that is the kind of the magnitude and caliber of writing some of these masterpieces on Wattpad have. We must be proud of ourselves, because here on Wattpad, is some incredible literary achievement. This is one of such that evokes churning emotions and sends electricity through and through.

Think the visionary poets of the past - Rumi, Blake, Rimbaud, T.S. Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Ginsberg, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, you name it - the ones that write of ancient wisdom, spiritual awakening, cosmic consciousness, social criticism, contemporary and prophetic vision. The kind of poetry that operates deep in the soul, the kind of poetry that walks on the mythic plane, the kind of poetry that looks at the universe and at our current context with sharp clarity. It may be subjective and bold to say this, but here is a poet whose writing resonates similarly. The poet writes about the ancients and the oceanic:

"the ancient moon,
staring over ageing cities.
between canals of asphalt,
beside the lurid oceanic,"

but can just as quickly bring it back to the "empty restaurant" and "this godless realm of / digital messiahs". Within the writing perhaps is also a voice that laments and cries out, a voice that has lost something, a voice that haunts. Skyler opens with lines like "i reached out to the sky / but it came no closer."

The themes, experience, ideas are amplified with original use of diction, wonderful wordplay, soaring explosive energy in moments that strike me speechless. Here and there, the unexpected juxtapositions such as "spotlights to take their place inside a lavalamp of feathered panthers" can become distracting and extraneous for some poets, but not in the case of Skyler's "untitled", where these lines come together, testing the limits but holds on to visionary intensity. Sometimes wordplay and experimental form tends to fragment and break flow, and though there are some rougher spots, these pieces must be read aloud; many lines roll off the tongue with graceful and crafted rhythm, like spoken word or rap or magical incantation. "Veins like vines like half-artery stumps". Try saying it out loud, fast.

I am not only in admiration but in envy of such writing capacity. Personally, I recommend the pieces "take flight" and onward, which are strongest and build momentum as you go on. It's truly worth an experience.

Despite some of the darker moments, Skyler leaves us with this kind of an energy:

"oh flaming fiery birds,
rubies in your eyes,
take flight!
take flight!
fly another world"

Well done.