Our Hearts are Leaves

Hey Kazeybear,

I've read a few of your works and one thing that I find that connects all of them is that 1.) You have an excellent handle with flow, meter, and rhyme. That is wonderful, it makes your pieces easier to read and digest and also pleasing to the ear.

Also 2.) You always have something to say about the world around you, a moral or truth or snippet story woven into your lines that allow your pieces to deliver whatever message it is in a satisfying way.

Those two things are great. Not a lot of writers can accomplish those things and it is apparent that you are practiced in this. In "Our Hearts are Leaves" we have a connection between hearts, leaves and the innocence of life. The piece is simple and the tone reflective and contemplative. For me though, it is boring.

It could be I am not the right audience for these poems, but it all depends on what your aims are, if it is communication, there is not much left for me to critique. If your aims, like mine are writing poems that speak of personal truths, that take care in observations and creating impactful imagery, poems that show an experience rather than trying to relay a moral, than that would be my biggest suggestion for this piece.

Maybe focus less on ending with a moral, which can be somewhat stale and forced and to focus more on relaying an experience through showing: what you can see, touch, taste, smell and feel. It makes a difference when you show me something and allow ME to come up with my own interpretations, say an image of a person with a heart made of leaves and a narrative behind it, than when you give me an image and tell me its interpretation. That becomes too rigid with not much room left to interact with.

I hope this helps.

~ Audy

'Ello Kazeybear! Rose here for a review and/or state of opinion.

I haven't really read or review anything for a while so excuse me if this isn't the best comment you receive. Heh...

First off I want to congratulate you on the wonderful imagery you created in my mind with the words you used. There isn't a lot critiquing needed, though there is some. It was a short cute poem explaining a strong feeling/meaning. I feel like it flowed pretty well in fact. Fall is my favorite season ever, so using the imagery with this season was really appealing to me.

I think the crimson of leaves,

floating on the brisk autumnal air,

corresponds to our hearts.

When leaves get old,

they redden, right?

Our hearts do the same.

Hey, clogs here to review.

I'm a huge sucker for fall-related imagery, and I thought the metaphor between leaves and hearts was definitely an interesting one to make. However, I feel like you missed some parts of the metaphor. The comparison you're making is this: Like leaves changing colors in the fall, hearts change over the span of time and become corrupted. That can work, but it feels kind of incomplete to me. This poem kind of ignores that the changing of the leaves is part of a natural cycle, and that the leaves will come back green again in the spring. It's almost like you're describing the color change as irreversible. Perhaps each generation of leaves represents a new generation of people, born anew, and the tree is like the world that holds them all? I think if you could add something about it being a cycle, then it might make the metaphor more complete.

I also think you could describe the things that lead to corruption. You kind of jump straight in saying "we are impure" without stating why. That's a pretty big claim to make. Why is that the case? Maybe compare the evils of the world to the colder weather or something.

A big part of what made this poem interesting was unstated, so I'm not sure if it was intentional, but I got a sense of the inevitability of change from this poem. You can set a goal to be "green" forever, but ultimately, you'll turn brown just like all the other leaves, and then a new generation will pop up and go through the same thing. I have no idea if that was your intention, but that's what I got from it, and I find it interesting.

There's also room for improvement on the imagery in this poem. Seasons are a very tangible thing that we experience, so don't hesitate to describe the sensations and colors! I don't really feel an atmosphere of fall from this, which is a shame because there's clearly lots of room to build up the seasonal imagery! And don't lean on adjectives too much if you choose to do so-- listing adjectives tends to be kind of on-the-nose in poetry. Try to say what you want to say without actually saying it, if that makes any sense.

Overall, I think you should a) play off the cyclical nature of the leaves and b) work on your imagery and how you'll describe things. I hope this review helped, and if you have any questions, ask away! Thanks for sharing this!

Hey, Sheyren here for a review! This was a nice poem, and I enjoyed it a lot! Onto the review!

First, can I just say that "autumnal" was an awesome word? Like, really. I've never heard it before. At first, I thought it was a typo or something, but no! I learned that it wasn't. So, yeah. I totally will use this word for the rest of my life. Thank you for the addition to my dictionary.

For grammar, this poem was perfect. That's the nice thing about poetry. It really is loose on rules. You don't need to follow many rules. One thing that i noticed was how you used tildes as spacers. Usually, in novels, this signals a change in setting. I understand this is a poem, not a novel, but every time I saw it, it confused my brain. Not too big of a deal, just a small thing.

I want to say that I loved the topic of this poem. It was a popular topic for a poem, but comparing it to leaves made it unique. And really awesome. It convinced me to follow you.

Overall, awesome poem! Keep writing, and I can't wait to read more of you works (and looking at the side bar, I have a lot of options)!

-Sheyren