In the morning, I take
The taxing form of a pleasant
But calmly discontent housewife
In the afternoon, I renew
My tired facade as a dedicated
But quietly detached laborer
In the evening, I accept
The arduous role of an affectionate
But dissatisfied mother
In the nighttime, I can trade at last
The exhausting pretenses
For the stifling simplicity
Of solitude's sincerity
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139,794 Literary Works • 672,771 Reviews
When is saw the title i was hooked! The meaning behind your words are deep and meaningful which the reader can relate to. I honestly really liked the details you gave. No complaints here! Thank you for presenting a good read. Keep up the good work tgham99!
Reviewed by LP
Hello! I saw your work in the Green Room, so I thought I'd get it out of there for you.
One of the first things I noticed in your poem was its format. I loved how structured the narrative was; three out of the four stanzas follow the same pattern, and the fourth mirrors the rest. You start with a time, add yourself and a verb, and then move into two more lines that describe the speaker's persona at that time of day. You show the positive side of the persona before concluding with a "but" statement - showing that none of the personas mentioned can be ranked above each other.
You break from the format in the final stanza. There's still similarities (the time and the verb) but the negative aspect of the speaker is switched with the positive in regards to order: "exhausting" comes before "simplicity" and "sincerity". There's no "but" mentioned, and the stanza is four lines long instead of the usual three. It shows how the speaker is finally able to rest.
I also loved how you painted a clear picture of the speaker with your descriptors. There's no imagery involved, but the combination of the adjectives, verbs and nouns made me imagine a hard-working family woman who either has a job or spend the majority of the day working in her own home. You did amazing job portraying her life in so few lines and stanzas.
Overall, great work on this poem! I hope it ends up in the literary spotlight. <3
Thank you so much for your review, it's always great to receive such detailed feedback/analysis of my work!! I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'm also happy to see that my experimentation with shorter lines/more concise poems is going well.. <3
You're welcome! It definitely is going well.
Hi TGHam!
I like the poem. I specially like the subject it touches on.
I think the message is that nobody has one specific identity. In fact, all that one is, is a culmination of multiple personas. But even that may not be true. Maybe persona is something that's flexible, something that can shift. Can we shift it at will then, or does the persona compel us to shift with it? Ties in with the bigger question of free will.
We could ask another question. Does one have a persona at all? Or are we just vessels for our egos, carrying a collection of masks -- the personas, in a sense -- in our backpacks? We can trade one mask for another, depending on the needs of the situation. Then we only have to follow one rule. We must wear a/any mask at all times.
Leaving out punctuation is always an interesting stylistic preference. I like to think a good amount of thought goes behind making that choice. I wonder if it symbolizes anything in this context; not that it must. Could it be indicating at that never the ending shifting of personas? I can only speculate.
Hope you have a wonderful day. It was a treat to review this one.
~MAS
Thanks very much for your review -- I love that you went deeper into the potential interpretations of this poem. I really did try to encompass the fact that people have so many layers to them that it's difficult to pinpoint just who we really are -- assuming we even have one set identity from person to person, that is.
The poem is short and precise, although it could be elongated to fit in emotions. At the moment it sounds more like a news report. You could also touch up on the reasons of discontentment of the woman throughout the day.
Nice work though
Thanks for the review! I actually intentionally left it shorter to remain more vague/less detailed to leave the reasons for her discontentment open to interpretation, but if I make a continuation of this particular poem, I'll definitely work a bit more detail into it. <3
Hey!
This definitely hit home. I think we all pretend to be people we truly aren’t and can’t wait until we can be our true selves alone at the end of the day. I love the words you used and I probably wouldn’t change anything about this poem!
Thanks for the great read!
<3 Rascalover
Thank you so much for the feedback!! I'm glad you liked it