Published July 6, 2013
I have no need for your adjustment,
I am who I am.
This world was ours from the start,
And now,
Your're telling me;
This is mine!
I'm telling you one thing my sweet,
One thing you must know!
This could be it, changes upon changes,
But,
I'm,
Back In Black.
No funeral,
No nothing to mourn,
I'm simply;
Back in Black.
Hear them gossip;
Ohhh,
She's Back In Black.
What a rebel move,
See the Mockingjay pin,
Inked in her Black shirt.
Because she's;
Back In Black.
You heard the gossip,
And I ain't giving you crap,
I'm a rebel.
And that's how I like it.
Smooth tone, Black tone,
Getting in the Back tone.
I need my Mockingjay pin,
I'm a rebel.
I understand the medal.
I don't need no one to educate me on the whole, Great Rebel.
I'm a Black Rebel.
No,
I'm not Goth.
I'm following the Thunder,
Watching Lighting strike my heart.,
Seeing Fireworks and Lighting,
Battle for dominance.
I'm a free bird,
You can't catch me.
I'm a ninja,
I fight for the rebels.
I'm the Rebel Queen.
Smooth Tone, Black Tone,
Getting in the Back Tone.
I'm flying high above your head.
And to you,
I appear as;
Back In Black.
Smooth Tone, Black Tone,
Getting in the Back Tone.
I'm a Raven in an Unkindness.
I'm a blackbird,
I'm said to hold magic.
And my group is is an Unkindness.
I'm a Rebel.
A Rebel Back in Black.
Back forever.
In the skies.
Black as a Raven.
Now you know,
What Back In Black means.
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138,283 Literary Works • 672,096 Reviews
Hi there! Here to give you a review for the May Poetry Exchange!
Here is my honest opinion. It's filled with good intentions.
I like some of the rhythms you have going on, and the rhymes that you sprinkle nicely over this poem like powdered sugar on a beignet (I'm hungry, so this will be full of food metaphors).
Overall, I felt like the tone of the poem was kind of braggy and didn't really feel like it was saying anything new, or saying anything that I, as a reader, really cared about. Teenagers like to consider themselves rebels, and really, wearing all black isn't really a statement anymore. I did it (I was supes goth, tho), and really, everyone wears a lot of black. Find a new way to properly illustrate the state of being a "rebel." And honestly, everything has been done before-- it's hard to rebel when the Man knows how to push the rebels back down.
I don't understand your random capitalization. It can be used effectively to emphasize things, but when you overuse it, it becomes no longer effective. It's kind of like soup. If you put just enough pepper in, it's delicious, but if you put in too much, it's kinda gross.
This poem feels kind of like a word vomit. Cut out some of the redundant lines. Describing the character as a bird once is perfectly acceptable, but you mention that the narrator is a bird several times in the poem, which makes the reader roll his eyes and think, "we get it." Make this a focused, polished word vomit. Then it will be lovely.
I advise you to cut out some of the punctuation in this piece. Not every line needs punctuation at the end. It would improve the rhythm, making it even nicer.
I hope that this review was helpful to you! Happy writing!
Hey Peg,
I'm going to mark down any lines I feel are useless because this poem seems to be a bit long and you can either incorporate them into the lines above and below them, or just take them out with slight edits.
Spoiler
"You're" is misspelled by the way, extra R.
Having just but in a line is really kind of lazy. It doesn't say much.
Back forever is sort of like saying you're going to leave again. In the skies, well, it doesn't really say much as a descriptor.
Overall I'd say you don't have much going for you in this poem to be honest. You've got a good beat, which is good, but good is just good.
To make this poem really shine, you're going to need to do some serious work with figuring out exactly what you want to say instead of this wishy washy stuff like "back forever" and "I'm a raven in an unkindness."
Whut? What's an unkindness? We can't understand that type of re-naming from a simple poem like this, you need to expand and if you're going to personify something like that with capitalizing the name, then you're going to have to go into what that personification is doing or like.
Most of this poem needs reworking to incorporate a better understanding of setting, place, time, and the general idea of the poem. Right now it seems to just be a salad toss of cliches like "ravens" and "I'm not emo but I wear black." It's like the poem is trying to be something that it's not which annoys people even if we're just trying to talk in a different accent.
I would suggest taking this idea that you had and completely re-writing the poem with some development of your idea and a particular emotion that you want to show through. If they're a rebel, then give them something to rebel against.
I hope this doesn't completely discourage you. I think you can make this poem better and it was a great tool to work on beat, but now it's time to move forward, onto 2014. You've grown a lot in a year, let's show it. <3
Thanks! So you know, a group of ravens is called an unkindness. Like a murder of crows, or a parliament of owls.
Hi there ShadowWings. Nite here to give this a look-see for Team Inc(red)ibles this fine Review Day!
I'm going to be honest with you, I'm finding it very hard to critique this. This is because I'm rather distracted by a couple things
1) The "Back in Black" and "Freebird" references. If you title your work the same as a really famous song, it invites comparisons. Most of the time, it won't be favorable. Heck, I'm not even an AC/DC fan and I'm kind of annoyed by this. The "free bird" thing (classic Lynard Skynard) was less in-your-face but it still bugged me. In the future, try to avoid using the same titles/phrasings as famous stuff so you can forge your own style.
2) The Random Caps Like This. You use capital letters a lot, which can add emphasis, but here it's overdone and sort of diminishes their effectiveness. It distracts me from the words themselves, which should be the main focus.
