Hey Alice! Here to leave a review for your poem.
This poem has a very unique internal conflict portrayed - I took the poem to be a lament of a speaker that really wants to let their real feelings out, but they are afraid of that real-ness - of how that could consume them or hurt them in other ways if they were that honest, they decide ultimately they do want to be open and reveal who they are - and they don't consider themselves lost in this respect, but instead they see themselves as free.
I think the unique and unexpected thing about this poem is that there's a lot of danger portrayed with how the speaker is reflecting on showing themselves to the world. In the first and second stanza you use the image of fire to describe how it would look for their truth to be out - I would love to see that fire image incorporated into the 3rd stanza too in order to draw out that metaphor even more. You do a good job of using a little flight / bird imagery throughout, and I think this could even be a place to consider expanding on is that comparison.
You used a very elevated word choice for this, with some of the words very formal and archaic, which gave a certain "weightiness" to the poem that makes it seem even more serious - but it also gives a certain distance because the words seem less lived in and more for the sake of poetic point than organically occurring.
A few places where you may want to take a second look at the word choice - just as I was reading through...
- I enjoy the alliteration of "frustrating / flickering" here - but usually I relate "Frustrating" with more of an "annoyed" feeling rather than a fearful / horrified / deeply conflicted feeling - since this is the first line of the poem it sets the tone up for what the reader is expecting - I might take a second look at that I think.Frustrating was the flickering conflict of the heart.
- this is another good use of alliteration - but "Puerile" is quite a rare word, I actually had to look it up to double check that I knew what it meant - the passive phrasing here where the description comes before the speaker or action causes a little bit of distance too.Puerile me used to fear the inferno of fondness
But the choice of being scorched or immolate was beyond us...
I think "immolate" should be "immolated" here as it's a verb - so read the way you have it, it makes it seem like the speaker is the one who is going to burst into flames.
Oh, the dreaming grey is too beautiful to remember this meaningless fight!
This line confused me a little bit - was the "dreaming grey" in reference to the ashes in the sky or the askes made by something else, or that a reference to something entirely different.
Overall I really like how you created an ambience of spookiness and threat within the poem - I think you might experiment with ways to make the poem feel more personal - maybe even by trying to write a version without the rhyme scheme to see if that gives you some freedom / ideas, and then adding the rhyme scheme back in if you think it's worth it to keep in.
Thanks for sharing!
alliyah
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Reviews: 1217
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