My Smile

My Smile, My Smile
Oh how deceitful it is
My Smile, My Smile
My emotions are hidden
Beneath my Shell,
As far as i know none can tell.
My Smile, My Smile
It is what i share.

With the sun it rises and sets,
but my smile needs to rest,
i close my eyes and dry my tears,
until another day when again my smile appears.

That was a great theme for a poem. It speaks to just about everyone - how we, as a society, hides our actual emotions in the course of public life. When people ask "how are you?", no matter what's going on at that moment, many respond with "fine". It's a lot easier to connect a poem with a reader when there is a shared experience or feeling, and you have that here.

That said, your execution could use a little work. While I enjoyed the repetition of "My Smile", the lines between are too inconsistent for me. Either have a line of "My Smile", then a regular line, then "My Smile", or have a "My Smile", then a few lines, then another "My Smile". It'll help keep the rhythm consistent and the flow nice.

I also feel like the second stanza is tacked on; like you felt that the poem needed to be longer, so you threw something together and slapped it on the end. Other than the recurring theme of the speaker's smile and how it lies, it reads like a completely separate piece. If you could find a better way to integrate the 2, it might sit better with the reader. Or at least me.

What I did like was the use of the lower case "I" when the speaker referred to themselves. Nice touch on showing how the speaker thinks very little of themselves; they feel they aren't important enough to warrant a capital "I". And I do like the capitalization of "Smile" and "Shell"; I'm huge fan of that sort of thing because it give those words importance and makes them stand out to the reader, but their meaning still needs to be figured out.

I would have liked to see more punctuation throughout the entire piece. It helps the reader understand where the lines are ending, and can give certain lines more impact. Think of the each stanza as a short paragraph broken up; if you were to bring each line together to form a single line, would it look good in an essay or story?

Overall, this was a good poem. Not great, but good. With a little work, it could be great. As for you, just keep writing and practicing and posting here, and you'll become even better.

Nice poem! This is my 2nd review for this month's Review Day but, unfortunately, it will be short >_<.

Anyway, I agree with TheThing. The poem has a nice theme and it applies to almost everyone. The readers can easily understand the message. My only only problem with this is the structure. It felt scattered/messy as I was reading it. The use of punctuation, like TheThing said, will also help in the improvement of this poem.

I hope this still helps lol. The first review is great enough. Keep writing.
- Whisperer -

I really like the theme of this poem. I think that there are probably several poeple who do what you described, they smile even when they're upset or angry. I felt that you needed some punctuation in there. But overall it was a good poem.