3) The Hunger Games stuff. Disclosure time: I have yet to read the Hunger Games. That said, I wasn't sure upon reading this if this was actually a poem about something that happened in the book, or a poem about someone who considers herself a rebel for being a fan of the book. I suspect it's the latter, which I don't really understand. The Hunger Games are one of the most popular books for teens right now. It doesn't seem particularly rebellious to read them. It reminds me of something a friend of mine once posted about how liking Harry Potter books shouldn't be enough to make someone a nerd. I'd consider including more obviously rebellious actions, like breaking rules or enjoying something teens don't normally like.
If I'm wrong, make it more obvious. Cut lines like "I'm not goth" (I doubt Katniss really cares about being goth) and make the references stronger.
Overall, this is pretty good, despite my harsh comments. I think the presentation and the constant repetition of "Back in Black" are holding the piece back. Keep writing!
Ok first thing first is that i think you should divide your poem into set stanzas. this makes it easier to read and gives it a sense of structure. Stanzas tell us how things go together and the placement. I know its not your fault by the bad formatting from the publishing centre makes the gaps hard on the eyes so stanzas may help give it some balance.
Ok so when I read this it made me think of men in black agents yelling out this one by one is a sexy fashion. I think its a bit too divided. You have alot of these abrupt words and they could be combined into a full line to make more poetic sense.
After further reading I sort of like this as your poem seems to combine lots of aspects of fiction and pop culture together. Although its quite hard to follow it can be effective in a sense.
Formatting was not my fault. YWS was being was being stubborn...
Hey I'm going to review this, it's my last review this review day. Go team Dory/Blue! XP
Okay now that my moments over I should get real serious now.
This is nice. The formatting on the other hand, well it's still somewhat nice. I just have an opinion on long, long posts with no stanzas. That said though I thought it was still good and I understand how you made it flow with your formatting and I really respect that and like it.
I did find though your poem was drifting greatly from the start to where it ended up. I actually really like your beginning and how you started that. But then when you got to this part:
I felt it was quite confusing. Why is anyone telling the character it is their world? Does that mean the other person or the people in the background are telling the character that the character is on their own? Deserting the character? But then why was it "ours"? So the start was nice, but those lines threw me off a bit. I was quite confused with what you had meant by it. I'd suggest maybe looking over it again.
I thought the Back in Black this was symbolic greatly. And you know there's a saying "Once you go black you never go back" I have no idea where and why that saying came up. But anyways. I liked the imagery that you used. And that you used birds, birds work great as symbols.
-- I really liked this part a lot! I especially wanted to quote it because I thought it was written so well, and it was surely my favorite part of the whole poem.
Overall:
The poem was a very interesting read. It was kind of simple, and nice, and overall I thought it was good to read. With the formatting a little different it would be great. The only thing is separating the different sections. Great job though!
--Keep writing and dreaming!
Hiya peggy! Here finally for your review, sorry for the delay.
Right I'm going to start straight with things I liked. I really liked the whole idea of it and 'she's back in black' and what it means to be back in black. And the fact being back in black means having these certain traits- very cool idea. Also, I know that there is already a song called Back in Black and I feared that it would be too similar, but this definitely wasn't, I can imagine it as part of a pop-punk song or something.
In terms of improvements, I'd like to start with something a bit technical. I'm not sure if this is a poem or lyrics, however even if the latter, I think you need to work on your structure a bit. If a poem I think the structure is a bit boring. I mean there are no line breaks and it's all in one big blob and could do with being split up into stanzas. This will be good because it's easier on the eye, and more interesting for readers.
Also, the punctuation wasn't very varied. I'm going to tell you now that with this sort of thing you really don't need a punctuation mark at the end of each line. It just means too many unnecessary pauses and ruins the pace of the piece. You may have heard of a poetical technique called 'enjambment'. If you haven't it basically means you can carry on the line without using punctuation. Now this might not make too much sense so I'll give you an example:
It could look something like this:
See the Mockingjay pin
inked on her black shirt.
Because she's
back in black
Now I must admit I'm not the best at using this technique, but you might get the general idea of not having to use a billion and one commas, full stops and semi colons.
Another thing is I think your imagery could be improved a bit. I really like the whole blackbird metaphor, it was really effective. I'd like to see more language like that, because it really make the piece more interesting to read, and gives the reader more of an idea to build up in their head.
Lastly, a quick grammar issue:
It should be'You're' as in 'you are'.
Overall, this was really cool. I liked the whole style of it and can really imagine it being sung. Next steps are a bit technical like structure and punctuation, but also some more imagery would be great. I hope this review helped, PM me with questions or if you'd like another review.
Keep writing!
-Arc x
Wow that was well written! Simple yet really good. Your mention of the Mockinjay pin reminded me of the "Hunger Games" haha! Was that deliberate? Also I never knew black could feature so much! It's not just a plain shade after all.
One criticism I have is that there was typo; "lighting" should be "lightning" right? Oh! And another thing the start is good but I think a little more depth is required, and what you are expressing is a tad tricky to grasp. But maybe thats just me haha. 
Well done.
This was excellent, and I liked the concept portrayed in this.
My first thing that I would suggest as a correction or edit would be to add an extra space between the lines of verses so that the reader can associate the concept of "these phrases go together and this is where the next part starts". This is simply a formatting concept which could help readers follow the flow better, especially useful when reading lyrics, and this change is completely up to you.
Now, I liked the flow and I thought the concept was interesting. I was not quite sure what to think from the title or the descriptions, but once I started reading, I was hooked. It was interesting and kept a steady pace. The repeats of Back in Black were placed so that the full impact was gained, and I liked the way you used this.
The rest of the lyrics were excellent and did a great job of tying the entire piece together. I was wonderfully impressed with how this flowed and turned out overall.
In general, keep it up. I'm definitely interested, and I have no major complaints to go with this piece. I would consider this a wonderful piece. Good job, keep it up!