Published February 25, 2010
i
Your heart is so tied up caged
behind a series of ivory; it makes me
cringe to know I’m the same way.
ii
I’m not a scumbag like you…
but we breathe the same air and
we bleed the same red and we
cry the same tears and we look up
and see the same stars and yet
We're two completely different people.
iii
I wonder sometimes, why you are
the way you are. You crowd your mind
with unnecessarily complex affairs, your
inebriated cortex's stirring with unbridled
worries. The means of which you calm yourself
is to take it out on simple me. Your confusion,
your hatred.
I guess understanding you takes me one step closer to forgiveness.
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kelle, this poem was amazing. It has touched me so deeply. I feel it, and Ive never read a poem that could make me feel as much as what this one has.
It's.. its perfect the way it is. I adore it. Its my life story, and you've.. you've made me speechless
please please please dont ever stop writing
here, have a dancing purple elephant
Hello there! I just would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this poem. It was a nice idea, the writing is fresh and clean. However, there were a few things. Firstly, why do you divide up the sections of your poem? It kind of seems a little weird, especially since the roman numerals are right there-they stick out. I'd delete them. If you want to note the division somehow, adding an extra space would be good.
Ivory what? It's not something in it's entity, but rather a material that takes many shapes and forms. So I'd specify what, and what the significance of ivory is in this section.
I don't like the ellipsis here. It would be better after the but in the next line. Here I'd put a comma.
The same blood, perhaps?
Otherwise, this was a very well-written piece. I commend you for that, and please send me a PM if you have any questions. Good luck, and keep writing.
-Elinor
The introduction is weak. It lacks the conveying of emotions that is necessary for emotional impact. 'Your heart is so tied up caged' - this makes me think of a heart being this way unwillingly, but you've left the sentence alone so that we can interpret it the way we want to, but before we can do that we need a connection, a vague idea. Build solidarity in the first stanza before letting abstractedness take over - just so we get a picture.
'It makes me cringe to know I'm the same way' - this is begging to look like prose. The whole point of poetry is to convey emotions to the audience using images that are connoted from certain words. The main theme of the last line has a sort of hypocritical bitterness. Disliking a trait in someone or something that you, yourself, have. Why not show us this using images that we are all familiar with? Filler words can only go so far.
The first line in the second stanza puts me off completely. 'Scumbag' - it's a modern word, a slang word, a repulsive word that makes me think of a teenager on a hormone high. It connotes a screaming couple, a high-maintenance girl - angry things. But that doesn't fit, because the next sentences are handled with delicacy.
I said it before; find a different way to handle these emotions. You've got a: I'm not what you are theme here. Why not portray her denial as an image? A wilting flower planted on the other side of the garden? A carbon copy trying to run away from its original? You need to find a common connection with the reader. We need to feel what you feel.
The third line in this stanza is out of rhythm with the rest. Also, the fifth line which runs onto the next line - you've brought something completely new into the poem at the ending. I'd advise you not to do it because you've kept up a consistency, and though it's a frail consistency, it's still there. '...to take it out on me' - you haven't mentioned anything of abuse or neglect in this poem as of far. You've mentioned her denial of being like her lover, or whom she loves, but you haven't mentioned anything about this which you have just brought in. If you'd presented it to the audience somewhere in the middle then that could be considered fine, because you have enough time and space to clarify, whereas you bring this completely lonesome sentence into the end and leave a loose end hanging You've pictured his complexity well, and then something new is brought in. Why not
target a new sub-topic in a different stanza?
The resolve, the ending sentence, was severely out of touch with the rest of the poem. Though it is the ending and the structure can be broken if it's a single line, you haven't connected it with anything. It's a resolve, but it doesn't appear to be a resolve to what you have been creating in your poem. Make it a unity with the other stanzas, collect the themes from the stanzas and mould it into the resolve. Hypocrisy, denial, confusion - at least attempt to nail it in the resolve.
From what I've seen from this poem, you have problems with imagery, and a slight problem with structure that only occurred in the last stanza. I've already mentioned why imagery is important, and that's because the reader and the narrator need to find common ground by something they are both familiar with. If you said 'sadness', it connotes different things for different people. But what is sadness to you? Is it a girl sitting lifelessly by the end of a river?
