Money Minded

Hello, Jegde here to review this fine piece of artwork!
Okay so I just wanna say this was a fantastic poem and I really enjoyed it.
There weren't many flaws but i had some things I wanted to say.

Okay so I really like your theme of explaining to the audience,
I wasn’t always like this –
I promise.
That is pretty consistent. But what I would recommend is that you add another verse at the end to complement the first one.
So what I mean by that is, your first verse asks the audience what to do when someone craves money that much. Your should add a verse at the end that adds on to this, so you can ask questions to the reader like "should I give up completely or should I take it all?" OR you can say just restate the introduction in different words (or the same) - it'll add to that theme of regret and hopelessness.

every time

two-minute shower

In this paragraph you say everytime, referring to more than 1 but soon after you soon after you say 2 minute shower, as in singular, so add 2 minutes showers

Other than that I really love this poem. Keep going strong!

This is Kaos here for a review! I see you're new to YWS, so I welcome you!

I'm interested in your style and how you write, which is what happened to catch my eye. The style that you write in has elegance and flow, which is something that I admire, so I want to talk about this.

What does one do
when their instruments of downfall
Are their itching fingers which crave the
smoothness of linen strips that promise
the world?

Here there's a lack of punctuation which is something that I think would help it in its flow. Another thing is that you switch out to using punctuation further on in the poem, and I suggest you keep that kind of thing consistent. This would help the poem be more dynamic in what it' trying to say, giving weight behind the lines rather than not using it at all and I'm not saying that you have to, but I do think it would benefit this poem in particular.

Onto the actual content of this, I assume it's talking about money as the poem is titled "Money Minded" and it gives context clues to this, just not as up front, but subtle, which is good. One thing that I do want to note is that it these context clues aren't as much so here as they are later in the poem and without the title it would be harder to tell what you're talking about. Again, no punctuation here other than the question mark but I do suggest adding it in for the lines to flow better into each other and make more sense. The instruments of downfall and the linen strips are something that caught my eye.

I wasn’t always like this –
I promise.

This is a strong transition between the stanzas and I feel it gives more insight into what the poem is about in a few simple words. It's talking about how the speaker wasn't always greedy in a simple way yet has a lot of sincerity and power behind it.

It was the judgment clouding the pitiful stares
as stolen disks of copper promising extravagance
fell out of the holes of my sister’s hand-me-downs
That turned me into this

This stanza was a little much for me in terms of the imagery that you're trying to imbue. I liked the last line here but your descriptions in the first two lines didn't really work well with me. Give us something more vivid than that rather than just using words that sound nice. That's one of the problems that I had with this poem, which was the word choice. I would like a more vivid description of the coins or a more /real/ one rather than it being so romanticized. Give us something that imbues more emotion than that, the coins tasting like the blood of people who have worked (a reference to how copper tastes like blood).

The next two stanzas are ones I'm grouping together because they have or follow a similar idea. I say to group them because I had a hard time connecting this to the rest of the poem. Nothing like this was really previously stated and it kind of just jumps out of nowhere. It talks about the narrator making a fruit bowl which in art is something considered to be standard and boring. I like the subtly of this fitting in with greed but it just doesn't directly fit into the poem like the other parts do.

I like the imagery of colors that you use but I want to see something more than that, I want to experience it fully, and while color description helps, there are other senses out there that would make for good sensory detail even if it isn't elegant. Not everything is elegant. Another thing I do have to say is that you use a lot of adjectives to describe things, and sometimes even in a row. Instead of doing this, spread the image out and put it into different actions or words in that way.

The ending of the poem didn't really do much for me? At least not the first two lines. I thought the italics with the repetition of "I promise I'm worth it." was a little much because of you having it right before and ruins that line of repetition for me. If you're going to use repetition, you have to take some things into consideration. Why are you doing it? Are you only repeating it to add emphasis or are you repeating it and adding something onto it?

For example, you can say "I really like the moon." once, but if you say you really like the moon three times, we really know you like the moon. And for adding on, maybe the first time you say, "I really like the moon." but the second time, you say, "I really like the moon because of how many craters it has and how pretty it is." you add something more onto it. How many times do you repeat the line, and how much dead space is left in-between that also is something to take into consideration. With the last lines other than that I think they could be used to create a strong message of the speaker wanting to feel worth something, though the greed feeling kind of goes away, but at the same time you could make the speaker greedy about being worth something.

I hope I helped and have a great day!