Dear Kitty

Dear Kitty,

What are these walls for?
What are these rooms for?
What is this window on the paper?
I look into your eye, in the comma,
and I draw the little details
more
and more
and more
they fascinate me.
Down beneath me, all the Germans marching
their numbers on the paper - they photograph the birdsong,
they listen to the clicking music.
I can hear it howling on my hard, forbidden ceiling
when I'm standing on my head.
In my annexe, I want to be a paintress.
I want to be an actor.
But i've got only ink - and my fiction isn't fiction,
all the walls are disapproving
and the Jermans steal my freedom
with their legal, legal wealth -
it should not have been allowed them.
When I close my eyes, I can see into the darkness
and the walls, they go away, and the windows are my canvas.
If I had a gauze, I would clean away the blackness
and I'd find the holy grail, and I'd teach it to the people...
and if they did not obey me...well I told you im an arter
and I fictitisnt real and I'd put them in the attic.
And then they could all imagine what it's like to be a no one.

Poor, poor man, he is sitting on the pavement
and wishing he was Jewer, and wishing he was Blonder.
But he don't have no walls, and he don't have no grammar
and he's blind just one step further than the human I can see him.
Anne x Anne x Anne x, he'll be rapping at your window
he'll be scribbiling out his flyers - he'll be calling out his speeches.
Kitty! Can you hear me?!
He'll be coming any minute!
And he broke the chains of trust
and he stealed his mighty freedom.
Heil! I see him coming, and he's looking
like a badman. Like the girl I wanna be when
I'm finally a singer.

Everyone forgets it, 'cause we humans must blame someone,
but I really hate his moustache, cuz I see it when I'm looking
closed-eyely in the mirror. Everyone denies it, 'cause they're
holocaust deniers, of the holocaust inside them. Everyone
who loved him, they're better of than he is and they're better
off than I am - for I have been imprisoned by the public and
the man who was imprisoned by the public, by the men who
were imprisoned - by the public, and the public...
Everywhere you walk, it's cemented in the pavement that the
holocaust was your fault, and the people from before you.

But even someone empty, like the Frank girl in the attic,
at the bottom of the staircase, one step away from Hades:
she still deserves to live, and she deserves her passion,
so she can't wait till he gets here, to take her right away
to the land of ghosts and spirits, and then he can take
his own life too and they can be together,
that's the only
way to
live now...

[b]Wow. I like your reference to Anne Frank in this poem. It really helped me understand the stanza a little bit more. I didn't see anything wrong as far as spelling and stuff like that goes but then again, I got lost in the poem, in a good way. It kept me reading and it didn't bore me which is a good thing, believe me, quite a bit of poems bore me half to death, lol(:[/b]

~Faith(:

I have to admit. When I looked at the title, I didn't immediately think of Anne Frank. I thought of cats, and once I started reading, I started crying. The more I read, the more I cried. I had to take a few deep breaths once I finished. Now, there were some spelling errors, but they're not hard to find. But, I don't think Jew's use Hades, they'd use the devil, since Hades is Greek mythology, but I'm sure you already knew that. Other than that, amazing!!! I loved it! Keep on writing!

"who loved him, they're better off than he is and they're better
off than I am - for I have been imprisoned by the public and "

I caught a typo.

Excuse me for the bullet points, but it's been a while since I've been on yws and I'm fascinated by this "reviewing checklist."
General Impression: Personally, it's not my cup of tea. I tend to shy away from anything holocaust related. Why? Because, not to be cynical, it's overdone. Nevertheless, I haven't seen too many holocaust poems. I commend the effort for trying the exercise out, but it didn't do it for me. You tried, until the very end, but you lost hold of your voice. You weren't the 13 year old Anne Frank anymore, you were a boy pretending. If you put on a voice, be consistent--and I am not talking about your last stanza, you lost your hold on "Frank" a lot earlier in the poem. Anne Frank did not speak in vague metaphors. She was a child. Write like one. Also, consider the speech and mannerisms of that time. Are you being too colloquial? Are you not being colloquial enough?

What is brilliant about the idea--if carried out successfully--is to turn a letter into poetry. This is a very difficult task because you must convey yourself two fold: through the superficial (yet meaningful) discourse of a letter, and then through subtle exposures of an underlying meaning. This can be done through spacing, stanzas, and mostly placement of punctuation, but NOT THROUGH INSERTING POETIC DISCOURSE.

What we have hear is a clash of media--poetry and letter-writing--and its trying to the ears. Not because of what you wrote, which is pretty good, but because poetry is tiring. It imposes A LOT on the reader, whom looks for hidden meanings, metaphors and analyzes spaces, punctuation, etc--so you can't use these devices capriciously.

If I were you these would be the main points I would consider:
1) Streamlining it--get rid of the excess stuff. (We know its a poem and it has meaning, don't try to add extra meaning somewhere or explain yourself.)

Such an instance would be:

"Everyone forgets it, 'cause we humans must blame someone,
but I really hate his moustache, cuz I see it when I'm looking
closed-eyely in the mirror. Everyone denies it, 'cause they're
holocaust deniers, of the holocaust inside them. Everyone
who loved him, they're better of than he is and they're better
off than I am - for I have been imprisoned by the public and
the man who was imprisoned by the public, by the men who
were imprisoned - by the public, and the public...
Everywhere you walk, it's cemented in the pavement that the
holocaust was your fault, and the people from before you. "

This was a sort of existential diatribe and it's too demanding of a reader. If this were prose, you could get away with it--just look at George Eliot--, but this is poetry and you must draw the reader to such conclusions without stating it. Think of poetry as masterful manipulation. I, the reader, should come up with this idea or theme without you telling me.

2) Stay true to your voice. You are a little girl. Should the tone be serious or should it be childish and optimistic? Naive even? What makes it so poignant should not be the poem itself but should be the CONTRAST between the words and the tone. Consider William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" Poem in Songs of Innocence:

"When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep."

Do you see the discord? It strikes you! It's sing-song but so so terrifying (Really, Blake was something, huh? I get shivers!).

I believe what you have is an opportunity to do what Blake did, to create a poem which has two distinct voices--both loud and clear but contrasting one another. Through such contrast you can build a harmony of sorts and provide several dimensions to your poetry.

Oh my, I've made the longest comment in history.

Good luck, I expect good things from you!

Yatta!

Thank you for your review, actually this poem is not exactly about Anne Frank only, it's about the parallel between Anne Frank and the man on the pavement, who'se voice I try to change into towards the end. Actually I recorded a song version of this poem, and the voice starts off in a neutral American accent and slowly phases into a thick German one.

As for it being very long, I think I agree and I will probably redraft it and make it shorter and less ranty, I could probably put that in the symbolism, and I will try to make the voices clearer

This is really, really good! Very creativly written and beautiful and sad and... aah just amazing! There was a tear hinted in the corner of my eye at the end. I'm not a fan of poem this complex without any noticeble structure but since the flow and rythm wasn't anything to complain about I guess I should keep away from picking on the structure aswell The one thing I feel like I should suggest you change is the amount of periods... there are way tooo few. In the last stanza for example you've only got one at the end and you can't read all of that in one breath! xD

Good Luck & Keep Writing

// Demoness