I would not stand and stare
Born with wings, I dream and dare
To fly and mock the mountain's height
To bully and tease the strom's might
And to trespass the omnipresent outline
To outshine the glowing sunshine
Sneak in night to steal the star's glow
Or to catch a thousand or so,
Alas! I could, but am not to fly
Supposed to eat, speak, sleep and die.
I was born with wings
But I was born in a cage
I was born as a girl.
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Normally I don't review short poetry--because it often leaves me with little to say since there seems so little to correct. I hope I can do a satisfactory job for you.
After reading the entire thing, there are a few notable places where the rhythm seemed to just get spliced. You got a typo on storm, that's a simple mend.
Now you have a good thing going by repeating all those lines starting, "To...." but right in the middle of them, you start one with And, and it kind of chops it's cool emphasis into pieces. If you want to start one of them with end, I would suggest saving it for the last one, which would put it on the line about Outshining the glowing sunshine.
There is something also in that line that currently incorporates the And. Saying the outline is Omnipresent is so vague I just can't be certain for sure what you intend to say to me by that. Also, you could choose a stronger word than glowing to describe the sunshine: because that seems just awfully cliche, and doesn't titillate my senses. In poetry, I think we look for the rarities and off-the-cuff's as much as ever.
"Sneak in night to steal the star's glow" - 1) you have used the word Glow in back to back lines. 2) How about, "Sneak under cover of night," or something like that? While it does get the message across, Sneak in night barely works to get my emotion's fired up. 3) do you want stars' plural, or star's singular? it seems to me, by that following line, that you want plural. 4) Speaking of that next line, instead of saying catch, you could say bottle, or say something completely different, and make it a little bit of a narrative. "Go up and swirl among the orbs/ornaments of the atmosphere." I guess it's often a matter of imagining kind of a story to Insert & immerse yourself into. I feel a good poem comes to life when you almost live some kind of fantasy trip during the minutes you are actually shaping the poem. Otherwise the material you have to work with, has little personality in its voice.
"Supposed to eat, speak, sleep and die." - This line jumped out at me. I was visited by the image of a time-lapsed life, sort of from birth to gradual graying & increasingly less & less activity. That's the big hitch with this poem: you don't treat me to enough Illustrations. Would you think about re-drafting this whole thing maybe, keeping the first two lines & the last three lines, but really concentrate on hallucinating a wild and dreamy scene in between that's more idiosyncratic?
Thanks. I will try my best to improve.
Hey Leela, I shall try to review you since I feel like reviewing and your work caught my eye! I won't drag anything on longer than I should so here we go!
First of all, I really like the idea you are going for, though it only became clear in the last line. Poetry can almost always use improvement and I feel this work has a lot of potential for imagery, so if anything I suggest thinking of ways to create that.
I love rhyming in poetry personally, however it can make or break a poem. I encourage practicing rhyming, so I say keep it up! But the point I want to bring up is that, despite simple abab rhyme scheme being completely fine, I would suggest looking for more creative rhymes, as your word choice seemed a bit simple. I don't agree with SakuraTheHuman's last point, the last line is fine to be by itself, but the last two lines above it do throw the rhyme scheme off by being by their selves as well. All I mean is that "ababcde" doesn't sound well as a flowing rhyme scheme.
This may just be me, but in lines 1 and 2, I felt it was a little weird at first, using "would", past tense, then in line 2, "dream and dare" being present tense. It sounds fine after reading it several times, but I wanted to mention that because it's always important to keep the same tense.
SakuraTheHuman and Silberfee both already mentioned the seemly misspelled "storm", because I doubt you were just randomly using a Norwegian word for a farmstead, but what they didn't mention was the flow of the line. You did have the same syllables in both lines, so it is considered correctly done, but reading it, I expected the second line to end with a two syllable word, an example is "de-light" or "mid-night", but then it fell flat. I say this because of the end of the first line, "the-mount-ain's-height" using four syllables, while "the-storm's-might" only used three.
