My parents had given birth to gold
Straight A’s, perfect smile, and polished work ethic
Everything shining and rust-free
They reminded me every day, rubbing polish on my face
No matter if it made my eyes burn
No matter the horrible stench
For what good is gold if it’s not on display
Every teacher put me on the front row
And handed me certificates of legitimacy
For I was a real-life gold piece within their reach
One that needed to be celebrated
But sometimes, I wouldn’t act like it
I’d tumble off my shelf and cover myself with dust
And tell my parents that I just wanted to stay down there
But they’d just bring out the polish and rag
They scrubbed and scrubbed my face until it was clean again
“You’re the pride of the world, almighty gold
Some would die to be you.”
And if I would die to be anyone else, I was wrong
If I wanted to be something else, I was doomed
I left my parents behind and went to a bigger school
A school I could only attend because of my gold shavings
Every time I came to my teacher in tears, they’d smile
They’d smile and wave around a jar of my gold
A pot of reasons why I shouldn’t be tired
My parents no longer polished me, but I still had that rag
I’d wake up with a shiny smile and polished face
My teachers would giggle at my glow
That’s all that I was to them, a rare show of shimmer and sparkle
There were other gold bars beside me
Most with the same exhausted look
Some would melt into shimmery puddles
Others would simply warp
Others didn’t care
Ignoring their glitter and shine
They covered themselves with dust and soot
And they had time to smile
But I knew that was no life for me
If I was jealous of them, I was wrong
If I wanted to join them, I was doomed
I graduated from big school and had to be my own person
Suddenly, gold shavings meant nothing
No one counted the glitter on my surface
“You’re no one special, you hunk of metal
You bend at the slightest heat.”
I just made a mess wherever I went
While bronze and silver surpassed my feats
So, I put the rag and polish in a heavy box
And I mailed it right back home
I let the dust collect on me
Until my shiny exterior was no more
None of my friends recognised me
My mother stopped calling me back
But it didn’t matter to me then
And it still doesn’t matter now
Because after years of being behind display glass
I finally get to choose my own path
I finally learn how to smile
For the past thirty years of my life, I’ve been wrong
And if I continued down the old path, I’d be doomed
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141,249 Literary Works • 674,330 Reviews
Hi there, AlmostImmortal!
Here are my first impressions of your poem. I read the emotions of the speaker as being bitter for the first two stanzas, then hopeful at the end. The tone was conversational, and definitely made me think of a narrative, as you’ve listed in the genre. I’m not entirely sure what mood reading the poem put me in – I felt mostly neutral throughout, a little bit in an ‘absorbing-information’ mode, if that makes sense. Now onto specifics or thoughts I had when processing it afterwards . . .
Subject, Themes, Narrative
Broadly, I think the theme of this poem is education, and specifically a critique of attitudes towards education, delivered through how it impacts one person, the speaker. In the first stanza, the speaker is depicted as a kind of child prodigy, and there’s a sense of objectification I think of how they are treated by people around them, for instance the teacher “put” the speaker in the front row and the parents “scrubbed” their face with a rag. Grammatically, a lot of the active verbs are being attributed to others, whereas the speaker “wants” and “was” – stative verbs describing their thoughts and condition, which is what gave me the impression of objectification.
Something that stood out to me was the odd sense of irony in how the ‘adult’ figures like the parents and teachers seem portrayed as being child-like, for instance in the quote above, whereas the speaker goes through a journey of maturation, a coming of age. I thought this was interesting and gave a layer of nuance to the narrative.
To me, the turning point of the narrative comes occurs in the “suddenly” here. From this point on, the speaker having been confronted with a different period of time in their life post-graduation. I noticed that this divide seems to be marked more on time rather than location, for instance it’s not entirely clear ‘where’ the speaker goes after the big school, only the changes in their mental and emotional state which are associated with time, for instance, all the references to time in:
Language and Imagery
The strongest images in the poem I found to be those connected to that central motif of metal, and especially gold. Some of my favourite images were: “I’d tumble off my shelf and cover myself with dust”, “my gold shavings”. Also:
I thought the continuity of the rag and polish throughout the poem was a nice touch.
This image is a neat bit of satire that conveys how much the teachers and parents from before seemed to overemphasise the ‘wrong’ things. As a whole, I think the gold imagery is meant to satirise, and I thought you did a pretty good job of making sure it didn’t repeat too much while also carrying a narrative. For instance I didn’t feel too bothered when the phrase “gold shavings” was used again in stanza 3, because I interpreted that as referring to the specific “shavings” from the earlier stanzas that became meaningless (and not, for instance the dust or the “shimmery puddles”).
Do you think any other threads of imagery might be good to add? To enhance this/ convey more nuances – for instance if the speaker and their peers are metal, what if the parents and the teachers were associated with flesh imagery?
