Hi again, miasylvest! RagingLive here yet again to review one of your poems!!
I found this piece strikingly beautiful as I love color poems. I've written several, one of which is posted here on site, however, yours has your own unique style that makes it a different sort of color poem. This can be good, but we definitely don't want to hear that it can be bad either. I don't believe yours is in any way the latter, but I do think that we could clean it up a bit, yes?
Pardon me if I echo the past reviewers and say that the phrase 'It is' was slightly overused in this poem. I don't want you to think that I'm beating you over the head with this fact, I just want you to realize that this can be a potential problem. Replace 'It is' with 'It might' or 'That is' or even 'Red' itself to spice it up some.
I don't want to sound self promoting in any way, but if you are interested in an example, this is the color poem I wrote and it might give you a few ideas. Also, many more color poems can be found by browsing YWS.
boiling your blood
and heating your face.
Sometimes throwing 'and' in there is fine - but it's an 'invisible' word in a sense and might bring your poem down. This is just a suggestion, not a terrible nitpick that simply must be changed, but I want to implore you to do something along the lines of:
"Boiling your blood / bringing heat to your face"
It is the bright flashing lights
that scream and howl despairingly,
You started out with more of a short sentence pattern but then they gradually began to lengthen.This was a bit confusing as I felt as though the reader lost the rhythm. Maybe if you lengthened the beginning sentence or condensed the ones coming after. I kind of the that the latter would work a bit better.
“It is bright flashing lights / that scream, howling despairingly, / while trying your trapped soul.”
Or you could say ‘saving’ instead of ‘trying.’ I kind of like the latter, though, because it was like the color red had trapped and was torturing your soul. Maybe or maybe not?
It is the warm sensation of passionate kisses,
and a heart that pumps love alone.
The tope line was just a bit too long, one out of three that make your poem harder to read. Maybe if:
“The warm sensation of passionate kisses, / a hear that pumps love alone.”
Easier, yes?
that leaves a burning impression on your character.
Second of the three mentioned above. I thought Falconer’s advice on this was wonderful, I just wanted to echo her.
It is the flag raised,
When surrendering to the inner demons.
Interesting line, I found it very visual. Now, we have a stark contrast here between syllable usage that kind of mixes us up. Maybe if we inserted:
“It is the white flag raised,”
Doesn’t that provide an even better visual picture? Also, consider striking ‘the’ in the second phrase above, it might help to even it out even further.
that engulf your mind and trap your spirit.
Using the word ‘trap’ here is a bit repetitive involving ‘spirit’ which is relative to the phrases I mentioned somewhere above. But it can be removed, I think, and mean the same thing.
“that engulf your mind and spirit.”
It also helps to cut down on the syllable count.
that sets your mind ablaze, yearning for release.
This was the third place out of three that I mentioned are harder to read. Since you have a comma in the middle I would suggest that you turn it into two sentences, splitting at the comma. Just to make sure it wouldn’t interrupt the flow, I did look at the poem and I personally didn’t see anything wrong with it. Hopefully, you’ll see the same.
Now, I know from personal experience how it can sound one way in your head than when someone reads it, but since we aren’t listening to you read this to us, we have to interpret it ourselves. I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to change the meaning of your poem, on the contrary, I want to understand it better. Incidentally, however, you are going to have to make the final decision for what best fits your means.
I know that this review has become rather long, and I hope that you won’t hold it against me. If you have any questions or need to set me straight on something, feel free to message me in the comments below!
I absolutely loved reading this and I believe that in the future I might end up becoming your biggest fan!
Keep writing and keep on smiling!!
~RagingLive
Points: 4915
Reviews: 172
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