Meant to Be Heard
No promises to strap me down,
no words to bind the free,
he tricked my heart into thinking
I could escape easily.
But Silence, in his noiseless watch,
while guarding harmful truths,
failed to prevent the certain rot
caused by my gullible youth.
Unsaid, critical words grew stale
while I drifted away--
stiff, smiling, quietly wounding,
with the words I didn’t say.
I worried that my words could hurt;
I never set them free.
When numbness came, so did the truth:
my Silence wounded me.
--Anna
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Canary word: Present
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I like the way it stats off with calmer wording and then it becomes more intense. I also like the way you view the subject. You obviously have strong feelings for being heard.
Anna, I have to say I love this. The personification of Silence is surprising and pleasant to the reader & I like the language you use.
I became somewhat wary reading the above comments because I disagreed with some of their suggestions. Here's what I've got:
I think the wording of the last 2 lines here are a bit awkward. In the third line, shouldn't it be "tricks us all into believing"? But then it doesn't fit as well. And the fourth line seems a bit forced.
"The certain rot"? This is a bit weird to me. And what does it cause you to lose?
I would prefer the first line if it read "Cruicial unsaid words grow stale."
Gramatically, the first two lines don't makes sense, I think. "Who knew but that" sounds like it should have "would" after it, such as "Who knew but that I would stumble across such a great poem!"
Sorry if this sounded harsh, but I really like it! Cheers!
rachel
Hello Anna! I'm Colt! Obviously I will review your poem.
I love the strong use of stylistic devices, but there could be more metaphors, similes, and personification. A simile is a comparison of two unlike words using like or as (He is as graceful as a flower). A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike words without using like or as (He is a flower). Personification is giving a non-human thing human characteristics (the sea cringed and wrinkled under the boat).
Be careful in the fourth stanza, some lines get too long. Otherwise, everything has pretty much been covered. Bravo!
-Colt
Wow, Anna, I feel rather unhelpful, because this was really good! I enjoyed how you portrayed Silence as someone to be wary of instead of someone to admire. "Silence is golden", they say. Not here! It's a twist on something well known that changes our perspective a bit.
Besides these little rhythm issues, I wouldn't really change any of your word choices. You've chosen everything carefully, I can tell, so I have no need to harp on about bland description or over-elaborate imagery!
~Evi
Hi Anna! June here, and I'm going to review this for you
.
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I like the way you open your poem! You begin vaguely, and sustain the "unclarity" throughout the first stanza so that when we finish the stanza, we can form a picture in our head about "him" without even knowing who he is.
I also enjoy the way you present this silence to us. At first, I was prepared to have a positive image represented by silence, but! It's coming off as more negative than positive. That's great, dear! Because you're giving us something much more to think about than the words in which this is writ.
The only changes I would make to this, dear, are in the punctuation. I often tell people that an easy, basic poetry-punctuation scheme to follow is this:
,
;
,
.
Or in English; comma, semicolon; comma, period.
Thus, it works with almost all four-lined-stanza poems
Also!
This line has got a bit of a drag dear. Pay attention to length of your above lines, and see how this contrasts with them.
Remember that length does not only depend on the written length of a word, but it also depends on the spoken length of a word, dear.
But, I loved it, Anna! Gold star for you-- keep up the good work, dear.
June