Hi there, AlmostImmortal!
The lovely personification and first line caught my eye with this poem. I thought the main structure here was the contrasts and contradictions between different things we associate with red, for instance joyful laughter and violence. Because of this, it seems the mood changes from line to line. The poetic voice here is pretty intense, almost declaring each line.
Subject, Themes, Narrative
The personified ‘red’ seems to be given a sort of portfolio throughout this poem. Through a series of contrasts, red almost seems to capture two different sides of the human experience. I say ‘human experience’ because ‘love’ and ‘hate’ I think are the two things people usually think about when they try to describe humanity, and I think it’s a pretty fitting thematic structure to go for in a poem such as this one. The two lists closer to the end of the poem seem to be the climax of the ‘story’, where the most extreme juxtaposition between war and romance is made. Then finally, circling back to blood, which links the poem’s theme to life and death.
Language and Imagery
There’s a lot of symbols associated with red being used in this, which is fitting for the subject of the poem. I noticed the “heart” and the red string of fate in particular, as well as roses. I wonder if there is a more death-themed red symbol that could have been used in the lines about war and violence, to sort of balance it out for a more even-handed contrast. Maybe poppy flowers?
I really liked some of the details you picked out in this poem. “bold colour on someone’s nails” is a nice and specific image for red and draws a nice parallel with blood on somebody’s hands.
There were some images I thought were a bit vague, or at least I could not picture them very well when reading:
It’s the colour of swollen lips
And the mother of the colour they leave behind
I’m not entirely sure what the ‘mother’ relation means? I would suppose the colour “left behind” might be something like a lip print, but it’s a bit hard to imagine the second colour that is implied to spring from red with just this description.
It’s ravaged warzones with their scattered bones
And cheesy school dances filled with wide-eyed kids
The second line was a bit difficult to picture as ‘one image’ for me. I could imagine a ‘cheesy school dance’ and ‘wide-eyed kids’ but perhaps there might need to be a bit of a link between those to make the images flow together? “filled with” is a bit static for dancing, in my opinion. Are the kids moving across the dance floor? Or are they actually standing still because the music hasn’t started yet? I guess I just got caught on the idea of the ‘dance’ so the next image was a bit hard to connect for me.
That being said, one of my favourite pairs of lines was:
It’s messy kisses and quickened heartbeats
And it’s the print of their hand on your face
It seems it might have a pretty dark implication – like a relationship gone wrong? – but I thought the second image was very impactful. The “print” of someone’s hand being red isn’t something super obvious and in-your-face, and the act of hinting or using an indirect detail seems to make the image stronger.
Structure and Sound
The speaker of this poem definitely feels distant from the subjects, a though a bird’s eye view or some storyteller in a tavern is narrating. Even with the first line “Red is the colour . . . “, while the present tense makes it feel immediate, the speaker is definitely not talking about themselves. If anything, they might be talking about the addressees, with “you” or maybe even a made-up character.
Throughout the poem, the way the contrasts are drawn is very regular. There’s always a declarative statement ‘It is/ It’s . . . “ followed by an image, especially noun phrases like “the colour of swollen lips” or “a beating heart”. In this way, it almost feels like a list poem.
The pattern is only broken in:
It’s desert sand, rust, and bloody battle cries
It’s first love, roses, and the dreams of that kind
In terms of the “It’s . . . “ structure, these two lines follow the rest of the poem, but the lists and use of caesurae change the rhythm. I read them with three dramatic pauses per line, which makes these two lines stand out and that’s why I think earlier I described them as being the climax of the poem.
That's all
Overall, this was a nice colour poem with links to a broader theme. I liked the poetic voice and the big-picture narrative stance you managed to take without skimping out too much on the little details. Feel free to ask me if anything I said here is unclear.
Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!
Cheers,
-Lim
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Reviews: 542
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