Hey SparkToFlame, My precious dame! I’m here to review! Whoop de doo! I’m going to review line by line, if you don’t mind!
“Here, have a poem.” Don’t mind if I do! I’m not quite sure why you have this line, but if you really want it there, keep it. I don’t care.
“i've been losing sleep staring at the sun” I like this title. It draws the reader in. It makes them think, “Wouldn’t you go blind if you stare at the sun? If you were blind, how would you be kept away by the sun? Don’t most people sleep during the night not the day? How would you lose sleep if it wasn’t time for you to sleep? What in the world will this be about?” Then they get all excited for it to start.
“i've been losing sleep, staring at the sun” very nice, title matches the first line exactly. Not that it has to, but it gets straight to the point. Now, I’m going to warn you now, the rest of the poem doesn’t make too much sense to me, but it kind of does because of this one line. I interpret this poem to be the ramblings of a person who hasn’t gotten enough sleep, and is maybe a little depressed, and pretty crazy because of it. Maybe there’s other factors contributing to this craziness, but because it was stated in both the title and the first line that this character (I will call this character “she”) has been losing sleep.
I like the idea that I get from this first line that this person would rather have magnificent beauty than sleep. It kind of reminds me of a poem that I’ve never written down, but I’ve thought about that has the basis of a moth flying too close to the light even though it knew he would die if he touched it. In the end of the poem-never-written, the moth decides he’d rather have one moment of extreme, overpowering beauty despite the consequences. I think it’s a beautiful
“my heartbeat's been keeping time with the beat of my shoes” This is a nice line too. Although I had imagined the person lying down instead of in a position where she could tap her feet or walk. The reason I like this line (as with most of you lines) is that it’s different than normal poetry. This isn’t cliché. If you said the beat of the drums, I think that might have been, but oh well. I also like that you’re using such rich words. “heartbeat” is a very descriptive word, and “feet” would probably be used more than “shoes” in this situation, so we actually picture shoes. I have nothing to say to make you change this line.
“and my blood is flowing down the pavement” This is one line I’m not AS fond of. The mood of your poem (according to me) is kind of a mix between mental exhaustion and calm in that exhaustion. I don’t think that blood flowing anywhere really fits with your mood. When I think blood-out-of-body, I think violence, however I also think of craziness just a little bit because of Lady MacBeth when she sees blood on her hands and goes whacko. So I guess this line could fit. Also, for some reason I associate “pavement” with “warmth” (probably because whenever I step on pavement in bare feet it’s ALWAYS warm because I wear shoes at all times in winter) and that fits with the “sun” part of your story. The summery part. If I were you, I’d change this to fit the mood more, but it’s also okay as it is. It’s up to you to change your poem.
“i wonder if i walked fast enough if my feet would leave the ground” This line is on the edge of being a little cliché (but that’s okay because a lot of amazing poems are too. By cliché, I mean over-used, and there’s a reason things in poetry are over-used: they’re good, and they get a reaction from the readers) but you keep it on the more unique side because you said “walking” instead of “running,” which changes things up a bit. I’m not sure why you did that though.
You referred to shoes earlier, maybe you could make a connection to that line and go deeper and say what type of shoes she’s wearing on this line? That might make it awkward or more special depending on how you deal with it. If you choose to make it a symbol, to make the shoes reflect something deeper, that could be a really great detail to add. If it’s just randomly there for no reason, that would be a bit awkward, and I’d encourage you to keep it as it is now.”
This is something I notice a lot in my own writing, but those “if’s” sound weird like that. Even though I’m pretty sure that is grammatically correct, to me it seems like too many ifs. I’m not sure how to tell you how to fix it. (Notice how weird those “hows” sounded, or at least they did to me as I wrote them.)
“these days i feel as if the sun is within my reach if i just reach out and take it” I like how you specified “these days” because it seems to me that this person’s mental state was not always in this condition, leading me to think deeper about who this person is. The reader can identify with the part about reaching out for the sun, because who didn’t try as a child to pluck the sun and moon out of the sky? I really like that detail.
“my fingers are playing the mournful notes” This one I’m not so sure of. I like the idea of music in this poem, and I like the adjective mournful, but you make no mention of music anywhere else in the poem (unless the shoes part counts), and I think that would be a big detail if there was music, but it is hidden in this line that one might overlook if they were just to read quickly through this. Now maybe you’re not talking about physically playing a musical instrument, but it sure sounds like it, and I can’t think of anything that would fit metaphorically.
“i'm just looking for a place to lay my head” This gets us back to that exhausted theme, and aren’t we all looking for this? I know when I’m dead on my feet I’d do just about anything to have a suitable place to lie down and sleep forever right then and there. Honestly, tired people are sometimes the most desperate.
“there is no place like home when you don't have one” I really like this line too! So many wonderful lines! And this one works beautifully with the one before it. You wouldn’t be looking for a place to sleep if you had one, a home. This line by itself is a powerfully true statement. Now this is kind of reminding me of a homeless person who was, at one point, not homless, but then they went kinda loony and started watching the skies and staring at the sun. Actually, now that I reread the entire poem with that in mind, that fits really nicely. Either that or the homeless person in into drugs… e.e
“the grass looks like a pillow if you are tired enough” So true! And this fits nicely with the two lines before it. A “pillow of grass” is a really nice, calm image. I like it.
