Life is A Piano Recital

Here's my second attempt at poetry, done as part of an English assignment. We had to write a dramatic monologue titled "Life is a ____" or "Life is Like a ___"

Here goes!

Life is like a piano recital.
The curtain rises
And you walk out--
Wobbly at first.
The feeling of the space around you--
You can sense the tension in the room as you sit down.
Expectant faces in the audience;
Calm and smiling.
Sitting down on the bench,
You ready your hands,
Begin to play.

The start is shaky.
Fingers fumble.
Your foot slips off the pedal.
You hit a sour note.
But, as you play, the movements become smoother;
Your hands gliding over the keys,
Sound flowing with ease.
You slow, fingers treading lightly,
The melody soft and mournful.
You move quickly through riffs of joy and surprise.
Finally, the music climaxes--
A moment of bombastic surprise
That ends with one last note.
Hanging in the air,
Shivering like a candle’s withering flame.

The song is over,
The resolution reached.
You lift your hands from the keys,
Stand and step away from the piano.
Bows are taken.
You walk offstage
As the curtain falls,
The stage lights dim,
And the sound of applause fades away.

I liked your first attempt better.

This is all one big metaphor--but it doesn't really show. If I didn't know it was a metaphor I would think you were writing just about a piano recital, and that is where the problem is. You have to make the metaphor visible through the poem. I think maybe if you wrote it the other way around--more about life with mentions of piano playing in it--rather than straight from the piano side, it might have worked better.

It's just sort of bland as is, and has nothing that works up to the metaphor. The third stanza could be seen as part of the metaphor, but it was still too much piano and less life. And the word "bombastic" makes me laugh too much. XD

Hope this helped! If you have any questions feel free to find me!

I think this poem was hurt by the assignment it was written for. As a general rule, if you're making a metaphor about life, DO NOT say, "Life is like a ______". It's basically a crime against humanity.

Subtlety. When you're trying to make a meaning like that come across, never go and say it flat out. Parallel the two things you're trying to compare, but never come out and put them in the same sentence with "like" in the middle.

Description. You have a great attention to detail...but how many times have I heard an audience described as "expectant"? Fingers as "gliding over the keys"? Too many, really. Your speaker clearly knows a lot about playing piano, and logically should be able to describe the sensation of playing music better than those countless other music poems can.

Keep working on it!
-Colleen

Just because its in the title doesn't mean it has to be in the poem.

Also: this does a lot of telling. Even though there are scenes and things happen and it is a little more than generalization, I go through the motions of being wobbly/afraid without actually getting a sense of that from the word choice or other metaphors. Wording like "resolution is reached" is especially weak, because it sounds like something from a legal brief. Where does the resolution come from? What is it like? How does the resolution in the music mirror the resolution of a life [what kind of music is it, anyway? the descriptions of it are a little vague and contradictory and mechanical.] Details are key to making a poem fresh and interesting to the reader.