05-01-2015, 05:15 AM
(04-07-2015, 04:43 AM)shy_symphony Wrote: Because I am a woman,
I am expected to be an impossible version of myself.
Because I am a woman,
Every lens I look through is distorted to imperfection.
Because I am a woman,
I try to turn every ounce of hate for myself into love for you,
Until I am bone and skin.
Because I am a woman,
I was taught that this is the only way I would get love back.
Because I am a woman,
The only way to be happy is to call for an uprising,
To fight an unholy war until I return to the soil.
Because I am a woman,
My existence is catastrophe.
But because I am a woman,
I am strong enough to survive.
hi!
i enjoyed the overall aim of this poem very much. i agree with you that there are a lot of impossible double standards and societal limitations placed on women and any poem that tries to explore those is wonderful in my book.
a few of the other replies here i think said something about reducing the repetition - less "because i am a woman" lines. i absolutely agree. while repetition can be extremely powerful in conveying anger or pain (see Allen Ginsberg's Howl), there's a way to do it. when your poem is this short, and you're breaking up each single image and line with that one repetition it actually lessens the impact of the words rather than heightening it, as i imagine you're going for. sort of like when you say one word so many time that you start to wonder if it's even a word.
i also think some of the lines here ("my existence is catastrophe; to fight an unholy war...) run the risk of making you sound melodramatic when you really are calling attention to something important here. there are good images that i like, for example the bone and skin thing evokes a sort of anorexic type shape which i think is important, but some of your images end up a bit foggy and over-generalized (again, the catastrophe line). there's a shape that this poem needs to take, and i think that's something slightly more personal and more specific, in order for it to have the impact that it should have. thanks for listening!
-ajax