you blink awake
out of a dread-laced sleep
to a thin, yellow sun
shining through the glass
captivating enough
to ignore your fingers'
urges to scroll through
bright, flashing headlines
and shrug off musings
creeping in the corners
of your white-painted room
for this is not a day for hiding
despite the forecast
predicting rain.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Such a succinctly summary of the sorrows of WAKING UP AMERICAN-successful in its simplicity. It seems to me you make subtle comments in the simple showing of contrasts. For instance, you make special note of a "thin yellow sun" against the "bright flashing headlines" in the secure sanctuary of your room, which is specifically noted as being a "white painted room" White is universally symbolic of the pure and innocent. Brilliant stuff! If I could change one thing though, I would attempt to re-write the ending to maximize emotional impact, but.... I kind of feel this is all the more effective for it's understated simplicity. I love this poem!
Thank you for the review!
Hi, EditorAndPerks! I'm not sure if I ever reviewed one of your works before, but I saw this lurking in the Green Room and just had to check it out. c:
The first thing that drew me in was the title. It was something that resonated with me even before I started reading the poem, and something that still sits well with me after reading through the entire poem. It's the perfect way to describe the poem, while also having a cool, creative spin on being an optimist.
I'm also a big fan of how short this poem is. Long poems are great, too! But it's always cool when a poem's message can fit within just a handful of stanzas.
Another thing I really enjoyed about this poem is how realistic it is. The imagery and words you chose painted a picture of hope, while also showing that the morning didn't magically make things better. It was something that was apparent from the very start of the poem:
I love how this is both upbeat and gradual. A yellow sun is associated with bright, happy feelings, while the "thin" descriptor dampens the effect a little. I also really love how you have the "you" of the phone struggle with things I'm very much used to: anxious thoughts and watching the news. It made the poem feel relatable. Add in how gradual the new beginning was, and it made this poem feel like something that I could do.
My one critique is for this part down below:
The first quoted stanza feels a little off. I think it's because of the wording. I love every line of this section, but I think the first three lines can be their own stanza. The one problem with that is that it doesn't match the pattern you have in the previous stanzas with four lines each, and the last line in the first stanza quoted also doesn't really work well with the last line.
This is definitely personal preference, so feel free to ignore it if it doesn't match your poetry-style! But if this was my poem and I was revising those last two stanzas, I might make them look something like this:
The way that it's currently written ends the poem on the note that the forecast depicts rain, while the revised version puts more emphasis on the new beginning. I do love how the last two lines ground the reader, but I think it would be good to end the poem on a more positive note.
But that's a really minor nitpick! Overall, I love the message of this poem and the way you conveyed it. I'm definitely saving it to reread when I'm having a down day.
Thank you so much for the review!
hey, stygianmoon for a review
What am I to say about this.. it's simple, it's effective- there's not much to say.
There also is this little touch of melancholy which makes the whole poem infinitely more touching.
Anyways-
❌❌❌ MINUSES ❌❌❌
The flow. I get that this is supposed to be a slow, melancholic poem. But the flow is just so irregular. In the first stanza, if you read it aloud, it makes sense. The flow is slow but beautiful, and you make tiny pauses before skipping each line. Which is what makes that first stanza so effective. Then you move on to the second. It speeds up. there is less punctuation. And if you read it aloud, you quickly run out of breath trying to respect the flow. The third stanza is exactly like the second, in terms of flow. And the last stanza, by its shortness, returns to the style of the first one.
There's nothing wrong with speeding up a poem, and the places you chose to sped them up make sense. But putting two fast stanzas one after another really breaks the flow and makes it hard to read.
✅✅✅ PLUSES ✅✅✅
I already mentioned it in my introduction, but wow- the style, the melancholy, the intricate choice of words that help visualise the scene so vividly we almost feel what the person is feeling and seeing. Absolutely beautiful. I know I wrote like an essay for the minuses of this poem, but it's one point. And it's about when you read the poem aloud. because really, it's a minor point. You writing is fantastic, and maybe except for punctuation and flow, there's absolutely nothing you should change
Thank you so much for the review!