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125,012 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Hey there!
As usual, your poem is absolutely fascinating. However, I'll try to write you a review.
Keep up the good work. 
I'm so glad I got my hands on one of your poems.
Firstly, you did quite well in describing. However, this part kind of confused me:
"I remember how
my mother's one arm
lay around my shoulders
and the other patted choti's light brown hair."
When you said: "my mother's one arm" it made me think she had only one arm, but the following lines disapproved my thought. I don't know whether that's messed up or just really good, but I guess you did a good job. It made me feel sorry for the mother and have sympathy for the children and that's kind of the whole point, right?
Secondly, You said:
"We waited,
for a knock on the door,
for father returning home with a small bag
of snacks."
I'm not really sure, but I think it's supposed to be:
"We waited,
for a knock on the door,
for father [to return] home with a small bag
of snacks."
Finally, I cannot but thank you for your outstanding poetry. You've helped me improve myself and my work. Thank you deeply.
Thanks
Hi there, shoaib.
This is really good. It sent shivers down my spine. Your description is good, and the way you ended it was excellent.
Now, even though it's a very good poem, it has room for improvement, as all poems do. I'm going to be a little nitpicky; the details are the things that make the whole a lot better.
Okay, so this could be the start of anything, really. I don't see anything special about this. It could start a prose piece, even. It's been very done before, as well. "That night" or "That morning" has lost it's impact because of overuse. An easy fix would be to switch the lines of the stanza around a little. Perhaps say:
If it's not at the very beginning, it doesn't seem as stale.
I read this as your mother only had one arm. It made me do a double take. If you want to avoid that, I suggest saying "my mother's left arm" or "right arm" to improve clarity.
While I understand this line, and it's a good line, I feel like it's a little awkward. "lost elsewhere" seems odd to me. Perhaps you could say "wandering elsewhere" or "lost among the dusty streets" (or another image. Whatever you choose).
I would use different words for narrated. I don't think that repetition is serving the poem well here. "told" would work. Just don't use "narrated" twice.
omit the comma after "waited."
Altogether, this is great. You're quite a poet. I hope this review was helpful. Happy poeting!
Thanks
Hello, Shoaib. How are you ?!!
)
You always write something that can grab my attention. Wow It was so good. It touched something beyond my skin.
I like the way of writing of yours...
I like this part
We waited, praying.
I remember how
my mother's one arm
lay around my shoulders
and the other patted choti's light brown hair.
Sighing, she
narrated tales to calm us down,
her eyes lost elsewhere
But this is my favorite line
"I must have missed the tear that left mother's cheek,"
Wow Tthis is a very great ending
We waited,
for a knock on the door,
for father returning home with a small bag
of snacks.
We have waited ever since.
Keep the good writing up ^^
Salam
Your sister
Ilham
Thanks Ilham
Heyhey
or maybe the smiley isnt appropriate for a sad poem like this ...
Lately i read a book about an orphan from the Vietnam war and this poem brought me back to the feeling i had when reading it . People waiting for their relatives or friends to come back , but they never do ... I luckly haven't experienced that and i can't even imagene how it might feel like . But this gave a good sense of the feelings one might have when this is happening to them . Good feeling and flow in this poem , even though i was sad . But sometimes any emotion is good , even if it's sad.
Hello, shoaib! Indie here with a review for you today. So about this narrative poem - I've written a few narrative poems lately on my own, so I have an eye for it and I really liked this. I'll break my review down by stanzas.
1st stanza: I've found that the majority of narrative poetry I read, 9 times out of ten, starts out with phrases like your opening line. "That was the night," "That day," "Sometimes at night..", "That was the reason," "There were times when..", etc. They are okay starters, and very tempting to use, but they really don't stand out or draw readers in as opening lines, simply because they are so overused. I don't really like the transitional word "for" here, either. I think you would be fine with just starting the stanza off with "It was late. Father was..."
I like this here, but you don't bring up any indication that the speaker's family was praying later in the poem. The only note of this dialogue-ish type thing is when the mother told stories. Maybe if these were religious stories, or stories of having faith, etc. then this would be centralized. But otherwise, it's not really necessary.
3rd stanza: The term "narrated" here just doesn't really work - it's almost too big of a word to fit the otherwise simple but raw vocabulary in the rest of the poem. And the speaker notices her eyes being "elsewhere" - maybe you could expand on this a little: where is "elsewhere," and what where her lost eyes searching for? Other than the obvious whereabouts of the father.
4th stanza: I absolutely love the first 3 lines of this stanza. But the last two lines about the tear on the cheek and more narrating seems to add "pointless" fluff - it isn't important enough to the story. The first 3 lines are far too beautiful to contradict in this way.
5th stanza: The ending wasn't as strong as I had hoped it to be. It was predictable, which isn't a big deal, but if you had told the common ending in a different tone, you could really set it apart. The last line, We have waited ever since, is the third time you've used the word "waited." Try finding another way to word it that reflects back on the poem, like "We have sat here in suspended amber ever since," or something similar.
Overall, I really liked it. Just a few things you could tweak, and added imagery would be nice - you have none in this poem. But it has great potential! On a side note, I love reading your work - if you ever need a review, please don't hesitate to let me know!
Keep up the beautiful words!,
~Indie.
Oh, goodness. Something happened to my quotations and apostrophes. My apologies!
Thanks indie, appreciate it..
No problem! I still think about this poem, and that's when you know you've read a good one
Hello my name is Kyla, I'm just here to give you your review.
I think it is a nice piece, I enjoyed reading it. I saw some punctuations that could be corrected. When I say this, I mean you could've added some commas and periods in different places but it was still neat. I like how you explain everything; you express your emotions on how you felt during the wait and I love to read that in literature. I will have to look you up and read more of your pieces