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137,703 Literary Works • 672,063 Reviews
This is beautiful. I love how symbolic and expressive these words are. This is genuinely the favorite poem ive ever read, and I love how the title is so simple and so complicated at the same time. Danger under beauty. Thats an awesomesauce message and ive seen it before but the others weren’t this expressive!. I’m flabbergasted by how good this is. Keep writing! I love your poems and you have real talent.
<3
I love the unique spacing and scattering of the text forces the reader to slow down and take in every single word. ALSO, title "wolf" is the perfect setup because it lets us know that something dangerous is hiding behind a gentle front. (at least that’s how i interpreted it)
The phrase "my name painted on bitter lips" is such a stunning piece of imagery. It’s giving that uneasy feeling of knowing someone is talking behind your back while pretending to be your friend. The contrast between that bitter gossip and the soft act of braiding hair makes the betrayal sting even more.
Thank you!!
Hai :3
I wrote half of a review for this and never finished it >.<
This is so intimate and vicious at the same time though!! I love how the poem begins with this tender domestic image, someone braiding hair gently, and then lets the violence underneath slowly reveal itself. There’s such a quiet betrayal here!! The whole piece feels like being touched by someone who is pretending to be soft while secretly resenting you, and that tension is SO uncomfortable in the best way!! It reminds me a lot of earlier teenage friend groups I've been in ~~ A lot of internal frustration and complex feelings!!
LOOOOVE this opening!!
The physical tenderness of “not to tug” is immediately complicated by “even more careful with / her tongue,” which is such a sharp turn!! It tells us this person knows how to perform care, how to make herself look gentle, but language is where the real harm lives... I really like how the poem links touch and speech together, too. Braiding becomes almost symbolic of manipulation, like she’s arranging the speaker while also controlling what gets said around them.
!!!! “My name painted on / bitter lips” is gorgeous and mean in a perfect way
This is so good!! It has that exhausted intuition to it, like the speaker has learned to recognize cruelty before it fully announces itself. “My ears know” is such a simple phrase, but it carries so much history. It makes me feel like this is not the first time the speaker has been talked about, betrayed, or quietly humiliated. There’s something so vivid about the word “painted” here, too. It makes the gossip feel deliberate, almost cosmetic, like bitterness is something she wears.
I also love how the spacing creates these little pockets of silence between phrases. The white space feels like withheld speech, or like the gaps between what is said aloud and what the speaker knows is happening underneath.
This bracketed line works really well!! It feels like an interruption, or a thought the speaker can’t stop replaying. The brackets make it feel contained, but not truly hidden ~~ I love the irony here, because “forgiving” becomes cruel in the way it's weaponized by the other woman. It’s not forgiveness if it’s being used as a mask or a weapon, but that seemingly isn't as apparent to the other person.
What an ending!! The veil image is so effective because it suggests concealment, performance, maybe even purity or ceremony, but underneath it there’s this animal rage. “She snarls” is such a good verb because it fully breaks the softness of the braiding image. And then the final line!! The spacing in “rip out my hair” slows the violence down so much. It feels like each word is being pulled apart, which is perfect because the action itself is about pulling. That formal choice is really smart, specifically for how it condenses the scene.
^^^ My main thought is that the poem is already very strong, but I wonder if “veil” could be made a little more specific ~~ It’s a beautiful image, but because the poem is so bodily and precise with hair, tongue, ears, and lips, “veil” feels slightly more abstract by comparison. Is it a veil of forgiveness? Friendship? Femininity? Religion? Politeness? Women have sooo many expectations on them, so it's hard to tell which one is the motivator. Like, I think even one extra detail could make that metaphor hit harder, since it's difficult for me to visualize like I did the previous images.
Ugh, I do love this though!! The poem takes something associated with care and turns it into a scene of violence, which is such a compelling emotional contradiction. It feels delicate on the surface, but there’s so much resentment and betrayal braided underneath. Nice work, cherie!! ^_^ <33
- Payton
Hi candy! Sorry for the late response on your review. But thank you so much for taking the time to write and review this for me! Your interpretation was super spot on and I'm glad I was able to convey those messages through the poem.
I totally see what you mean with fleshing out the use of "veil" in the poem to capture a more specific metaphor!
Again thank you for your review <3
Hello! You've created a short but profoundly abstractive piece of art. Here are my interpretations
I can't exactly pinpoint why but the act of braiding reminds me of someone gentle like a parental figure. Whatever might it be, it seems that the subject tries to be kind and tender to the speaker.
Perhaps the speaker is going through a terrible time which is why the subject here is trying to be careful with what she tells her but ends up messing up anyways. This creates a sense of sorrow and frustration.
I specially like the parts following it, perhaps it's my favourite, the one that goes
The betrayal, the revelation of the truth, the theme of the poem is well explained here and I just love the writing style.
Very distinct imagery here, I love the use of spacing, it creates a more dramatic and yet simultaneously serious tone in the end. Also love the use of parenthesis like it's a whisper, the lies I mean.
Alright, that's all keep writing ^^
Hey Anonymoss! Thank you for the review on my poem! I appreciate hearing your perspective and interpretations!
This poem is so simple, yet so complex. It can represent anything, but in my opinion, it represents fake friendships or fake relationships. Let me show you what I mean by that:
''Careful not to tug, even more careful with her tongue''
Fake friendships with fake friends are always wanting something. Either popularity or material gain, or something else. To keep the fake friendship going, the individual has to commit to keeping their mouth closed or being quiet.
I think that the narrator knows that they are in a fake relationship/friendship because they say that they know by the ''whispers between you and another''
Overall, a very simple but jam packed poem that I really enjoyed.
Thank you dove for your review! <3
HIII!
i absolutely love this poem, its short and simple yet it piques the readers interest in knowing the story behind the aforementioned 'she'-'s masked intentions.
the starting portrays the lady to be gentle with the narrator, making sure that they dont get hurt while she braids their hair, but the narrator knows that her kind words are really just deceitful lies as they claim to know that her true self isnt as kind and actually wishes to hurt the narrator, speaking of them bitterly with another behind their back.
is a part of the poem that i adore the most, it almost feels like its something secretive that the narrator is only letting the reader know, as if they dont want the aforementioned 'her' to hear them.
the title itself, 'wolf' , along with the description 'in sheep's clothing' fits the poem perfectly, although i find it a bit hard to interpret the relation between the two characters included in the poem, i assume it to be either about lovers/friends or about a decaying mother-daughter relationship
overall, the poem was really tense around the end as it unmasks the second person's animatronic of deceit and needless to say you did an amazing job!
-klited
fellow YWS member
sorry i seem to not know how to use the codes properly :c
You were so close with the quotes! Just misspelled the first tag hehe
And then for bolding text, just use [b] instead of [bold]
if it's any comfort i finally figured out how people do those fancy quotations in their reviews
Same
i didnt even notice the typo on quote ><
thankyou for correcting me c:
Hi klited! Sorry for the late response on your review. Thank you for leaving it! <3