I Was the Rain

I Was the Rain

If I'm too eager, I'm sure
you know it's your doing.
Look back through time.
Search your memory
as far as you can and
remember that moment
when you were me,
and I was the rain.

I didn't necessarily
care, and I was freezing
and pounded your back
relentlessly, under the guise
of being your conscience.
Of being your eyes.
I was the rain.

In your arrogance you claim
we go against the grain,
and what do we achieve?
You told me that I had to
be selfish to survive. Now
you try to tell me how to live,
but I feel as though I'm
betraying everyone and me.
It isn't the same as it was
when I was the rain.

What you have to realize,
dear, is that while humans
have a nature to think only
about themselves to a degree.
They are much more content
to suffer among loved ones
than to succeed in loneliness.
You also must know that someone,
preferably not as biased as you
or me, must always be the rain.

I wanted to be the wind
whistling through the crowd,
touching gently the faces,
the hearts, of everyone I
didn't know, had never met.
Then as swiftly as I came, I
wanted to let them go, let
them become the wind like me.
But no. That wasn't for me.
I just had to be the rain.

I think you're just jealous.
You wish that once again,
I'll be the rain,
so you don't have to.

As semi-requested.

If I'm too eager, I'm sure
you know it's your doing.
Look back through time.
Search your memory
as far as you can and
remember that moment
when you were me,
and I was the rain.

The first two lines of this have an okay set up to them. Vague enough that we don't know what's about to happen, but concrete enough that we get an idea of a situation. However, the rest of the stanza doesn't seem to be a continuation of the first two lines. The rest of the stanza is a flashback, while the first two lines set up a future. The two just don't mesh well, in my opinion.

The rest of the stanza, however, isn't half-bad when it comes to a set up. I like it, and I find the stanza makes a lot more sense when the first two lines are factored out of it. However, that brings up that "look back through time" as its own sentence isn't the sharpest first line in the book. I don't feel it provides a real hook to the reader, especially as its own sentence. It feels a bit too... angsty is not the right word, and you do set up a sadder note to the poem, but it sets up the narrator as this being scolding the reader and I'm not sure that's the best for a poem.

Which brings me to "search your memory" as a first line, unless you can rework the first three to create a smooth transition between ideas/make "look back through time" a stronger first line. I like "search your memory" mostly because it provides a note of curiosity and also sets the sadder tone, without sounding like the narrator is too angry at the reader.

I also really like how you hook us at the end with "when I was the rain." The line makes you wonder if being the rain was physical or metaphoric, and makes us want to keep reading to find out what that actually means.

I didn't necessarily
care, and I was freezing
and pounded your back
relentlessly, under the guise
of being your conscience.
Of being your eyes.
I was the rain.

Now we see a snapshot of the moment. However, again, I find the first little bit drags it down. Specifically this bit: "I didn't necessarily/care, and". I'm not sure what "I didn't necessarily care" relates to in the rest of the poem. It seems to derive from not caring about being the rain, but the character is, so far, nothing else but the rain. This makes not caring about being the rain seem odd, as it has no antecedent.

The middle part of this stanza, from the remainder of line two to five ("of being your conscience"), I really liked. It sets up a person as the rain in the physical sense and metaphoric with the conscience thing.

I find you lose that with "of being your eyes." Basically, you drop the thread of pounding rain being like a conscience (which I was loving) and pick up the narrator being "you"s eyes, but that second thread isn't expanded upon. It makes the flow jerky and the poem fall a bit in this stanza.

The repetition of "I was the rain" is alright. You set that up as a pattern, which makes it neither here nor there for the most part. I like how it drills the metaphor into us a bit more at the end of each stanza. However, as I mentioned just above with dropping the metaphor's threads, you weaken the poem by not making this metaphor feel complete in my mind.

In your arrogance you claim
we go against the grain,
and what do we achieve?

Going to break up this stanza a bit, as it's kinda long and complicated.

The first thing that caught me here was the rhyme. You have no rhyme anywhere else, so seeing claim/grain really threw me.

Your question also threw me. I don't know what the "grain" is that people are going against, and your question seems rhetorical but I don't have enough information to answer it.

