i???m more than a body

Hallo Harper/Lulon, I'm here to review your work since the name caught my eye.


First of all, allow me to give some recommendations!

You may want to work on a flow, since this feels like lines pieced together in a sense, though they convey great emotion.

Stanzas would fit in well for this type of work, and there are random metaphors that made me backtrack a bit.

I liked the emotion portrayed and the words used are very creative. This is well-done in a sense that it made me feel something, so congrats!

Overall:

I like this! I hope I helped and please let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said didn't make sense. Keep up the amazing work =)

Jade

Hey, there! Nice work with this poem. I think the point you've made reflects a truth that a lot of young people struggle with, especially when there are so many individuals who want to take advantage of them. I can feel that the words you've written are an expression of true inner feelings, which gives the reader a glimpse of how passionate you are about this issue.

There were a few places where I wasn't sure if you intended to be rhyming, but overall it sounded more open-verse in form, as there is no consistent rhythm and meter. Open verse can be just as nice as rhymed poetry, though, so keep experimenting with it. I personally tend to write more in rhymed poetry, so I can't critique too much.

My next comment is not exactly positive nor negative, but sort of both. In reading this poem, I got the feeling that the narrator is very vulnerable and struggling to feel secure, maybe even a victim of specific mistreatment. If that is what you were aiming for, then great job. If, however, your intention was to convey passion on the issue and suggest a change, you might want to tone down a little on the personal emotion. Either way, it's not bad, just think about what your goal is, and that will consequently make your goal clearer to the reader.

Thanks for contributing this cool poem. You have passion and talent, so keep developing them!

Hi there! Haraya here with a review.

Generally, I think the imageries are nice. I actually liked how you use the image of being prey to then point out you're more than just your body. I think that was clever. The message was understandable. I think many will relate to your chosen theme.

For my critique, I found your poem difficult to follow. The lack of stanzas made your poem too heavy on the eyes. I think some stanza breaks would have worked since there were parts were you changed the images or ideas you used such as here:

"as they sit above me on their thrones
my friends don’t have this feeling"

Starting another stanza with the line "my friends" would have made your lines clearer.

The lack of punctuation also made it difficult to transition from one thought to the next. I suggest implementing some punctuation to clearly indicate where you introduce another idea. For example, using the same lines above, end the preceding line with a period since the next line will be following a new idea.

My other problem was you often alternated between figurative and literal. Sometimes you used similes and imagery but then you drop them and deliver your message directly. For example:

"as if your being preyed upon
like in a savannah
being stalked by the lions
i’m more than my body
but that’s all they care about
they don’t want to love me
just take my innocence away"

In the first three lines, you were being descriptive. You compare yourself to being prey. But then you lose this descriptiveness and the lines became more prosaic. If you write it without the line breaks, this is how it looks like:

"I'm more than my body, but that’s all they care about. They don’t want to love me. Just take my innocence away."

The sentences are not vivid. I suggest expound your images and metaphors. Build upon them to make your ideas more powerful.

That's all I wanted to say! Hope my review help you out. Best of luck to you in your future works!

I love this. You perfectly capture the feeling women have of being devalued. It’s so damaging to be a woman and know you have feelings and emotions and desires, but to society you’re just a child-bearing machine. You have a good progression of ideas, starting the poem by expanding how it feels to be a woman. I love your comparison to being “stalked by the lions”. I can really picture it in my mind, and it conjures up such strong imagery and strong emotions. I also love the way you say “I’m barely balanced, nearly falling off the edge”. That’s such a good description, and I think it shows how as women there are so many things we have to juggle and it’s so hard to fulfill every expectation and keep our sanity. You cover a lot of different nuances of sexism in the poem. You talk about being hunted, being valued only by your beauty, and your hair and makeup, and the way boundaries aren’t respected, and you can’t have relationships with man because none of them see your humanity. Good job addressing all of those things. It takes your poem to the next level and exposes the full scope of the issue.
The one suggestion I would have is to try and incorporate more figurative language. Try to show instead of telling. You do that well with the comparison to prey on the savannah, but I think you could add similes and metaphors in other places. For example, where you talk about how “there’s been so much pain to get here”, you could describe the pain. For example, you could say your life has been like “being constantly trapped under a boulder, no release possible, either through death or escape”. Or where you say “my worth is not in what they think of me / yet they convince me it is”, you could add a metaphor. You could say “they say I am a tube of lipstick, a punching bag when they’ve had a bad day, a puppet who agrees with everything they say”. Just try and create images for each idea, so the reader can fully feel the emotional impact.
Also, I noticed there were no stanzas and a full indent between each line. If this was intentional, keep it, but if it’s just because that’s the way YWS automatically formats everything, check out this link How to Format Poetry It explains how to format poetry with the HTML format.
Overall, great poem! I could relate to everything you said. I look forward to reading more of your writing.

so at the end, it won’t let me type the final “n” in “porcelain”