Title: Kaleidoscope
Author: Blackaddictz
Genre: Short story
Rating: None
# of chapters: 1
# of chapters I read: 1
Summary/blurb:
A nuanced sky
A melting sun
A golden evening
A charcoal night
A chromatic abstract
A prismatic mosaic
A colourful painting
An incandescent photograph
A kaleidoscopic life
Review:
Cover:
The moment I added this book to my reviews reading list, I knew I'd have something to say about the cover. Why isn't there an actual kaleidoscope on it? What I'm seeing right now is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It just looks like you chose a random 'starry night' background and slapped a title onto it (which let me add, is blurry, as is the author's name). I'm not sure whether you did it out of irony or not, but I'm not seeing it.
Overall—Put an actual kaleidoscope on your blurb or call your collection of short stories "A charcoal night."
Blurb:
This is the first time I review a collection of short stories, but even then, I'm not given any indication as to what the overarching theme is. What I'm getting, instead, is a poem, which doesn't tell me anything. I mean, it's beautiful and all, but still; I'm not sure about what kind of short stories I'm meant to expect.
So I took a peek inside—thinking that maybe each story revolves around a line of the poem, e.g. story 1 is about 'a nuanced sky—but then I was given yet another poem, which makes me think that you have placed this in the wrong category. If the rest of this book is going to be filled with poetry, I suggest you put this in the poetry genre.
Other than that...I don't really have much to say. At first, I thought that for some of the lines, you correlated the wrong adjective to the noun. For example, I looked at "a prismatic mosaic" and thought, "Isn't a mosaic 2D what does it have to do with prisms?" But to save you from my ignorance, I looked up "prismatic" and saw that it also means "rainbow". So a colorful mosaic. Noice.
Overall—Put this is in the right category.
First Impression:
I'll tell you straight up that I don't write poetry, nor do I ever read any. I've had a horrible experience in high school where I was forced to analyze poetry by the defunct Irish poet Seamus Heaney—most of his poems revolved around potato crops and the farm life, which I personally found very boring. So this is kind of a challenge for me—so take this review as my miserable two cents.
I'm going to work through this first impression the same way I did just last year. In parts.
1. Theme—The poem clearly revolves around colors and the emotions we associate with them. Or at least, this is your interpretation. When it comes to sadness, a lot of people see the color blue as its visual representation, while others associate it with serenity and peacefulness. Black is usually associated with death and loss, so I found it interesting that you correlated sadness to it as the overall emotion. It's not wrong—there are no right or wrong interpretations.
2. Title—Well, a kaleidoscope is an optical instrument through which, with the help of colored glass and whatnot, can help you see trippy images. Linking back to the theme, the title not only has something to do with color but the way you, yourself as the poet, perceive them. Unlike animals that see in greyscale, we human beings see everything in color, and of course, there's a pattern in the emotions that we link to it. Kind of like the designs you see when you look into a kaleidoscope.
3. Tone—The tone isn't completely impersonal because there were a few references to "we", which includes the author. Referring to oneself as a collective pronoun gives me a sense of unity—the gift of life and colors is something we all have and share. I also thought that you sounded very pensive while at the end, in the last line, "Life has myriads of beautiful colors and we should learn to paint murals with all of them" I saw wisdom, as well as a gentle reminder that we should appreciate the gift of colors.
4. Structure— I really appreciate how you've made an effort to make your poem follow a structure. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end, and you show the transition between these sections through the stanzas. The first two are quatrains, the next three are triplets, and the last are couplets (or maybe one couple and a single line. Maybe you meant for the last sentence to be on one line, but Wattpad messed up the formatting). The strength of a poem is found in its structure—if it looks sloppy, then it's harder to get your message across. But there is a fluidity to your poem, so good job for that.
5. Sound and Rhythm—This is the part that I found a little jarring. Whilst you have a clear rhyme scheme (except for the last time. Personally, I think you should get it to rhyme with the first line of the first stanza, to give it a sense of finality), sometimes I felt like the individual lines didn't have a clear rhythm. It's hard to explain, but poetry, like music, needs to follow a specific tempo, each line should have a specific amount of beats to it. What it really comes down to is the words you chose—you can only really notice this kind of thing by reading the poem out loud. Take the first three lines of the first stanza, for example.
"Life is a kaleidoscope of infinite shades,
A reflection of myriads of hues,
A smeared painting of sapphires, rubies, and jades [...]"
I don't know if you've noticed, but the third line sounds a little bit off—mostly because of the inclusion of the word 'smeared'. It throws off the rhythm you set in the first line (because I think you have an abab scheme). I suggest that you rid yourself of 'smeared' so that it sounds better.
Even the fourth line of the stanza, "pretty pinks, bright yellows, and soft blues." The alliteration of 'pretty pinks' is a little off-putting, especially because you don't use it for the other colors. So I suggest you change it to: "Soft pinks, bright yellows, light blues." So the whole thing would read as:
"Life is a kaleidoscope of infinite shades,
A reflection of a myriad of hues,
A painting of sapphires, rubies, and jades,
Soft pinks, bright yellows, light blues."
Read it out loud—does it sound like there's a bit of a rhythm to it now? Like you can snap your fingers to it? Make sure you read through the other stanzas as well, because this is an issue of noticed throughout the whole poem. If you don't see these things, have someone else read it out loud for you and point out what wording would work better.
6. Language and Imagery—You've mostly used adjectives and analogies, but it works well in your case. There were some elements of repetition every once in a while with the wording, such as 'myriad of hues' was used more than once, so I'd watch out for that. I did picture the different colors through the metaphors, so that worked well.
Writing Style:
The biggest thing here is the grammar and punctuation. You've used the possessive noun incorrectly on a number of cases, in the place of plurals. For example, "pretty pink's, bright yellow's, and soft blue's" should actually be, "pretty pinks, bright yellow, and soft blues."
Also, make sure you add a comma at the end of each line, except for where you end the sentence.
Characters:
None.
Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 7
I've decided to give this a seven because of the grammatical and punctuational errors, the lack of rhythm, and the non-related cover. Rhythm in a poem is one of the most important elements—if it doesn't sound like there is a consistent beat to it, then it's mentally jarring. It's not easy to do, but you live and learn, right?
Otherwise, I really liked the concept. You have a good grasp on the basic elements of poetry (which isn't that easy to achieve) and you've started the book with the right foot. Good luck!