10,000 Steps

Hey Blue!
Here to review,

My first impression is thinking of my own mother doing her little morning workout routines etc. so I definitely felt like I could connect to the themes of this poem from the beginning. I have a few suggestions that I'm going to jump through.

1.When the speaker is talking about reclaiming youth and going back in time you use the words, "young and soft, with long hair - " I love that you didn't just go with the standard youthful descriptions of unwrinkled skin and shiny pigmented hair - but I think it could be an interesting edition to have one of the details be a nonphysical trait. I mean the concept of the "youthful body" is something I think people can get really obsessed with recovering once they start aging, but other aspects of youth beyond the body -- like freedom, energy, a sense of adventure and carefree abandon I think are other more emotionally pulling aspects.

2. I found the sentence in stanza 2 a bit hard to follow. In the other stanzas I sort of liked the circular logic you used but I think the combination of the words "But", "maybe" and "if" all in one sentence made it a little more tricky to follow the train of logic.

3. The emotional highlights of the poem are the first and last line and the three lines recalling youthfulness - because here we get the personal connection. The other lines are good additions but I would say their more intellectual/philosophical moments in the poem. I think that you might want to balance those two categories a bit more. I'm not a huge math person - so when I see a number I automatically want to read past it (other people really like numbers of course!). I think this poem benefits from having all those little specific logic turns, but if you could a few more human elements or draw out the 3 moments where you're describing the mom character I think it would help readers stay attentive and engaged.
Some ways you could add more to the human elements if have a physical description of the mother at the beginning of the poem, to contrast with the youthful image. You could also even describe the daughter exercising or their own appearance to contrast with the mother.

4. I think flow could be looked at a bit more in this poem. I didn't the first two lines being split that way quite worked - probably because "and said" is a sort of weak line all by itself. In fact you could just get rid of the "and said" part and I think the poem would still make sense. the line that just had "three feet" and then "maybe" also made the flow a bit disjointed for me as well being so short. All the grammar was perfectly fine and I like the way you used hyphens to highlight the repetition of "if a step is only a foot/step" in the last line of the stanza.

Overall/Theme Discussion
Overall, I think that walking forward is a great metaphor to start with for the passing of time and aging. And actually exercise is a really intriguing metaphor for this because often people exercise to reclaim youthfulness or return to a former fitness level - so the metaphor's kind of ironic in that way - because you use it in the opposite direction.

I also liked that this poem felt positive in the end. I personally don't love to read about poems about aging because they're often sad! This one just felt like it stated reality (everyone, including mothers, grow older & age) but you gave the the person who was aging some agency "She only walks forward" -- making the last line a powerful rather than a weak response to life. Thanks for sharing your poem!

Let me know if you had any questions about my review as well!

~alliyah

Hello BlueAfrica! Kara here for a (hopefully) quick review!

Give me your soul.

With that aside, I'm not the best at poetry but here we go!

Bold = grammar and flow issues.
Italics = suggestions and overall
Strikethrough = remove
Underline = krazy Kara komments.

My interpretation:

Overall:

This review courtesy of

Thanks! Maybe I should show this to my mom, it's a poem she might appreciate seeing as she inspired it and you all like it so much... ^_^

~Blue

I thought that this was truly beautiful. I am speechless.

IceCreamMan wrote:This is awesome! I don't agree with Abigail (nothing personal, of course)...the use of "feet" in the poem is perfect. There is no reason to change that; in fact, doing so would cause the poem to lose much of its allure. I wasn't confused by the poem at all, though, at least not in terms of the "feet" and numbers. The last three lines took me a minute to think about, but overall it is a very clear poem, at least on the surface. I don't really have any critique to make of it. I love it the way it is (sorry, I know you probably want to hear about all of the changes you should make, but I wouldn't change anything about it).

The part I like most about it is how you take a very mundane daily activity and smoothly--incredibly smoothly--transition that into a thought about aging, existence, and the inevitable processes of life, which hints at a lot of existential questions, emotions, and dilemmas (at least that's how I viewed it). All without being pretentious! I thought this was beautiful.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it...and yes, I find criticisms helpful (nice ones - mean ones make me cry like a little child, hahaha), but I'm just vain enough to appreciate it when people say, "I love this exactly the way it is!" Who isn't, right? And especially when I like it the way it is...

I was actually surprised that my mother saying that inspired me to write anything at all.... Go figure!

~Blue

This is awesome! I don't agree with Abigail (nothing personal, of course)...the use of "feet" in the poem is perfect. There is no reason to change that; in fact, doing so would cause the poem to lose much of its allure. I wasn't confused by the poem at all, though, at least not in terms of the "feet" and numbers. The last three lines took me a minute to think about, but overall it is a very clear poem, at least on the surface. I don't really have any critique to make of it. I love it the way it is (sorry, I know you probably want to hear about all of the changes you should make, but I wouldn't change anything about it).

The part I like most about it is how you take a very mundane daily activity and smoothly--incredibly smoothly--transition that into a thought about aging, existence, and the inevitable processes of life, which hints at a lot of existential questions, emotions, and dilemmas (at least that's how I viewed it). All without being pretentious! I thought this was beautiful.

And indeed I did mean for it to be that way! What's a poem without some confusion? Haha, just kidding, but anyway, yeah, that was intentional. And actually I already knew how many feet were in a mile, 5,280, because that's just one of the many random things I just know, but I did have to calculate how many days to a certain number of years and vice versa. Glad you liked it!

~Blue

Hi BlueAfrica! Okay, honestly, this is confusing, but it's great once you sit down and think about it. I mean, the message is so unique and beautiful, and the whole, "if a step is only a ..." thing is bewildering. The reader gets confused between the mother's feet and "feet," as in the measurement. However, I appreciate your hard work going and calculating how many feet in a mile and whatnot.

So I think the real way for you to solve the problem is to find some measurement other than feet. Unless, of course, you meant for the poem to be a bit of a confusing tongue-twister.

Overall, great work! I hope this helps!