A crusader - a fighter
My journey began from my first breath.
In that moment,
I vaguely recalled a woman;
whose lights had glared,
flickered,
brightened like an angel’s,
then faded like the mist.
Then I saw,
darkness,
melancholy,
agony,
and a man shrouded in the shadows.
A hero - a warrior with a journey
The path I took was said to be perilous.
Covered in thick forests
of hardships,
hungry wolves with fangs
made of mistakes and choices,
and wicked phantasms;
trying to stop me with words of
discouragement.
In a cruel world,
I was told I would be in need of
a guide;
someone who knew how to
tie the laces of shoes,
fight for what’s right.
Someone who had seen the tough terrain.
A mentor - a guardian
My father was a veteran knight,
yet he was a ghostly presence,
sitting at a blank screen.
Long has his armor been in use.
Now, it was rusted
and sullied from neglect.
His sunken eyes gave
emotionless stares.
His wrinkled skin,
sagging on his body like
crinkled fabric.
His story had finished.
His legend was recorded.
His rewards reaped.
forsaken - to be alone
My obstacles weren’t special
Every warrior must face
the villains we meet in our youth,
the challenges and trials of
growth and maturity.
The tribulations met
when we’re set thrust upon,
the world that needs saving.
failure - to live in guilt
My quest had ended abruptly.
I couldn’t reach the forbidden castle,
for I lost the battle.
How could I have won
barefoot and weak?
I had no map,
no steed,
no sword,
and no armor.
haunted - to be followed
I begged my father to teach me to be a hero.
to face slay dragons,
to complete a mission,
to climb the tower,
to give true love’s kiss.
monster - a villain to kill
My father’s corpse-like body
gave me a deathly glare.
He couldn’t help me slay monsters,
rescue damsels.
He said he would never fight again.
For his fair maiden was gone,
and to help me,
was to help the monster
who slayed her in the end.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,800 Reviews
Hi aooborromeo,
I was looking for a poem to review and found this one sitting in the Green Room. After reading through it and discovering the twist at the end, I decided that I just had to review it!
I love the amount of detail and emotion you poured into this piece. It's a poem that borders on the storytelling you might find in prose, but still carries the rhythm of a poem. The formatting definitely helped with that. The italicized words that were paired with definitions were great ways to show the story's progression; they also served as clear markers for each different section.
I've always been a sucker for fairy tale metaphors, and this poem was no exception! At first, I assumed this poem was about a child looking for guidance from an absent, potentially neglectful father. It was only when I read the last stanza that I realized the speaker's mom had died in childbirth and that the father was absent because the speaker's presence reminded them of that. When I reread the rest of the poem, I realized that you had hinted at the mother's absence the entire time. The speaker mentions memories of a woman whose "light" went out at their birth. They also never go to their mother when searching for a mother figure.
The part that really gets me is how the speaker is convinced that they're a monster because their birth resulted in their mom's death. No child should ever feel that way, and I love how you waited until the very end to reveal that--almost like the speaker was trying to convince themselves otherwise.
This poem is definitely going to stay with me for awhile. Props to you for writing something so powerful! I'll definitely have to check out more of your poetry soon.
Thank you so so much!
Hi there! One of the interesting things I noticed about this poem was that the fantasy motif seems metaphorical, as if the speaker is just using it to describe events in their real life in a modern era. There seems to be a coming-of-age theme, or maybe a reference to the hero’s journey, in how the speaker has to learn to become a hero by facing trials and obstacles.
The mood to be seemed to be one of hopelessness, which I felt especially in how the father is described as “shrouded in the shadows”. I also liked how the speaker’s lamenting tone was conveyed here: when reading the title, I expected maybe to see a more antiquated voice, but was pleasantly surprised by this more stream-of-consciousness-like style. I think that’s a unique twist, as far as fantasy-themed poetry goes.
Language
Some of my favourite images from this piece include “wicked phantasms” and “hungry wolves with fangs”. They just create this eerie and foreboding atmosphere that fits with the rest of the poem.
The juxtaposition of the fantastic with the mundane here was really striking. It was at this point that I got the sense that the crusader thing was an analogy for trying to make it in a world without a parental figure’s proper guidance. The contrast between the domesticity of the first image and the comparatively more intense second image made an impression on me.
There were a couple of images and lines I think I would have like to see expanded or described with more specificity. For instance:
I like this aspect of the speaker’s challenges being ordinary rather than ‘special’, and it makes me curious as to what these “villains” would be like.
Does the castle represent something in particular? Or is it just a general goal? I think it would add a lot of nuance to the narrative and potential for developing the themes further if the poem explored a bit more as to what this battle and castle are like, why the speaker is trying to conquer the castle and how that is relevant to the overarching narrative with the father.
Structure
I like how you used the ‘rule of three’ to emphasise some parts of the poem. It felt very natural fitting in with the rest of each stanza and made a dramatic impact, especially in the bit below:
Having the plot twist in the very last line is always a way to create drama. The ‘parent who blames the child for the other parent’s death’ is a trope I see quite a bit in medieval fantasy stories, so it makes sense to have it here to compare real life and the archetypal fantasy narrative, I think.
Another structural device I found interesting were those italicised interludes like
The italics made me think they were meant to be set apart from the rest of the piece, so they felt to me like title cards being inserted at various points throughout a silent film. I liked how they seem to frame what happens in each stanza. This one in particular made me think about how the father maybe isn’t a hero anymore because his journey is already over.
That's all
Overall, a pretty immersive piece of narrative poetry with perhaps a double meaning to it.
Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!
Cheers,
-Lim
Thank you so so much for this amazing review!!!! Everything you wrote really stuck with me. I love fellow reviewers who really delve deep into editing poetry. I do the same.
Language wise about the theme with the castle and the images you mentioned, I wanted to expand them, but I was worried the poem might be too long. The villains were the idea of the people So I'll look into it. This poem I literally wrote in fifteen minutes of staring at a piece of paper forcing myself to write.
The italized structure was intentional because I wanted to use the hero's journey as a metaphor for the child feeling neglected by his father due to his father's grief and anger. Yes, the mother did die giving birth the narrator. His father blames him for that.
Fun fact: I'm a huge game of thrones fan and Tywin Lannister was my favorite character. One of the more vulnerable human like was his relationship with his son Tyrion. Tyrion was not only a dwarf, but a reminder of the loss of his beloved wife, Joanna. It's made clear that Tywin and his daughter not only despise Tyrion for his dwarfness, but for the fact that Joanna died giving birth to him. So Tyrion or the child in my poem is a reminder to the father about the wife he lost.
I wanted to highlight that emotion, but I'm also worried it didn't come off as clearly as I liked.
The villains were the idea of people that bully us or hurt us in life. The castle is the dreams or end goal of what we want in life.
Ah that's interesting! I think I did actually think of Tyrion when I read the twist ending that first time.
I think it would be interesting to expand the 'villains' and the 'castle' if you can make space in your poem for it. Something I like to do when trying to make space for other things in a long-ish poem is to cut out stuff like '-ly' adverbs, synonyms, etc. Hope that helps~
That actually helps! Thanks