colors

Hello, steampowered here with a review! I haven’t read the other reviews, so these are just my own opinions and thoughts on the piece.

First of all, can I just say how much I loved this poem? I read it, liked it, read it again, went to like it again… and then remembered that I’d already liked it. This definitely deserves to be featured though!

I really like the freshness and uniqueness of this poem. I never really thought of colours as representing things before – apart from the usual red for anger, blue for sadness, yellow for happiness kind of thing.

One thing leapt out at me as possibly needing revising:

she spoke in the color brown, matter of fact and ready to learn

attentive and ready to take in all the information she can

I love how you use the colors. This is a very interesting and meaningful piece of literature. There's only one thing that bothers me and it's the line "bright and loud and not afraid to tell everyone" What do you mean? Well what I mean is what do you want to tell everyone? I feel like if you expanded on that then things would be so smooth. Other than that the descriptions, personification, and the literature used in this are spectacular. This really is one of the best pieces of literature that I've have ever read. The actions in the poem went so well then suddenly it took a turn for the worse with the last stanza. The last stanza really stood out to me and it made me feel some type of way that I can't explain. Keep up the good work!

Ok, I’m not really sure where to start with this one.
So I’ll just go with the fact that I loved your personification of the colors. And how you used descriptive objects that actually reminded me of the colors you described.
Like coffee being the one obvious on, but describing a person’s punctuality type as the color brown was very clever. I chuckled a bit actually, because I know a few people who would I would totally call brown personality types.

Pink related to love, I thought was a bit of a cliché, but again the description of loud and bright, and unafraid seemed to fit in there quite nicely.

Purple had to be my favorite though, *with deep dips and tight tangos* what a beautiful line, I mean, totally original. And very clever to describing purple. People often associate the color purple with great depths.

The sad part didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the feeling of the poem in my opinion, but it was still a great ending. Maybe there needs to be more build up to the death.

And as mentioned in other comments, it would be an idea to review word structure, flow and capitalization. Also a little punctuation goes a very long way, and can add a great deal of suspense to a piece, or a sense of depth and so on.

Over all a complete pleasure to read, and as always keep practicing. The key is to never stop.

-Alexander Desmarais

Hello, TinyJar!

I really like the way you used colors in the poem. You used them in a way that could be taken literally at times, yet contributed more to the feeling of the actions within the stanza. There are a lot of poems like this, but this one satisfies me because you focus more on the person and the action than the color itself. Good job using the color as a vehicle.

I do agree with caliginous on the punctuation and capitalization in this poem. However, that is your choice. I do think that a little punctuation would be helpful to the poem, though.

Something else that might seem small to you would be the wording of the repeated line (while the line isn't exactly the same, it is mostly, so I'll refer to it as the repeated line). I suggest that you say "she loved me in pink" rather than "in the color pink" because it's more direct and streamlined. Besides, most of these colors don't have different meanings. Now, if you were to say "she loved me in silver," I'd be a bit more concerned about clarity because it could be referring to silver jewelry rather than the feeling of how she loved.

Consistency is good to have, so I think you should put the second half of the first line on the following line, or add something onto the repeated line each time.

The second line of the last stanza is the only line that I feel describes the color more than the action that is going on with this person. While death is much more emotional than any other action that the speaker talks about in the poem, it doesn't excuse us from wanting to know more literally how her death was blue. For the other stanzas, we have at least one literal thing to keep us grounded in the color. The first stanza has brown coffee, the second could have a purple dress, and the third one, we have the pink of her lips from kisses. While you say "her hair spread in the water," this raises far more questions than it answers, and I suggest a bit more concreteness in that second line.

Altogether, I appreciate your creativity and I enjoyed reading and reviewing this poem. I hope that this review proves useful to you! Happy writing!

Hello, caliginous here for a quick review.

First of all, I really loved this poem. The way you used various colors to describe someone's life was beautiful. Although it was short, it was directly to the point and you managed to give meaning to almost all of the words. There are only a few lines I could think of to alter:

"it was deep and punctual" Perhaps you should replace the "it was" with "a voice" to make the line read "a voice deep and punctual". This just makes the line clearer, because at first I stumbled over it a little. This is of course if "it" means her voice, but I could be wrong.

"with pen in hand and coffee in mouth" I would suggest taking out the "with", it's just an extra word that's not really needed.

"big and bright with lots of twists and turns" Try to use stronger adjectives. "big and bright" doesn't tell me as much as "bold and vibrant" would.

"bright and loud and not afraid to tell anyone" The word "bright" was used to describe both purple and pink. In this case, it works perfectly. These adjectives are clear and simple, yet with deeper meanings. I love that about this line. I just wanted to point that out.

"she died in the color blue" Wow, that line hit me like a slap in the face. I love it. It is so shocking, it really completes the poem. No, it goes beyond completing the poem. It's just perfect. Perfectly tragic, but still perfect.

"with her hair spread in the water and her lips curved in a smile" I absolutely adore the bittersweet imagery used it this line. It is truly the perfect line to close off this poem. I wish I had more to say about it, but it's too beautiful for words.

Finally, punctuation. I know the lack of it is most likely intentional, but a comma and a period once in a while wouldn't hurt. Some punctuation would really enhance the poem by creating pauses in between some important phrases.

I don't really care much about capitalization. I feel the absence of it in this poem creates a calmer mood.

Once again, this poem is exquisite! Absolutely amazing and beautiful.

~caliginous

Wow
Amazing!
Awesome presentation style. The use of colours is good.
From the dispassionate matter of fact brown to the enticing purple to the mesmerizing pink to the lost blue of death is truly a journey.
Though there is no red for her flaring temper or a mild orange for her friendship or yellow of sunshine for her laughter.
Great idea.
Keep writing
All the best.