Ah, I'm just reading this now somehow?
This is a really strong poem Blue, and everyone who said the message is golden is absolutely right.
Here's some thoughts:
Your stair step rhyming/repetition with these three lines is really interesting, and makes it really catchy sound-wise- like at this point in the poem, I was thinking it'd be a really dynamic spoken word piece. I don't know if this was edited from when the first couple reviews were written, but I would say your enjambment is actually really good - because it succeeds in making the reader read more quickly at a crucial part in the poem, and also creates a skippy rhythm from the hidden repetition. - The repetition would be annoying if it fell in the same place of the line each time, but it stays interesting because it switches up.
laughter. And I know I look crazy. I know people think,
that girl is weird. And I know if could curl in on myself,
hold myself in, things might be easier. But I'm bad at fitting
into too- narrow shoes. Fitting keys into locks. Smiling
^ The wrapping the rhymes in the middle and ends of the lines, through repetition sort of amps up the pace of the piece - because you're breaking up the lines in different ways each time the phrase repeats, I think this makes the last 3 lines fall a little slower too, because the reader isn't caught by enjambment anymore.
Yeah I think the formatting of all this was just perfect, and a poem about imperfection would be kinda hypocritical if all the lines were 100% even I think, so I even like the paragraph poetry look pushed into one stanza, because it's a bit more rebellious, and lets readers appreciate those line-breaks.
I liked the imagery throughout because it was really specific, but also completely relateable. Like gosh I'm sick of flats killing my feet, and overthinking pictures. And I think a whole lot of people can relate to those images/moments. I like that rather than just saying, "sometimes I'm self-conscious of pictures I'm in" you showed what that looks like - so you did a good job "showing" rather than "telling" creating a really vivid feeling in the first few lines of the poem, that the reader could share with the speaker / and then have their expectations of the mood/tone of the poem change as the poem concluded to it's positive ending.
A little critique:
I really like the parallelism in the poem from the first to second halves, but there were two parts I thought could be improved. I wish that the escalators / stairs had made some sort of reappearance at the 2nd half of the poem like the other images did, even in using like "ups and downs" language or something - because declaring boldly "I struggle with escalators!" doesn't seem as brave & significant comparatively to the rest of the poem which sort of heightens into a "I'm going to be me, whether or not that fits in." So that for me wasn't quite as full circle, but I did like how you used the rest of the images. I also think you could have had a line in the first half that demonstrated the "Loving with anything less than my whole heart" - because I'm not sure the escalators or picture-taking quite got there , and it seems like there must be some sort of similar type of image you could get in that would lead into that conclusion at the end.
Overall, this is a really well written poem, but also one that is enjoyable to read, and I think impactful. Well done Blue, I'm happy that I stumbled across this now, even if it's a few months late.
- alliyah
Points: 144000
Reviews: 1228
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