Published April 9, 2017
I look down at the ground
and see 20 pairs of shoes
all different
Cowboy boots on the professor
Ugg boots on the straight-laced blonde
Vans on the girl with the Disney tattoo
What does this mean?
Can you judge a person by their shoes?
Can you judge a book by its cover?
maybe the teacher lives on a farm and owns a horse
perhaps the blonde orders an iced soy latte every morning
the girl is childish, stuck in the past with cartoons in her head
No.
the professor underwent surgery and nerve endings were damaged
her arm gives out quickly and can't handle a horse ride
the blonde visits Goodwill every other week
her Uggs are five years old and she can't afford Starbucks
the girl got the Disney tattoo three weeks ago
two days before her dad died. "Shine On", it says,
in Disney font, to remind her of her father's love
Don't judge a book by its cover.
Nothing is as it seems.
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139,836 Literary Works • 672,776 Reviews
Hey there AshleyT13 and Happy Review Day. It's just Lizzy dropping by real quick, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.
The idea that you're toying with here is a very deep and serious one but the means you used to get with it, took away all the seriousness and deepness. I get the reasoning for making it so silly and stupid and having the imagery dance around but I really takes away more than it gives. I was more distracted by trying to focus on one aspect of the darn imagery, than I was focused on the actual point of the poem. This has been well picked over but there's much more that I'd like to comment on before I go on my way.
There's little or no flow here, which was a real deterrent to me and is something I know always drives people away from works. The punctuation elements of this piece are spotty at best, and that's being nice about it. Sometimes you will have the correct commas and periods. But then I skip down to the next line and it's either excessive or missing in some way. I think lightsong already covered this pretty heavily so I'm just going to hope he explained the specifics.
The bouncing around between ideas was confusing enough but the comparisons you decided to use also tripped me up. Somehow you jumped from comparing different types of shoes (guessing this was a poke at the relationship between clothes and personality). Then you move onto trying to get the reader to feel sorry for someone using a mirage of sorts. Like taking the complaining person and making them into this kind person at heart. But everything moved by too quickly for me. I think you really just need to slow it down a bit and give the reader time to process everything.
That's really all I've got to say for now. If you have any questions about this review, feel free to drop me a line.
Have a nice day.
~Lady Lizz
Lieutenant Knight of the Grwen Room
Hey, Ashley,
I like the premise of this poem -- it's always a worthy topic to discuss why we shouldn't judge people by how they look. And for some reason, the concept never seems to get to people unless they have specific examples to refer to, which is what your poem provides in the explanations of these people's "real" lives.
That said, is there more that you can do with the way you present the sentences? Right now they are pretty straightforward, the way you would write them in any prose piece. Poetry allows for more flexibility in trying to get the biggest emotional reaction possible. For example, instead of saying the professor underwent surgery, could you say that his shoe laces were tangled in scalpels and forceps and that his damaged nerve endings met scars crossing his chest? You get the same information: surgery, damaged nerve endings. But you also get interesting images (intertwined tools, shapes of the scars) as well as an emotional suggestion (being intertwined means he can't get away from the surgery, he can't escape that past or his scars).
I hope these thoughts make sense to you! If you have any questions/comments feel free to PM me or reply here.
Thanks for sharing, and good luck!
Hannah
Hey there, I'm just going to leave some of my thoughts here on your lovely poem.
I think you did succeed in turning a kind of used phrase "judge a person by there shoes" and really going deep into what it means, making the reader really consider it.
I liked the specificity throughout the piece, rather than just saying "name brand" you gave the reader a specific reference "uggs" etc -- this is a good way to build up imagery and show rather than tell the readers what is happening.
One thing that could be worked on a bit is consistency as far as capitlization. While you certainly don't need to capitalize the first letter of every sentence, or line, or what have you (because it is poetry after all) it is nice to keep it consistent. So in the first stanza you kind of switch back and forth capitalizing first lines, then you capitalize all the first words of the sentence, and then suddenly there's no capitalization anywhere. This looks a little less tidy on the page and can potentially confuse or distract readers. So, I would pick one capitalization method and stick with it for the piece. Spelling and other grammar choices seemed fine though!
I liked the continued specificity in the second to last stanza, where you really pull at the heart-strings of a reader. I liked all the references and continuity from the stanza before. Although one reference I didn't quite get was the "shine on" at the end. Perhaps this is something that has personal meaning to the speaker, but I couldn't quite decipher its significance.
Overall, lovely poem, with an important message. Nice work!
~alliyah
(Please let me know if you have any questions regarding my review, and I'd be happy to answer!)
this is a very interesting one
Hey, I'm here to leave a quick review!
The first stanza pretty much hooks me. I'm interested in reading where it leads me with the shoes being seemingly not matching with the wearers. I can see how the poem would explore this more.
Then I read this,
and chuckle in my mind. Not that I think it's a bad line, it's just that its originality comes off in a humorous way. Okay, I can't explain in what way it is humorous, but it is somehow. The line follows is this,
I would suggest you to remove it. You have this strong, original metaphor that is shoes, and here you try to relate it with the words of wisdom, 'don't judge a book by its cover'. They're both related, yes, but the focus seems to be divided, and I'm left to wonder which imagery is supposed to be more strongly imprinted in my mind - the shoes, or the book?
I love how you tell us about the stories of the professor, the blonde, and the girl, and I think each story can have its own stanza. From there, you can focus more on that, using more loaded words to make each story more poignant. The professor, for example. I understand her wearing the cowboy boots have a connection with her horse riding, but since she can't handle a horse ride, why are she still wearing them? What's the significance?
The story about the girl is the most well-rounded, in my opinion, because there's motivation and its simplicity brings out the sincerity in it easily.
For the last stanza, yeah, same suggestion: drop the book cover reference. You have the shoes; use them. It's a fresh take of how we can't judge someone by their appearance, and while you may use the book cover reference as the basis for this, you still need to make it your own with your own delivery and perspective.
Overall, I think the message of this poem is important, and minus the book cover reference, the execution is good enough to earn a Like from me. Keep up the good job!
I love this poem. The message of it stands out well and is perfectly conveyed. The only issue I found is some punctuation and capitalization is inconsistent. While poetry does not have to have neither capitalization nor punctuation, it is a bit off to me. I think this is because many lines are capitalized while others are not, and periods are missing in places while punctuation is spot on in others. This isn't a major issue, though. Once again, I love this poem and I am glad that you wrote it, nice job.