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140,265 Literary Works • 673,077 Reviews
Hi there, Stringbean!
From what I gather, this seems to be a poem about contrasting expectation with reality. I get a strong sense of longing from the speaker here, especially with the "If I were" being repeated.
Language
My first impression of this poem is that it feels like a list poem, almost, with the images being less directly connected together than you'd expect. It's not a bad thing at all, it's just an interesting quirk. However, when I looked closer there seems to be a comparison between 'the human' and 'the non-human' throughout most of the poem, with the human often coming out on the unfavourable side of the comparison, like with the sparrow and hunter. Of course, that seems to have been subverted with the hamster in the wheel, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
There seems to be two recurring motifs that alternate with each stanza: the sea and the land, for instance, the first stanza has "seawater", the second, "unspoken ground" and the elephant, while the fourth stanza returns briefly to "the already returning wave". Again, the hamster stanza breaks that pattern a bit, since the hamster's in a wheel, which to me doesn't give very earthy connotations.
I liked the word choices for verbs, generally, as they create a strong sense of desperation. "clambering" and "cradling" were my favourites.
Structure
The main structural technique here seems to be the repetition of this syntactic structure I've quoted, which does give the poem a longing feel. The tension and anticipation also builds up with each stanza given this kind of structure.
I agree with the other reviewers that the ending might be a bit anti-climactic. This may be just me, but I feel like I've seen that ending line in a lot of poetry, which could make it come across as a cliché.
My suggestion would be that perhaps this poem doesn't need an extra 'ending' line. "If I weren't. . . " already seems to work as a climatic turnaround and ending, if you added the word 'only' there just to make it more like a 'full' sentence.
Miscellaneous
The way you indented the last line of each stanza does give the poem an interesting shape! I think it lets you divide up the stanzas pretty nicely without having a whole space between them, which is probably useful if you intended for this to be a 'small'-looking poem.
That's all
Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!
Cheers,
-Lim
Thank you! This is helpful c:
Damn boy! or girl(I could be wrong). Well for starters I am new to this but your words hit home. I absolutely loved every bit of your poem. I think it was absolutely beautiful.
Thanks! (And girl, yeah
)
Hi, Spearmint here for a review! First off, I love the title of this poem, and how the apology isn’t written explicitly (instead, the reader sort of has to infer it). Also, I really liked the line about the hunter (especially the “finding over and over again only another tree” part) because I can really visualize the hunter searching in the forest, straining his eyes to find game, but only seeing tree after tree.
Similarly, your lines about the villager are also quite vivid. And the part about the “already returning wave” implies that the villager’s efforts were futile, without having to specifically tell the reader so. So, great job there!
Next, sort of adding on to what silented said, perhaps you could slow down the ending a little? By that I mean doing something like,
“Then maybe, just maybe...
I’d be enough.”
This is totally optional though, I really like your poem the way it is right now! Honestly it was hard to find anything to critique here
Overall, this is an amazing poem! Keep writing!
Thanks! I'm planning to work with the ending a little more in another revision, so that's helpful. Thanks for the review!
It would be so cool if you added a piece of wisdom at the end. Something you needed to learn when you were younger. Just a thought.
I do feel like it needs something better for the end, yeah
Stringbean, you did a really good job on this <3
Thank you <3
<33 I love the formatting! Where did you make it?
Thanks! In Google Docs. I couldn't get the formatting right for YWS, so I just took a snippet and posted that lol
ah ok lol