I won't mention anything else Sakura said already because I could agree with the rest of their suggestions. In the first line here, it was a bit long compared to the next (remember, a good constant flow keeps a constant syllable structure within each couplet). The last two lines have a lot of potential that I felt you fell short on! I won't say "do this, do that" but I hope you could find more creative words to express this image. I personally feel "sneak" could be changed, but that's an opinion. My last point here is possibly changing "the star's glow" to "a star's glow" because in the next line, it sounds strange to "catch a thousand or so" of the star's glow. I do think it would sound better to catch star lights instead of star glows however.
Here, I clearly understand what you are saying, however the first line is completely awkward grammatically and in flowing into the next line. I would try to rewrite this, an example could be, "Alas, I would have, if my wings could spread, but chained, I'm only to eat-speak-sleep, until dead." or maybe, "Alas, I would, if free I could fly, but chained like a doll, I'll obey and then die." I'm not the best but I tried to give you some ideas!
Okay. I really like the conclusion you made, and the message it presented. That is why I really liked this poem. However, I felt it was too short, it was too direct in just telling the reader the message instead of letting us figure it out or "get it".
The whole poem gave me a satire feel to it, but like I seem to like saying, it just seemed to fall short. But this poem has so much potential and I saw you are new to the cite, and I hope you continue improving. I can see you making some interesting, entertaining, but genuine poetry and I hope to see more from you soon! I apologize if I sound overly critical, I'm really not! I'm just very observant and I like to take poems piece by piece.
I only have two major tips for you, practice rhyme scheme, and practice imagery!
I hope you have a great day! ^-^
Thanks. English is my second language. Despite reading many novels and books, I am still not fluent in it. But I believe, with the help of some honest reviewers like you, I will be able to improve.
Hi! This is a very touching poem I liked the visual imagery you integrated in the poem:
should be 'sneak in AT night to steal the star's glow.''wings/mountain height,' contrasted with 'I could but not to fly,' but as someone who is not very familiar with Indian culture I would have liked it if you could put some examples of why you were not allowed to 'fly,' so I could have a greater appreciation for the visual imagery. I assume flying is to go out of your home?
Apart from that I just have to grammatical corrections to make:
You misspelled storm in:
We submitted our reviews at the exact same time XD
ah yes I was startled when i found your review just when I returned to the homepage and got a notification
Thanks. I just realise the imagery after reading your review. Indian girls spend the first half of their life in hands of their parents and the second half in hands of their husbands. We always have to take choices which are beneficial to our family. And most of our dreams are crushed for safety reasons.
Thanks. I just realise the imagery after reading your review. Indian girls spend the first half of their life in hands of their parents and the second half in hands of their husbands. We always have to take choices which are beneficial to our family. And most of our dreams are crushed for safety reasons.
I did wonder whether it was referring to the society where a woman can never go out alone and can't take certain jobs (like train to a dr) because then husband will want to marry a woman who is smarter than her ... anyway I would like to know about your culture and how it affects you so I hope you write more!
Hi Leela! I'm Saruka here for a hopefully helpful review of your poem!
Wow. First off, this was great. I loved what it said, and it reminded me of something nearly identical Malala Yousafzai said in her autobiography (I don't know if you read it) but she's been a great inspiration to me, and I see you share some of the same feelings.
You wrote,
Isn't this spelled 'storm's'?
You used the word 'shine' twice, and it kind of stopped the flow a little.
I would suggest adding a 'the' in between the 'in' and the 'night'
You don't need the 'as'.
Lastly, I feel as if you should insert one more line in the end, before "I was born as a girl" because the rhythm feels like it needs one more line. Maybe something like, I was born with wings/But I was born in a cage/I can never fly free/I was born as a girl.
And that's it. I really loved this poem, its layout, and the message it conveyed. This is a very important issue these days, and I loved the way you addressed it.
That's all for now!
Saruka
Thanks. Your review really encourages me.
You're welcome! Any time you need another review, just post a link to it at The Human Reviews Your Stuff!