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125,020 Literary Works • 672,733 Reviews
Hi, again!
By stanzas, then! First stanza, second line - nix the chameleon bit. Reads much smoother that way. I love the "someone else's breath" bit. On "inhaling"/"exhaling" bit - I'm not sure, did you mean to write them that way, or are they reversed? The last four lines - something isn't quite sitting correctly within them as a whole. The final two lines' repetition of "air" I don't like - I want one to be "breath", or a different word altogether.
Second stanza, second line - "hum's and ha's"? I keep wanting to read that as "hem's and ha's", and I would imagine you do mean "hum," but it's distracting.
In general, I'm finding this stanza to simply have too many words and too many things going on, like, here:
and I would watch, catching snippets
playing songs with fragments till each line made sense
I want to take that and do something like this, to trim it down and make it easier both to follow and to read:
and I would watch, catching snippets
of songs played in fragments till each line blends
See? There's a few more spots you can do that.
I keep wanting to see the word "dissonant", since you have so many music references and all you need for dissonance are two notes that don't quite go together.
I don't like "tunes" in that stanza, either. You've been using music terminology, and "tunes" comes across as entirely lay - I'd rather see something else there, even just "music" sounds better than "tunes," I think.
Ok, third stanza, I think you simply have too many metaphors going on all at once for them to be effective. The simplest example is this line, "while her contralto anger played a sultry hiss" - if you simply take out "anger" I think it works beautifully.
"ends" is a weak word to be ending the stanza on. I want to see something more dramatic! Even "dies" could work - but not ends. Music doesn't usually just end, but rather cuts off and resonates, so something that echos that a bit would probably work best.
Last stanza... it's not cutting it. If you take out "one" in the final line, it's better, but I'm still not sold on it. Plus, I'm not sure what to do with your combined sight/sound metaphors running through. Both is a bit too much, still, and you need to reference and deal with both simultaneously, I think, if you're going to pull it off. Otherwise, I'd recommend sticking to just one.
I didn't expect to see the music imagery, but I definitely enjoyed it, and it made me miss playing in an orchestra, so kudos to that! Happy editing, and PM me if you need anything.
Mesh
This is pretty good. I think it does need some editing though. I like the theme, very poetic and cryptic. I was confused the first time I read it. Come to think of it, I'm still a little confused.
You've used some nice, fancy figures of speech I'm too tired to identify, but it's a good poem overall.
I'd be a good YWS'er and leave a proper review but it's late where I am and I have tons of homework to complete and my mind is spinning from studying about ancient civilizations. But I will be back! I think.
-Day