You told me that I had to
be selfish to survive. Now
you try to tell me how to live,
but I feel as though I'm
betraying everyone and me.

You pretty much lost me with this bit. I'm not sure what anything connects to, or even how it connects. You've also dropped the rain metaphor completely, making this feel really detached.

It isn't the same as it was
when I was the rain.

Now you're reconnecting it a bit, but I don't feel its enough. How is this different? Ask yourself that for the whole stanza. Tie it back into the rain metaphor, to not make this stanza feel so detached.

What you have to realize,
dear, is that while humans
have a nature to think only
about themselves to a degree.
They are much more content
to suffer among loved ones
than to succeed in loneliness.
You also must know that someone,
preferably not as biased as you
or me, must always be the rain.

Your first few lines tied in the stanza before, which I enjoyed, but it just doesn't feel like enough. Mostly because of "they are much more content/to suffer among loved ones/than to succeed to loneliness". It doesn't tie into anything in my opinion, and brings in a completely new thread late into the poem. I find after the first couple stanzas, it gets too confusing to add in new threads to a work (that could be my problem with the stanza before. New thread after the beginning of the poem is introduced and not completely explained).

You're tying back in the rain, which I like, but because you haven't explained exactly what the rain means we're left wondering why somebody always has to be the rain, and why the must be unbiased.

I wanted to be the wind
whistling through the crowd,
touching gently the faces,
the hearts, of everyone I
didn't know, had never met.
Then as swiftly as I came, I
wanted to let them go, let
them become the wind like me.
But no. That wasn't for me.
I just had to be the rain.

I like this stanza. It's really expanding on how personality types can be like the elements. It felt detached from the themes before because it's picking the original thread back up in a new way, instead of directly continuing from the previous two stanzas. On the second read I got it, though.

But, again, because you haven't completely explained the rain, I'm not sure what the last two lines mean.

I think you're just jealous.
You wish that once again,
I'll be the rain,
so you don't have to.

This would have been an interesting twist had the two characters in the poem been more prominently featured. Instead, I found the poem to focus more on the the general feelings of the MC and the "you" is hardly mentioned. And since, in the stanza before, you just mentioned yourself completely, I'd mostly forgotten about the "you" in here until you mentioned them.

I also hadn't realized "you" had taken on the role of the rain, which made this stanza a bolt out of the blue.

*

Overall, I found this poem heavily disjointed. Your ideas read as incomplete for the most part, and your stanza flow was interrupted often for new threads and ideas (the first two stanzas being on the idea of the rain, the second two stanzas being about "you" and how their advice isn't good, the third stanza being about the wind [a semi-direct continuation of the first two stanzas] and the fourth stanza on how "you" is the rain and wishes that the narrator was the rain so they didn't have to be).

I'd suggest to really slice this down to two things: the rain and the conflict between the narrator and "you." By focusing on the rain you get to complete the metaphor and make us really understand the whole thing. And by focusing on the conflict between the two characters, the poem becomes past navel-gazing and it would gain some interest from the conflict (just like a story normally would.)

My second suggestion is to cut out "you" completely and make this an imagery-laden poem on who the rain actually is. You'd have to watch that it didn't become too focused on the narrator, but I think with the imagery that risk would be removed a bit. I still enjoyed the mild conflict and I'd have liked to see more, hence my first suggestion.

Some bits of this were really good, namely the whole concept behind the thing. I wanted to see so much more of that, but you didn't really provide which made me a bit disappointed in this.

Hope this helped! PM me with questions and/or comments.

~Rosey

Our beloved and beflowered Rosey Unicorn was quite thorough in her critique, which doesn't leave me much to add since she has already covered practically everything I was planning to say. XD;;;

About the only thing I can say is that this poem really confused me. I think it was due in particular to the jumping around in focus of the stanzas. I think if you were to just write out your main ideas for the poem by themselves and see how they're interconnected, it would make it easier to show that connection clearly and logically within the poem.

Another thing that left me confused was the rain. Is it literal or metaphoric? If it's both, when is it literal and/or metaphoric? You really need to clear that up.

I apologize for taking my sweet time getting around to this. =] But here I am. I haven’t read Rosey’s review, so I might repeat some things, but we’ll see. =D

Overall, I loved the feel of this. I loved the thoughtful, conversational tone, the metaphor of the rain, the rhythm—the form was really lovely.

