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140,804 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
lovely. very tight, very precise, very thought out. you know what you wanted to do and you did it, but the one thing that really bothers me is the end. it was very abrupt, and i'm sure you want to say, "that's okay, it was supposed to be", but you constructed a beautiful moment and then you ripped it away. ripping it away without giving us a chance to mull it around means we won't remember it. you want us to remember it, don't you? give us a reason to.
give us the struggle before the end. the thoughts, the finger twitches, the sights of faces on the other side of the window, or a traceable path of wind through the trees or anything the evoke something more than blackness. death / end does not have to be always black. you can still paint it for us, still engage us with it. i think that's the only thing this poem needs.
good luck. please take a second look and push on.
let me know if you have any questions.
Hello there!
The narrator could simply use 'tasteless cups' which would take away the wordiness, making the poem sharp and concise and also give the sense that they're on the 'you' element's side. They feel the same and understand this feeling.Specifics
1. I feel that this would really benefit from a few changes in structure as it's currently not grabbing my attention enough. It has a very slow and steady tone which sometimes works wonders, but isn't really making strides for you and because I can't resist, I'm just going to flip the first few lines on their head for a moment to try and give you an example. I hope you won't mind my playing with your words!
Headphones and fingers can
only block so much noise
before they drown out your little,
shaking voice.
Basically that rhyme there is one of those wonderful, in your face but not too in your face half rhymes and the structural side of me just really wants to see more made of it and the attention focused there. But this might be because at heart I'm a structure poet and only recently finding my way through the experimental and free verse sides of things.
2. I'd like to see some of these lines be more pro-active as that would give the poem more power. For example, you have 'I bet you wake up every day' but you could take the wordiness away without losing that beautiful uncertainty. It could be something like 'Do you wake up every day'. Just a thought!
3. Wilted flowers is overused and too obvious. What's a way to describe them without it being something you'd usually use for flowers? For example, you might say that a carpet is frayed so could the flowers be frayed? It's not the best example but it's a start. Simply think of how you would describe other damaged or dying objects. You would say an old door is peeling so maybe peeling flowers? It's little phrases like this which can make a reader sit up and really pay attention to a poem.
4. Another place you could be more pro-active:
5. I don't feel that the last line fits very well with the rest of the poem. You haven't set it up and it could mean any one of a number of things or all at once. There needs to be a more concrete ending. It can be abstract but still needs to five us something solid to think about. There's this great writer called Dickinson who ends one poem with ''tis like the distance/ On the look of death'. Which means about as much as your last line but is far more powerful because it's unique and because the rest of the poem builds to this and sets it up. If you want to check out the full poem, it's called 'There's a certain slant of light' and I would highly recommend it.
Overall
There's something about this I really like, particularly that opening image/ idea that headphones can't block out all noise. I like all the unsaid words behind that and the picture it gives us of a person who is trying to hide from the world. You've got a really good base here and you just need to make that extra jump to get this to be excellent. It feels like it's at the first draft stage at the moment but has so much potential.
If you do make changes, feel free to ask me to come by and take a second look as I love seeing how poems progress. It helps me with the editing process myself.
Thanks for the read,
Heather xx
Hi again!
I've read quite a few pieces here which allude to the darker aspects of the human mind, and my biggest source of confusion is usually not being able to tell how specific the writer is trying to be. I picture the description of a person who for some reason is not at peace with the reality they are living in. Obviously, this is extremely general and I am going to try to look at this piece from the perspective that this person DOES NOT have a mental illness. I will assume that this is referring to an emotional barrier that this person has separating them from their surroundings. Please tell me if this is incorrect.
I don't understand the line that concludes this piece. You're describing a repeated experience over time, probably the failed notion that things will be okay that gets persistently crushed. Knowing that, I would imagine that the demise of this person is slow and painful, rather than abrupt (which is what you imply). Unless, this "blacking out" is seen as the person's savior from the horrible existence that they live.
Just a nit-pick: I don't like your description of cups as tasteless. Am I missing something? I would think that you are referring to what they are drinking inside the cup, and not that the cups are "tasteless" either literally, or in the sense that they demonstrate a lack of style (because that just wouldn't make sense here).
Keep up the good work!
-Alex