you have this way of looking at me
that is never really looking,
you
go over my body
as if committing it to memory,
as if I didn’t know any better
this is not the gaze of a lover
but the scrutiny of a student.
So you read my lines and write my footnotes,
making me your favorite disquisition
a beautiful paraphrase of a vile verse.
You chew on my words but spit something foreign,
making me a french poet and spiritual sorrow
a misspell of visceral pain
you have this way of touching me
that is never really touching,
you
fiddle with my corners
as if you’re turning pages
as if I didn’t know any better
this darkness is mine to survive and not yours to sacrifice
on the altar of the damned.
And damned be indeed
Baudelaire
and the rest of your french poets
or whoever it was that made you so
sentimental my darling,
you really don’t know any better
there are no flowers to my evil.
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,740 Reviews
Hey Levi! (Is it cool if I call you Levi? Short for Leviari?)
Hope you're doing well. I'm here to review your poem as requested, so let's start, shall we? I apologize if I get anything wrong in this review because I'm not the best when it comes to reviewing poems.
AnYwAYs-
I like how free your poem is. It doesn't follow any ruling - the capitalization is funky, the lines are funky, everything is funky, but the meaning behind the poem itself is very... ah... what's the word?
Dramatic.
Now, if you think about it, funky and dramatic don't exactly go well together. They usually do, but in this case, you have dramatic and romantic, but then when we're reading the lines... it's all funky.
(I'm saying funky a lot. Sorryyy.)
But anyways. It doesn't exactly match. Maybe if you structured it in a neater way?
Well, your vocabulary is top-notch but two places where it seemed to go down a little was here:
and,
Like the previous two reviewers said. "Go over" doesn't exactly fit with all the fancy wording you have everywhere else and neither does "fiddle". I'm sure you can find different words that have more emotions!
Overall, great poem! You can definitely improve much more on this and shine it. It's like raw diamond. You need to give it a good polishing until it shines like a star.
Keep on writing!
~Hedwiggle Potter
Heya! Yes Levi is fine ahah x
Thank you so much for your review, I totally get what you are saying. I was very insecure about this poem, now I'm glad I published it and got feedback like yours. I'll work on it! Thanks a lot!
Hey Leviari. I am here to give a short review.
Let start!
First of all, I really love your poem. As Liminality said, this peom has dramatic parts that make this poem unquie. And the title has it's own beauty, so great job.
Secondly, I suggest you captalize the words that starts the stanza. You are captalizing accordning to you setences, but in readers view it make us bit confused. But since it part of poet's freedom to do that, this is not a strong advice.
And as the reviwer before me suggested, it might me better if you change "fiddle" to another word. In my opinion, you should change it, for other parts of your poem has discribtive words.
Lastly, I quite enjoyed your poetry, and the illustration that give me a picture of romance.
Above all, it's a wonderful poetry you wrote there.
P.S I haven't read much of romance peom, so I don't really know if it suppose to be this way.
Thank you
>Keep on writing
Your reader, ChrisDixon
Thank you so much for stopping by! I'm focusing on improving my poem according to your very valid suggestions, I hope the right inspiration strikes soon ahah. Thank you again x
Hi there!
1.) I thought you've given the subject of the poem an interesting take. Lots of people talk about fantasy v.s. reality in relationships, but using this student v.s. lover dichotomy has an irony in it, that the 'romantic' and 'sentimental' person behaves so mechanically and "doesn't know any better", which makes this piece unique.
2.) I really liked the development of the extended metaphor: going from the cold scholarly imagery with a somewhat mocking tone in "beautiful paraphrase", then highlighting the problem in this narrative with "misspell", then escalating it to "sacrifice" on altars makes the images dramatic.
3.) The capitalisation seemed a little inconsistent to me. I think it's because you're trying to use capital letters based on where the 'sentences' in the poem begin and end - an admirable attempt to stick to conventional grammar in poetry! - but it sort of confused me when reading because I kept instinctively trying to pause longer for lines beginning with capitals, which distorted the rhythm for me.
4.) Could there perhaps be a better word for "fiddle"? To me at least, somehow someone fiddling with the corner of a page doesn't seem to fit the overall image of this student obsessed with turning their subject into a fantasy. . .
These are just suggestions, though. Overall, I enjoyed this piece, with all its twist and turns and the distinct voice you've used. Hopefully you'll find some of my comments helpful.
Cheers
-Liminality
thank you so much for your review, I truly appreciated your insights and your suggestiona are very helpful! I'll definitely look more into capitalisation and I agree.. I wasn't very fond of my choice with the term "fiddle" myself... we'll see if I can come up with something better. Thank you again!
You're very welcome! I'm happy it helped.