If I'm too eager, I'm sure
you know it's your doing.
Look back through time.
Search your memory
as far as you can and
remember that moment
when you were me,
and I was the rain.

I wasn’t crazy about the first two lines. They were a little too vague to be very attention-grabbing right at the start. I was hoping, though, that I would understand what they meant from reading the rest of the poem, but you never came back to them as far as I could tell.

“Look back through time” is cliché wording. I don’t think you really need that line anyway. I think the next ones say it sufficiently. The last two lines are what really get the poem going, though. Honestly, I think an entire stanza is too much time to spend just introducing a poem of this length. I would try to be quicker getting right into the thick of it.

I didn't necessarily
care, and I was freezing
and pounded your back
relentlessly, under the guise
of being your conscience.
Of being your eyes.
I was the rain.

“Necessarily” is a necessarily unnecessary word. It just weighs the sentence down. I don’t understand that phrase in the context of this stanza. Why would they be badgering the other person if they don’t care?
The next five lines are some of my favourite in the entire poem. You bring meaning here, to the metaphor of the speaker being the rain, and I love the image your description put in my head.

In your arrogance you claim
we go against the grain,
and what do we achieve?
You told me that I had to
be selfish to survive. Now
you try to tell me how to live,
but I feel as though I'm
betraying everyone and me.
It isn't the same as it was
when I was the rain.

The beginning of this stanza is a very abrupt shift in gears. I felt like you had more to say about the conscience, about the rain, before leaving off. I felt like you could go further in depth with that was going on behind that.
I felt like this whole stanza was a hodgepodge of different ideas that you intended to go together somehow, but ended up like pieces from different puzzles. I tried to make them fit, but I really couldn’t make any sense of the first sentence, and I couldn’t make the connection between their claim, and their telling the speaker what to do, and why you said “Now”, and who “we” are. Is that people in general? And you say, “you” told the speaker to be selfish, in the past, and now they’re telling them how to live. Isn’t that the same? I feel like I’m being confusing myself, but I had a hard time even figuring out how to explain why they didn’t connect.
Then there’s the last two lines. They make sense in and of themselves. It implies that it was better when the speaker was the rain. But that was in the past. So was “You told me that I had to / be selfish to survive.” Was that better too? Because that’s the implication I got.
Besides that the last two lines are fine, if a little bit bland. I couldn’t get any emotion from them. I had absolutely no sense of what they were feeling about that.

What you have to realize,
dear, is that while humans
have a nature to think only
about themselves to a degree.
They are much more content
to suffer among loved ones
than to succeed in loneliness.
You also must know that someone,
preferably not as biased as you
or me (“me” should actually be “I” ), must always be the rain.

Again, you abandon the rain metaphor. You go back to it so briefly, and then you drop it just as quickly. Here again, in the first seven lines you have a single thought that makes sense by itself, but seems unconnected to the rest.

Fragment alert!
“What you have to realize,
dear, is that while humans
have a nature to think only
about themselves to a degree.” Having the word “while” makes this a fragment. It should really be one sentence with:
“They are much more content
to suffer among loved ones
than to succeed in loneliness.” unless you change it some other way.

Then you have the last three lines. They don’t connect with the first part of the stanza, and they also add a new dimension to the rain metaphor that isn’t fully explained. You mention the rain so briefly earlier that we don’t know why someone has to be the rain, or what that entails, or a good many other things.

I wanted to be the wind
whistling through the crowd,
touching gently the faces,
the hearts, of everyone I
didn't know, had never met.
Then as swiftly as I came, I
wanted to let them go, let
them become the wind like me.
But no. That wasn't for me.
I just had to be the rain.

I love this stanza almost as much as the lines I pointed out earlier. It has one overall idea to it that stays constant throughout, and I can even see how it connects to other ideas. This is the life the speaker wants, as opposed to how the other person is telling them to live it. The one thing I didn’t understand was the last two lines. Earlier I got the impression that being the rain wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Here it sounds as if it is, to them. And it’s giving me a different idea of what the rain is, too. Because it sounds as if it’s the opposite—or almost—of the wind, but... Again, I’m sorry if I sound confusing as I’m explaining my confusion. But that was my reaction.

