I am a
straight
white
woman, and
I
am
afraid.
I am afraid to
say what I actually
think
but cannot voice because of
my race or
my gender or
my sexual preference.
I
am
afraid
to talk about
facts because
facts are
racist,
homophobic, and
sexist.
I see
the ideology our ancestors
fought
and
died for
crumbling around us.
I see
us take one amazing step
forward
and then three steps
back.
Today,
I don’t want to be
afraid.
Today
I want you to
judge me
on my
ideas, my
words, and my
opinions and
not
on the body that is
projecting them.
Today,
I want
to stop being
afraid.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Yo. clogs here to review.
I'm going to save my personal thoughts about this for the end, and just review the poem itself for now. So, moving right along:
First, this poem lacks structure. There seem to be clear places where it can be divided into stanzas, but you haven't done that. Stanzas really help with organization. I'd say that any time you have a new "today" would be a good place to make a new stanza, but that's only with all the line breaks. I'm personally not a huge fan of short lines, and it didn't really work for this poem either. They come off as choppy. Poetry doesn't necessarily mean short lines! Try experimenting with longer lines. Longer lines can also make lack of other poetic devices more obvious, so you can edit for imagery and emotion. Poetry is all about experimentation, so just dive in and see what happens.
This poem also just lacks figurative language and emotion. The "emotion" thing is partly because I have zero empathy for the narrator (which is irrelevant anyway), but also because the language just doesn't convey any. This is really bare-bones. So here are a few things you can do to make this more emotional:
1. Make it personal to you. This is incredibly generic. "I am afraid. If I say mean things, people will call me racist." That could be applied to many different people in many different situations. Write about your own experiences. Talk about a time that you felt that "political correctness" stifled your opinions. It's more direct. When writing about broad issues, it's better to look inward to how those things affect us, because that's where the emotion comes from.
2. Use imagery! There's no sensory language in this at all. There's nothing tangible. Tie your emotions into the real world; give readers something to relate to. Again, it's just incredibly bare bones. YWS is full of wonderful poetry resources, so I'm going to direct you to this wonderful Knowledge Base article about imagery that will explain the concept better than I could.
Imagery
Now, one slightly random thing: Don't get preachy.
Preachiness is when you start making the poem about the reader, rather than yourself. Nobody likes being told what to do, especially a die-hard skeptic like me. My immediate reaction to these lines is to say, "Hold up, that's what I was doing in the first place!" It can rub readers the wrong way if you make assumptions about them. It doesn't happen a lot in this poem, but it's definitely in danger of falling into outright preachiness. Instead of saying you want the reader to judge you based on certain things, just say "I want to be judged based on x, y, z." That way, no assumptions are made about the reader. If this didn't make sense, feel free to ask questions. ^^
The part about the "facts" was also preachy in a condescending way, because made the assumption that you, as the narrator, are supremely right and informed about the facts in our world, and as a reader, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I also found the part about the ancestors to be incredibly vague, as I just don't really see the connection between modern social issues and ancestors "fighting and dying" for things? It just didn't connect with the rest of the poem at all to me.
Here's another Knowledge Base link. It's a wonderful article about putting emotion in poetry, and it can help you go into more detail with your editing, if you want to:
Editing for Emotion
Ok, opinion time:
Spoiler
Ultimately, I see the opinions voiced in this poem as kind of whiny. The "political correctness" you speak of is the result of a movement to make LGBT+, POC, and women more visible and respected. We're trying to erase the negative attitudes our society holds, and that involves calling people out on their casual bigotry. Which then, of course, leads to people sighing and reminiscing about the "good old days" when they could be prejudiced without repercussions. To me, this poem is about taking minority issues that are starting to be discussed, and turning it around so that it's still all about you. You are afraid of someone calling you a bigot; as a queer person, I am afraid of literally being murdered on the street. So honestly, to me, the whole "I am afraid" thing is cringey to me. There are other things I could bring up, but I think that covers the gist of it, so I'm just going to leave it.
Hope this review helped.
You seem open to discussion (which is awesome, so thank you), so I wanted to let you know that I am not ignoring your comment. I%u2019m just working on schoolwork right now, so I don%u2019t have the time to formulate a reply that addresses your comment in the best way possible. I am looking forward to a discussion later in the week, if that%u2019s okay with you. Thanks!
-Lemony
Hi there Lemony, it's Gymnast2801 stopping by with a review!
Wow, this is really good! I often enjoy reading on serious topics, such as this, to see what other people's thoughts are. And I assume these are your thoughts? I think the poem is completely true--people are so judgmental these days that you can't say what you really feel without being pounded and judged. Granted, you shouldn't say a bunch of mean stuff, but still, I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
It's very true for race to be judged, gender, and sexual preference. Everyone thinks they know best, or they know the right way to do things, or if someone is even the slightest bit different, they shouldn't be included and should be frowned upon by everyone. Which I believe, is untrue. I dont like judging people. Judging people gets in the way of seeing the good in them, so I try not to. But I'm still human and I still do sometimes, you know?
Anyway, about your poem. As I said, I loved it and I liked it too
I think it flows well, word choice was nice, and I like the little thing you did there at the end with the "Today, I want to stop being afraid.". This poem is like, pointing out the flaws and motivating the reader to stop being afraid. Great, great job with that!
Well, that's about it for me. Please keep writing wonderful things like this!
-Gymnast2801
You just typed up exactly what I wanted to get across to the reader. That really makes me happy because it means you understood everything I was trying to say. Thank you so much for the review and your encouragement!
-Lemony
And yes, they are my thoughts.
Your welcome, I'm glad I could help! And your writing is really good so I'd say that's how you expressed your thoughts so well
Oh, and also, welcome to YWS! I just realized you where new XD