I found some of the other images seemed a bit unspecific, for instance with the polish:
What kind of “horrible stench” would that be? I’ve personally smelt polish before, but maybe for people who haven’t or who can’t remember what it smells like, a bit more specificity might be helpful here. Is it sharp? Is it tangy? Coppery, perhaps, or chemically clean?
The language, like I said earlier, feels conversational. It reminds me of a lot of modern confessional poetry, wherein the speaker is very direct, often making straightforward statements about their feelings and thoughts between the images, for instance
And
I think that gives the reader the impression that this speaker is telling a story about themselves, and sort of making a personal declaration about where they used to be and where they are headed.
Structure and Sound
Narrative structure is classic here: there’s an introduction in the first stanza, development in the second, then a turning point and resolution in the third – as I mentioned earlier, the events that unfold are also arranged chronologically. I think that makes it easier for the reader to get a hold of where the poem is going from line to line.
The use of “I-voice” in this poem is very prominent. I think in general a lot of subjects and words repeat throughout the lines and I’m not entirely sure what kind of effect it is meant to create.
On the one hand, something like this kind of highlights the speaker’s indignation at the way they’re being treated:
But I’m not sure what is added to the feel of the poem or the meaning with:
Who are the others? I understand it abstractly to mean other students, but somehow that depiction leaves me feeling like I want to know more. The repetition for this particular bit homogenises these “others” a bit too much for me to get an idea of what they are like, in my opinion.
I think another structure that ties the stanzas together was the parallelism and the repetition of “wrong/doomed” here.
The last one fittingly feels a bit different from the others, starting with “For the past thirty . . . “, which gives it a different rhythm. I like to think that “And if I . . . ‘ and “If I . . . “ starts a bit more ominously, as they reflect an iamb a little bit (unstressed-stressed), whereas the third edition of the pattern seems a bit more reflective and neutral.
That's all
Overall, I think you have a good thing going there with the metal imagery and how it develops. Some of the other images could be interesting to explore as well - or just to keep in mind for future poems.
Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!
Cheers,
-Lim
Oh, wow! Thank you so much for the review.
Hey! MapleWay here dropping by with a quick review!
This poem was great. I loved the concept of it and the emotion you showed throughout it. I felt as if I was having a conversation with this person. This made the poem much more personal in my opinion. I felt as if I was being invited into this person's life. My favorite lines had to be,
I loved the metaphor you used here and how you used it to show how the main character felt so vividly.
Anyways great poem! Congrats on the literary spotlight and welcome to YWS! I hope you like it here!
Thank you so much! I%u2019m glad my poem spoke to you.
Hello there! Late welcome to YWS! I'm Chris and I'm here to express my opinion about this poem.
The first thing I noticed is that it's pretty long at length. And I don't mean it in a bad way, rather the opposite. I haven't written a poem for a while, but for me, it's hard to continue a single poem this long. And I think it's amazing how you continue the story without making the reader bored, it's a great skill!
The second thing is that you compare everything in your poem to gold and other metals. I think it's really cool how you express and describe everything to metals. This is the first poem I ever read that was written in a such way, and it's a really good way.
I feel like this poem describes your life. You might not be thirty or more than thirty as the "gold", and not all of the poem might be like your life. But I feel like this expresses...this expressed you. There's a saying I found somewhere on the internet that said something like: "A writer, writes his life in a story." I'm pretty sure that's not the exact words, but your poem made me remember that saying.
I really love the last few lines of this poem. Especially these two stanza/lines,
The six words of expressing how you finally learned how to smile, they were beautiful. I didn't really know how to smile a true smile until recently, if I ever smiled in the past, they were fake smiles. Hey, I don't know if you know it, but you're an amazing author, and so are your poems.
That was a little longer than intended, sorry about that.
Keep on writing!
And if you need anyone to review your story/poem, feel free to ask me!
~Chris
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Thank you for the review. You got me on the writing my own life. I've always been the gifted student that was expected to go far, but my struggles with mental health and boundaries made it hard to stay on the golden path. I needed to learn that life isn't about awards and glitter, so I wrote it in a poem about the colour of winners and hoped it'd find someone who needed it. I'm glad you enjoyed it, though.
No problem. I used to be depressed a while back, I don't know how it's related, but the poem kind of explained my past too. I think that's why this poem felt somehow familiar to me. Anyways, thanks for sharing the poem, I know it was your choice. But if you didn't share it I wouldn't be here impressed by your writing skill, would I?
Have a nice day!!
And remember to never stop writing <3
You too!
Hello, KWN here for a review.
First of all its amazing the immediate change of the poem. It starts out rough and hard for the person but suddenly everything is fine. Its like a rapid going down a river falling down a waterfall into calm peaceful water. Instead of a slow gradual descent.
Another thing I like is how everything is compared to gold. And at the end gold gets surpassed by other metals. It really gives you that feeling of being able to understand it just right.
Over all it was really good and creative. Keep on writing and making new pieces of art!
Thank you!