My shoes fit snugly on my feet,
My legs turned out, I will not cheat
The rules I use to improve technique.
And to the tops of my toes I go.
My pointe shoes carry me, ever gliding.
The fear and the pain I can feel residing
Are gone and it's just the silk shoes sliding
Gracefully over the floor.
Dancing eases emotional pain,
Which in turn, serves, as emotional gain.
But physical fatigue is falling like rain,
And this dance takes its toll on my body.
As I lift my feet, they hurt and ache,
If I sickle my ankles I know they'll break,
How much more pain can my body take?
But it's more painful not to dance.
My arms cut smoothly through the air,
My limbs stretch so far it's almost unfair
To those who never dream, or ever dare,
To defy gravity as I do.
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139,359 Literary Works • 672,540 Reviews
Hi, DefyingGravity! Happy Review Day.
RachelLeeAnn here to review!
I love this piece. I'm not a dancer, but my sister is. I've heard her speak of the passion and the rush of dancing, and I feel you've portrayed that very well.
I want to take a second to nitpick a technicality here:
It is not required of you to capitalize the beginning of every line. When you do this, it's a little bit distracting to the readers. It throws off the rhythm. If you used the correct capitalization throughout this whole piece, the rhythm would be marvelous.
Overall, the theme and style of this poem is great! I really enjoyed it. I especially love this last stanza:
I'm a sucker for a good title-clincher
Keep writing!
Rae^^
This is a beautiful poem - is it from personal experience? I take ballet classes, and this is a lovely way to put the feeling of dance into words - the shift from pain to beauty and back again. And it made me think... are pain and beauty really just two different sides of the same idea?
Nitpicks
I'll just quote the poem with my suggestions in it, and you can use as many or as few as you'd like.
My favorite part, by the way, is the very last line.
I have one more suggestion - in some parts it seems forced, for some reason. Especially in the third stanza. Consider rewording it in a more relaxed way; and try to make more use of showing the feelings in your poem, rather than explaining what's happening.
I hope you find that helpful, sorry for the long review
I loved this poem. It is well written, and will only need a few corrections that I am going to put in this review. Okay, my name is GreenTulip, and I am here to give you a review. So here it goes.
1. Punctuation in your stanzas. This is how you should know when to put punctuation. Whenever your idea ends is when you place a period.
2. Be careful not to repeat the same type of words over and over again. Okay, I will admit, that I am not one who will follow this, but it is just a piece of advice for you.
Okay, I'm done. Good night.
I do agree, watching ballet dancers, it seems like you have the secret of defying gravity.
I get the sense that keeping the rhyme and rhythm in this poem is important to you. But I also get the sense that there's so much more you can and say and do between stanza 2 and 4, to really sell the motion, movement and...well flying. Can you show me more, how you defy gravity?
You mean 'snug'? They can be snug or fit snugly. The former messes up the rhythm, which I think was what you were trying to avoid.
If your pain is residing, and gone, then it shouldn't be an issue yet again. I'm not quibbling, just pointing out things that cause a jar to the (logical) continuity of a piece.
I have to ask again -- must you restrict your stanzas to four lines?
I hope this makes sense. One thing I did feel was your passion, and the dancer's.
So thank you.
Yeah I definitely see what you're saying. I didn't want to add another stanza because I didn't want to make the poem tedious to read. I'll fix the "snugly" error so the line is "My shoes fit snugly on my feet" and I hope that makes it better. I will definitely consider adding in another stanza. What I meant by the pain going away, it was more emotional pain. The next stanza talks about the physical pain. When dancers are supporting their weight on nothing but their first three toes and looking graceful while doing it, it means pain. So I'll fix those. Thanks so much
Hello Defying Gravity,
Wow! The title of the poem that you just submitted really fits with your name. Anyway, this is Magenta here to review. I like this poem a lot and I cannot wait to see more of this floating around in YWS. Here are just a few suggestions I have for you as you continue on writing.
"My legs turned out, I will not cheat" I would first like to suggest putting a period at the end of this line because it seems as if this the end of the sentence. But I was slightly confused by the wording of the line, "my legs turned out". It doesn't seem like a natural position and it doesn't seem necessary.
"My pointe shoes carry me, ever gliding." I understand that this was deliberate but you forgot to add the d on the end of "pointe" so that it says pointed.
"My pointe shoes carry me, ever gliding.
The fear and the pain I can feel residing
Are gone and it's just the silk shoes sliding
Gracefully over the floor."
I would suggest adding some commas after "residing" and "gliding" as well.
"As I lift my feet, they hurt and ache,
If I sickle my ankles I know they'll break,"
I don't think that you need to say,"If I sickle my ankles I know they'll break," because anyone who cuts their ankle would surely feel pain. I think that you wee trying to show how sore they were and how weak they were, but I would try something else.
Other than that, I think you wrote a beautiful poem and I hope to see more of it today!
~ Magenta
P.S. I hope I helped...
Yeah... you completely got this wrong. "Legs turned out" is correct because this is about ballet. One of the techniques in ballet is about keeping the legs and feet turned out. "pointe shoes" is correct because that's what ballet dancers wear. Ballet is French, so there is an e at the end of "pointe". Sickling the ankles doesn't mean to cut, it's a term use for when a dancer is on releve (on their toes) and bends their ankles outward. Because the dancer "sickles" their ankles, paired with them being en pointe, they break. See? And the first to lines you told me about how I should add a period. The whole first sentence is: "My shoes are snugly on my feet,
My legs turned out, I will not cheat
The rules I use to improve technique."
That part was about how the narrator is not going to cheat the rules of technique.
I appreciate the review and the tips that you gave me, but because of the dance terms that I used, they weren't very relevant. However for further poems I will be sure to keep these points in mind.
-Gravity