Wilting Plant in a Black Glass Case

Hello! my name is MagicAce and I am new to this site and don't REALLY no how to review so pleas tell me if I did it wrong.

Okay so for me the beginning counts most for me, threw any peace of work the beginning is most important for me, so here it is, I think your beginning was pretty decent, and alliyah already told you of the grammatical errors that I found so we don't need to go over that but other then the grammatical errors I cant really find a problem with this peace

so keep writing and I cant wait to se what else you have in store.

MagicAce out!

Hey there @SirLight , just wanted to stop by and say I really enjoyed this piece. I was a little worried with the first stanza about the face radiating sunlight, which can sound a bit cliche in some contexts. But I think you made it work. The plant metaphor was illustrative and interesting. And the last stanza really packed a punch.

One small critique is I think in the 2nd to last stanza you meant to write "I want answers" or "I want an answer". But overall I just enjoyed reading the story that this poem had to tell. Great work!

~alliyah

Hi there! This is absolutely amazing. You have a brilliant way with words and wow this completely blew me away.

You have a lot of punctuation in this, which is perfectly fine, but in a few cases, it seems to make your poem feel choppy and shorter than it actually is. I'd say to switch a few periods for commas, such as "so that they would never grow back, so that they would never date to scratch the surface." These ideas are all linked together, and I feel it'd better link the different parts of your poem together if you kept your ideas flowing from the line to the next, not just cutting them off with periods.

I'll try to review this stanza by stanza, so starting off with the first part, I feel like the first "out of reach" and "or, perhaps" is unnecessary since it's only talking about a single idea, not really comparing two different things. If you shortened those last two lines to "out of reach for people with dirty hands like me," then your point still comes across, just in less words. I'd almost recommend you to change the period after sunlight to a semicolon, just to keep te idea of sunlight going and not just ending abruptly before starting again.

The second stanza is really good! Your example of a "black glass case" was so well done, and I love the contrast you build on between shadows and light. Just brilliant! Two things I feel that you should change are: one, "why should you know?" would be better understand as "how could you know?" The use of "should" makes it sound more criticizing rather than reflective, like "could" appears to be. Or at least it does to me. "How" seems to fit better than "why" in my opinion as well.

My second suggestion for stanza two is that for the lines "your light. Your light which is supposed to belong to slender hands, laughing songs," you could combine these into a longer sentence, such as "your light, which belongs, instead, to slender hands and bright songs." I'm kind of perplexed by the use of "laughing songs" since although I understand what you mean by that, I don't think it works as well as another "light" idea. If you're trying to directly contrast the "light" with the "shadow" then you could try to make a different plant reference, or something like that? I hope that makes sense.

Stanza three threw me off some. So this person feels like a plant attracted to the sunlight of another person, but loathes themself so much that they want to basically be abused? I'd almost say to take this idea a different way, instead of "be cold. Be mean" maybe like "Surrond me. Fill me. I need your light" as it does seem that this person desires this so-called "light." They pretty much need it to survive. "You're non-stop. Stop." Maybe instead of just putting "stop" you could include "please stop, don't stop" or something to try to show a struggle since although this person is definitely not very happy, they rely on this person of light.

I don't have much to say about stanza four besides that "demanding answer" should most likely be "demanding answers." Besides that, this part is really well done, and I like how the lines are a little bit longer, and flow better. I also like how you refer back to the plant idea you fhad first established. By giving yourself a more ambiguous subject, you have so much more free rein to add on to this idea of life and light, instead of being stuck using only one way to convey it. Bravo.

Stanza five is really good as well, but I feel like the first couple of lines are too short. If you combined "Answers. Yes, I want answers," then this idea can flow better and remain more in tact, instead of separated into pieces. The other issue I have with this stanza is that "tell me what you feel" doesn't match with "if it's yes" and "if it's not." I really like that whole "comparing both sides" thing you've got going on, but I think you need to modify "tell me what you feel" into something easily answered with a yes or no statement. Maybe like "tell me if you feel awful when you see..." just so you can link your lines together better.

The last stanza takes the cake! "I don't want to hide a wilting plant." I think if you added "as" to make it "as a wilting plant" you are able to then keep the whole first person-centric structure intact. And the last two lines are absolutely amazing.

Sorry I wrote this long of a review XD. I hope this helped! You have a brilliant poem here!