“i had a dream i found a place to rest” This one doesn’t make as much sense to me, because if you had NOT found a place to rest (unless you’re talking about ETERNAL rest here), then you wouldn’t been dreaming, right? But who am I to question this. This just isn’t as strong as a line as your others in terms of cool details and imagery and stuff.
“the world had faded away” This line was also very “meh” for me. It’s cliché. Over-used in my opinion. You didn’t really say anything new.
“but really i'm watching the flowers wave in the wind” this line doesn’t fit with your last so well, but that’s fine, because I think you need to have something different in that line anyway. I do like the visual of someone just sitting there, watching flowers wave in the wind. It seems very peaceful again. I also like the fact that you say very clearly that this person is “watching” them. Not merely being in the vicinity of them. The fact that she’s actively watching them kind of reveals that she’s just a little cracked: most people might notice the flowers, or enjoy them, but she’s WATCHING them.
“monochrome colors dancing in time with the sound of my shoes” I didn’t imagine the colors of those flowers to be monochrome, but I like the fact that you did describe their color, and I also like that it’s not one of the average words used to describe flowers. I also like that you brink up that thing with your shoes again.
“i stayed up to watch the stars burn out” Love it. There’s nothing that I would fix here.
“gravity does not have a hold on me” I like you say this so assuredly. Most people would wimp out and put a little “I feel like” before this line, but there you are, so sure of yourself that you can just say it. Other than that, this line isn’t the most special thing in the world, but it’s not worthless either. It is here for necessity.
“i think i'm floating away” the narrator sounds rather helpless here, probably helpless because she’s so exhausted that she can’t hold on tight enough to anything to prevent herself from floating away. Another merely necessary line. I actually don’t see the purpose of either this line or the last line. The feeling of floating doesn’t really appear to be part of the rest of the poem, except maybe you feel like you’re floating when you go slow, or vice versa, and you do mention slowness at the end of this stanza.
“the sun has been beating on my back for too many days” I like that we’re finally getting back to the sun, and I like that we suddenly know where the sun is in position to the narrator. I imagined the narrator facing the sun to stare at it, and maybe that’s how she was at first, but now she’s sick of the sun and just wants it to leave her alone. Another merely necessary line. (In my opinion. But it gets us set up for a beautiful line next)
“the warmth does not reach my heart anymore” I love this line. I think it adds to the crazy flavour of this person because people who are unsympathetic can be a different sort of crazy; crazy according to others; crazy in a completely-aware-of-what-I’m-doing way. Again, my opinion.
“my blood is slowing down” in this case, I do not associate blood with violence because it’s in the body. I like that you say that the actual physical blood itself is slowing down, and not the beating that pushes it or anything, although we can infer that. This line is one of the lines where I get the idea that this narrator might be doing drugs…. If that actually wasn’t what you meant for your reader to think, I’d go through this with the idea of a drug-user in mind and change what you think would cause the reader to think that. Of course if this WAS your intention, wow! I’m amazed at your subtlety and fine details and details one might not think of when trying to describe something like that.
“it no longer runs like the cars on a highway” I like this comparison. Especially because cars on a highway seem to move with such ease in their speed. They make it look effortless.
“the pace a slow turtle crawl” The way you have this worded is kind of weird without any form of punctuation. Just read this one line as-is. Weird right? I’d think about rewording this to fit without sounding weird (maybe just adding the word “is”), or adding punctuation somewhere to make this part make more sense (I’m not quite sure what you could punctuate this with and have it make sense). Of course sense was probably not the most important thing you were going for when you wrote this, but the only way I feel like I can review other people’s poem is commenting mostly on coherency, because as much as we say we love the freedom of poetry and how you can write anything, we (or at least I) still like the ones that we can interpret ourselves without any help while still being clever enough to make us actually think, more than the ones that are impossibly cryptic or mind-dulling.
“i lost myself when the sun went out” I like it! Again, it goes with the drug theme, like, there was this drug that made this person feel so good, but when the drug ran its course, poof! It was gone and she was lost. But, more literal, the darkness that would create… It’s hard to be separated from yourself, so I like the part “I lost MYSELF” even though that’s a bit over-used. And I like that the last part of this poem is about the sun.
“it blinked goodnight and i reached up to touch it” I like how it blinked. It didn’t set slowly, it just popped out of existence. That’s new and different. I also like how she’s trying to touch it again, even though she failed the first time. Creating bridges between lines in your poem is very important in making a good poem a great poem, especially in this type of poem: one involving several seemingly random (at least to me) lines and weaving them together so they fit.
“but it wasn't there” I like how simply this was put. I thought it was cool that it seemed like if it WAS there, she could’ve touched it, because… well I dunno. I love this last stanza. It wraps up your poem nicely and simply.
Sorry I didn’t have very many criticisms for you poem. I really liked all of it. I’m curious though…. WAS it about someone doing drugs? Someone merely crazy? None of the above?
I especially liked the images and details you included. That was what made this poem great.
Great job!
Keep writing!
~fortis
Points: 4984
Reviews: 621
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