Hey there Leviari! I'm here for the review you requested in my thread. I haven't read any of your work before, so I'm excited to check this one out.
(Do note that this is my first review in 2 months, and my first poetry review since I don't even know when, so bear with me haha.)
I actually really like this poem. I enjoy short poems that have one central image/metaphor a lot. This one in particular works well because it gets at a very specific feeling without having a lot of details about your specific circumstances. It makes the piece very relatable - I know for sure I have had the feeling before of swinging wildly back and forth between two emotional extremes, or with never being able to satisfy either myself or someone else because what I'm supposed to be keeps changing all the time.
I find myself wondering about the "I am not unhappy" line more than any other line of the poem. It seems to me like feeling unsteady would be the root cause of feeling unhappy - it's not that the narrator isn't unhappy, just that they've finally figured out why they're unhappy. It doesn't quite make logical sense, but it does make me think about other possible interpretations, so I can't decide whether to say it's something I would change or not. It really depends on what you're aiming for and how literal you want to be.
I also like how short the lines are in the first stanza. To me it helps convey how the narrator feels disjointed, going back and forth between each extreme. It's a shame that that pattern doesn't really work for the second stanza - that might be something I'd look at rearranging. I think the punctuation is fine as it is, but you should feel free to experiment with it and pick the punctuation style you like best.
Similarly, if it were me, I'd probably go for my personal favorite style of capitalization in these sorts of personal, emotional poems, which is capitalizing nothing except I. So I'd leave the "maybe" uncapitalized, to sort of show that this an informal and personal reflection, and that the person writing this isn't very self-confident. (When I'm writing *really* insecure poems, I'll sometimes not even capitalize the "I"s.) But this is really a personal preference unique to each poet, and your job is to experiment with those different styles until you find what you like.
I apologize for the lack of concrete suggestions in this review - this is a short enough poem that leaves enough ambiguous that it doesn't quite feel right to tell you to do something this way or that. I definitely enjoyed reading it, though, and I look forward to seeing you around the site. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions about what I said!
Good luck, and keep writing!
Points: 90000
Reviews: 1085
Donate