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125,025 Literary Works • 672,766 Reviews
text version:
I wanted to be so cool
Spoiler
that the taste for life began to fade away,
I began to live in desaturation,
and a veil of clouds covered my eyes—weary.
how long has it been since I made art,
since I felt it.
so long that an upbeat rhythm has brought me to tears;
was I punishing myself for the sake of stoicism—of
criticism—the bane of my heart.
now im driving with sunglasses on
and the March wind in my frizzy hair
finally feeling something again.
what is it? I hope it’s me.
the sun feels so nice on my skin, please stay.
Hi! spottedpebble here using the Lucky Review Template; let's get into it!
The decision to add an indent before the word criticism feels a bit off to me, as does the em-dash following it. The rest of this poem flowed smoothly and I was able to read through it without interruption, but I had to stop and reread when I got to these two lines. Perhaps if you changed where the line break was and/or removed the indent it would flow more smoothly.☘ 1st Leaf: First Impressions & Initial Thoughts
The first thing I notice when reading this poem is the feeling in it. It is about losing a "taste for life" and then being able to find it again, to feel something again. This poem is about feelings, and the way you've written it allows readers to feel that return of a love for life right alongside the narrator. One might say that this poem is saturated in emotion. I love poems like this—a bit narrative, flush with emotion, and so genuine it makes the reader go through a whole range of feelings as they read.
I also really love the title and the inclusion of the word saturate, even when most of the poem is talking about a type of desaturation. I think it really drives home that this poem is ultimately about the return of feeling, not how it was lost in the first place.
☘ 2nd Leaf: Critique & Points of Confusion
There's not much I dislike about this poem, however I find myself getting a bit stuck at the lines
☘ 3rd Leaf: Details & Favorite Lines
Oh, where to begin? This whole poem is so lovely...
First of all, I love the indent added before the line It emphasizes how important emotion is to art and vice versa, as well as how the act of creating something makes you feel things.
A pair of lines I really adore are The question of "what is it?" shows that even though the narrator is indeed feeling things again, they are still figuring things out and learning to enjoy the return of feeling after so long wanting and trying "to be so cool." The "I hope it's me." in the same line immediately after asking the question shows the powerful hope in this poem. In only four words, it tells readers that part of feeling is finding yourself again and relearning how to feel more like yourself.
This is the inverse to the title of the poem, and I like how you're describing feelings and emotion as something that can be saturated and colorful or desaturated and grey, covered in a "veil of clouds."
I also love the ending phrase of "please stay." It demonstrates how even though this feeling has returned and feels so good in the moment, the narrator still fears it leaving again and is gently asking it to remain.
☘ 4th Leaf: Theories & Questions
Part of the title being a specific date and the description of driving in the March wind while the sun is shining down on the narrator's skin makes me wonder if you wrote this poem about a specific moment in time.
I would like to end by saying that this poem truly touched me. As someone who's been trying to figure out how to "taste life" and feel again, (and with reading/writing poetry being something that makes me really feel things,) this meant a lot. <3 Thank you for writing it and sharing it with us.
thank you for the review!! i definitely agree that the "bane of my heart" little section is off so I will tinker with it! I appreciate it a bunch
hello!! really tender work, this.
the title, as it is, stands out - saturate as a verb, a goal, an aspiration, positioned against a poem that's mostly about its opposite. i find it so interesting how it isn't titled desaturation, or recovery, or even decolorization. i like how you've named it what you're reaching toward, and that reframe,, almost colours everything before the first line even starts, in a way.
"i wanted to be so cool" is a brave opening because cool is such a deflating word 2 put at the top of a poem - it's small and human and maybe a little embarrassing, and that honesty makes it sort of confessional in a sense. essentially what im trying 2 say here is, the bathetic precision of that opening earns the weight of what follows.
"so long that an upbeat rhythm has brought me to tears" is a very strong line, and the specificity adds layers 2 it because it's about being undone by something joyful, and that inversion sits with a lot more than a whole stanza of direct statement could.
then "now im driving with sunglasses on / and the March wind in my frizzy hair" - the lowercase 'im', the frizzy hair, the specificity of March - i feel as though this embodies the poem's exhalation, because things stop being about emotional abstraction and become a body in a car on a real day. frizzy especially, because it isn't glamorous or composed, but like mentioned, honest.
"what is it? I hope it's me." - how much of a subtle and intriguing line this is. it feels almost dissociative, like the feeling is arriving from outside and the speaker is watching it come and aren't yet certain they're the one it belongs 2. 'i hope it's me' presupposes that it might /not/ be, and that feeling of returning and still not being sure if you're the one returning with it comes across perfectly. i think this gap between sensation and selfhood is where the poem gets quite philosophically interesting.
and then "please stay", i feel, closes on this plea that rhymes emotionally with the opening. the poem begins with wanting 2 be cool, which is fundamentally about composure and withholding i guess, and it ends with please, which is the opposite of that entirely. that entire arc from performed detachment 2 unguarded asking lands so well.
and running back 2 the title again - the date 03.13.26 is a journal-entry level of precision and grounds the whole thing in a specific threshold rather than a timeless lyric moment - i may be reading a bit much into it, but that choice caught my eye.
i suppose "the bane of my heart", though, and what with the dashes before it, there's definitely some interesting fragmentary work being done but i suppose bane reaches slightly past where the poem's language otherwise lives, and the self-interrogation there is real but not yet as closed-fisted as the rest of it. i hope this makes sense.
overall though, a really lovely read, and 1 that trusts its own instincts all the way through. excellent job
thank you so much for the review! i really love hearing your thoughts and the way you interpreted my work! i really appreciate it
of course, this was great work!
apologies 4 the tangent though ajsdkl;
truly stunning
that is so kind, thank you. it's been a while since i have written poetry, it's nice to feel alive again.