Id that was the case, you might put something like:
my hand dangles and the
sky (spoon reflections)
stares.
Apart from that, you don't appear to have any major drawbacks.
Thank you for your critique. I greatly appreciate it. I'll take your advice to heart.
But the point is, kind of, that it is jumbled-- since at the time I was feeling very jumbled up when I wrote it.
The first stanza, to me, was more about, bluntly, emotional constipation. The series of ivory is just a fancy way of saying ribs.
The second stanza is about how even though we have the same basic human similarities, we're still different.
And the third is more about why stuff would be taken out on me in an unpleasant way, and how being able to understand it now makes it easier to forgive.
I hope that clears some things up for you.
This poem reaches for so many different things, and falls short on almost every one of them. I'm really not sure how that happened.
Nothing in this poem matches up with anything else. Images don't work together, diction contradicts itself, and the poem resolves itself into nothing. It feels like two different people wrote this.
Spoiler
What is a 'series of ivory'? Also, the image of being 'tied up' is never reinforced, in fact it's immediately abandoned for a separate image of imprisonment; the 'caged up'. The last phrase (beginning on L2) is not fleshed out or explained, here or anywhere else in the poem.
L1 is stunningly harsh, it is a total contrast to the rest of the poem, and leans on a word that essentially characterizes the character in very broad and unchangeable strokes. Breathing the same air, bleeding the same blood, crying the same tears are pretty easy lines, only see the same stars seemed to have any real emotion or inspiration behind it. It's not enough to bolster a terribly pedestrian stanza. Consider that for all its flaws, S1 threw down at least something, and S2 proceeds to totally ignore it. Having roman numerals above your stanzas does not excuse you from forming a concrete idea, plot, or theme.
And again, a totally unsupported assertion, this time directly contradicting the previous one. What is going on here? You're the same, you're different, you're the same, you're sorta different, why should I care anymore, if none of this will be explained in any detail?
How does this stanza go from 'inebriated cortex's stirring with unbridled worries' to 'take it out on simple me'? We have a line so overcooked that it is essentially inedible, followed directly by a line so terribly childish and simplistic, that I cannot remember the last time I discovered something so bafflingly out of place in any piece of serious writing. It's two types of overwriting, the overwrought, and the underwrought. You're presumably going for some effect each time, it just so happens that they're just bad.
I mean seriously, this is where this poem made the strange jump from being underwritten and lazy to really really obnoxious. Let's not even dwell on the fact that this stanza is all telling, and no showing, and also redundant and contradictory at the same time. Just know that it is, and that's really got to change.
This line is like getting bowl of water instead of tomato bisque. Does this line really say anything?
Not at all.
I'm just totally confused by this poem. There's clearly an idea somewhere here, and there's the tantalizing hints of good lines, but it's all jumbled and messy. The sum of this poem is drastically lower than nearly any of it's parts. Nothing works with anything else here.
Okay, so...
Kelle_Belle, you have got talent. And I mean TALENT. You string words along so beautifully, but also so effortlessly (at least that's what it looks like). If you pursue poetry or anything else for a job, I bet my life you'd get critical acclaim.
GRADE: A
It's has a good turn. You talk about this hate for someone else only to turn it around and speak about forgiveness. Has a mixed emotion to it and it's lovely the way you write it out. :3
Wow... It seems like there's something quite fragile behind this.
I'm not sure what the numerals are for, but they're odd and out of place.
The structure seems a little like this has been one big paragraph that's been split up. It's not a bad thing I suppose, I actually quite like it. The lack of rhythm makes it more interesting to read.
The subject itself is brilliant. The contrast between "I’m not a scumbag like you…" and "understanding you takes me one step closer to forgiveness," it's like, you hate someone, but you still want to try to forgive them. I can't put my finger on it, but it demonstrates a kind of strength of character, even in such a circumstance.
I love that last line too. For the way the poem carries through the versus, you've rounded it off perfectly. Keep it up