Dances With Shadows

Review deleted due to being a copy of another's review.

This is a very sound start to a poem. Forewarning, I might sound a bit rude.

So... I'm all for rhyme but it was a bit too much for me to read every line rhyming with the next. I do appreciate how you broke the rhyme patter at the end of each stanza with a couplet that had it's own rhyme, but I'd like to see that breaking the pattern by being the only rhyme. There is nothing wrong with having a poem that operates with rhyme as one of the key elements, so long as it keep it's structure without the rhyme, which is something I think the poem is a little bit lacking in currently.

The next thing is literal imagery. I didn't think much for it before poetry class, but now it's easy to see why it's needed. Read these lines: "The shadows recede, slowly they crawl/ but only til noon will they remain small." Yes, I know exactly what your saying, but it's only cause I know about shadows being small at noon cause of the sun. The speaker of the poem should be giving a new image to relate to shadows, something completely tangible that can be related and make the image have since outside of logic. Really lame example here, but think of how a prairie dog receded into it's hole when it senses danger. That's a usable image (not in this context cause it makes no sense with the rest of the poem, at all, but you get the idea). Even if you shined up the shadow lines like that, the piece would gain some more structure with imagery. All of this appeals to my creative sense, bit you want someone totally logical to be able to link the images together without being like, "I already know what a girl in shadows looks like... moving on."

Something that I notice really quickly is the iambic beat to this. I'm not going to say pentameter because that's not quite accurate, but there is the definite use of rhythm in this poem. That's part of what assists in putting me off of the rhyme. Iambic metre is fine on it's own, so it rhyme, but together is begins to sound like a children's sound or nursery rhyme because that's how they're constructed. The thing with poetry is that you should BREAK the rules you set for yourself. If every line has iambic metre, break it three times. If every stanza is four lines and a couplet, break it once. The changes are interesting to look at and read.

I can see this entire poem being perfectly fine as it is now. I know what's happening, I understand what mood/vibe the speaker is trying to give off, and what the girl in the poem is feeling (you even state at one point "the girl begins to feel withdrawn"). But I want to understand why, not be told.

Thanks!

Hello Anubis!
You have a great poem here. You have done well, keeping the rhythm and rhyme even and ordered. There was only two parts that I thought you could change a little.

A dance with thee does not postpone.”

Through sunlit arms, the shadows speak

how loneliness has made her weak.