The structure was practically flawless, it flowed wonderfully, and I loved the concept behind this, in the places where it came through clearly, and I loved the metaphor. What I wanted to see was the metaphor weaving through the entire thing and bringing it together. I think if you focused more on the metaphor, it would help clear up all of the confusion, and help bring out what the rain actually is. I’d love more lines like in the second stanza, so beautifully descriptive and focused on the imagery. Even though I was thoroughly confused at the end, it still left me wanting more. I know you said you don’t write poetry much, but I hope you don’t give up on this one, revise it, and write more.
Let me know if you have any questions or want me to take another look. =]

Heeeey. I know, I suck right? Sorry it took me so long to get around to this but I'll try to make up for being useless XD I liiiike it and I'd call it poetry though as I mentioned in chat, it is on the verge of prose and I would like to see some more metephors and a changing rhythm. Here's a few specific comments first and then I'll talk about that rhythm:

I Was the Rain

If I'm too eager, I'm sure
you know it's your doing. [What I don't like here is the slightly uncertain feel to it. I'd prefer to see something along the lines of 'If I'm too eager,/ it's down to you.' Firm introductions often work better.]
Look back through time.
Search your memory
as far as you can and
remember that moment
when you were me,
and I was the rain.

[This reads really smoothly but I think you use too many words? With poetry, quite often less is better and leaving a little mystery/ intrigue is good. Like it could be shortened to: 'Dig through layers/ of wasted years/and remember you was me./ And I was the rain.' Just an example of how fewer lines can express the same meaning without losing any of their impact.]

I didn't necessarily
care, and I was freezing
and pounded your back
relentlessly, under the guise
of being your conscience. [Love the association of conscience and rain, I'd like to see that expanded a little?]
Of being your eyes.
I was the rain.

In your arrogance you claim
we go against the grain, [The half rhyme isn't quite working out. It's not subtle enough for a poem that has no rhythm or rhyme elsewhere. I do like the solid imagery of wood though. It makes a good contrast to the fluid, flexible rain. Maybe you could play with that some more?]
and what do we achieve?
You told me that I had to
be selfish to survive. Now
you try to tell me how to live,
but I feel as though I'm
betraying everyone and me.
It isn't the same as it was
when I was the rain.

What you have to realize,
dear, is that while humans
have a nature to think only
about themselves to a degree. [Another part that's too passive and wordy. It would be more effective to write: 'Humans are selfish dear/ but are much more content...']
They are much more content
to suffer among loved ones
than to succeed in loneliness.
You also must know that someone,
preferably not as biased as you
or me, must always be the rain.

I don't know if it was intended but I feel frustrated with your persona. She's not forceful enough, she doesn't rage and whine at him. Where's the bitterness in tone that her words seem to suggest?

I think you're just jealous. [I think just should be removed. It slows the reader and takes away some of the impact, softening the words instead of emphasising them.]
You wish that once again,
I'll be the rain,
so you don't have to.

Love the last line, very firm, very strong.

Rahythm

In brief, I'd like to see a sharper rhythm here or perhaps one that fluctuates. The lines of this poem flow smoothly and softly and it's beautiful to read but it isn't rain. There's no rush and splatter, no steady drum beat. I think a poem so intertwined with a theme ought to reflect it wherever possible. If you could imitate the rhythm of rain, that would make this more exciting and you get so many different types of rain. You could conjure up various emotions. There's the soothing tone of rain: does your character feel better now that he's the rain and she gets to be the 'human' as it were. Or would a storm work better; a reflection of all the rage and frustrations.

Thanks for the read!

Heather xx

Thanks so much for all the comments! You guys ROCK, hardcore. All of you.

Yes, I am definitely going to revise this. It's possibly the first (non-joking) poem I've written that I really like, and your critiques have pointed me in more the direction I wanted to take with it.

I'm probably going to wait until I'm on the plane to re-write it the rest of the way. I've already started, but I think my fear of flying will help me channel my emotions into it, and the in-flight champagne might loosen my mind enough to make it more poetic. (Maybe planes are good?)

Thanks again. You're all lovely. <3