Member Since: 1/13/2012
Posts: 13,577
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Cupid:
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swiftie13 - Firstly, I really like this opening line. Personally I wouldn't use "her feet have burns" I'd use "her feet are burnt". There's also something about "Upon" at the start of line 2 which disrupts the flow slightly. The second verse is beautiful, I love the play on the word shelter and how it sets up the rest of the song as a nod to flowers, sheltering those below from the weather. The 3rd verse, could you maybe have switched the scarred part with the cultivated part? The first line seems a little long, also the 4th line was kind of a let down after the first 3, it needed more punch. The 4th verse hit me, change "easy" to "easily" and that's a smack in the heart right there. "Her tired eyes poured out rain, Nurturing the garden" I love this, maybe my favourite couplet of the whole thing. The rest reads beautifully, I think you did a great job at using a metaphor that you wouldn't immediately associate with the theme of the song. A very poignant start to Diamond Hit.
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Temporal:
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Wow @ you stealing my totally original quote formatting. In general I love the concept and the tone, you struck a really nice balance between imagery and emotion, which is always appreciated. However, the meter combined with the rhyme scheme made the song really choppy. The second stanza is a good example of what you should’ve gone for in terms of flow, while the third is an example of what you shouldn’t have done (though I loved the vocabulary there). On to the more specific stuff:
- “Upon where” made my skin crawl a biT, “which” would’ve been a better choice.
- “A humble home with a warmth / To shelter all her children” the second “a” seems a bit unnecessary. Unsure how I feel about it tbh.
- “Despite the neighbor’s complaints” was clunky and nonlyrical.
- Stanza 5 and the “Petal by Petal…” >>>
Overall, nice job!
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Huga:
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Swiftie13 – A Sunflower’s Dance
[DISCLAIMER: You are free to take what you want from this/completely ignore whatever I say.] I will start with what I thought were positives about your entry. You have some powerful single lines – stand-outs include:
”An alchemist, she planted gold
Out of what seemed nothing
”Her tired eyes poured out rain
Nurturing the garden”
”A garden grown with sacrifices
That weren’t yet obvious to me”
Lines like these give off a powerful message without being too blunt nor too cryptic. I also enjoyed your consistent use of a garden/sunflower imagery and how it compares to raising a child, and I can’t say anything was there for the sake of keeping up this image. You had a reason for what you said.
However, I think your biggest downfall here will be awkward phrasing. I will take the first line that I said was powerful as my example. “Out of what seemed nothing” was jarring to read. “What seemed like nothing”, or “What seemed to be nothing”, something along those lines would have made for a less jarring read. You could claim that this was to fulfill a meter (and I know you said not to clock you on it), but I couldn’t really feel one in here. I didn’t get an obvious pattern to attach myself to as I was going along, which is important. You could even take just the stand-out lines I pointed out above and see that they don’t follow an obvious pattern.
There are other examples within the song, but I think I made my point. You could ask for me to expand if you really want to, though.
I will say that this was a pleasant start to my season as a judge, so thank you for not sending something God-awful.
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Pears:
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Swiftie 13 - A Sunflowers Dance:
Story-wise totally gripping, original and emotionally charged. A really sweet read that gave me generally everything I really needed in a song, let alone an early submission like this. The only small issues I had were slight moments of vagueness ("despite the neighbour's complaints" - I felt like this could've used a bit more explanation of just what they were complaining about or just a bit more expansion in putting across that mention of racism) and the meter.
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am happy with this feedback but also shook
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hoping for t20.