Kadie’s poem reflects the speaker’s want for the power to better the world and all those contained in it. In a single stanza, Kadie reveals a speaker desperate for this power and emphasizes the “need” through several different literary devices.
Kadie opens with an open ended question– “do you think I could just be like that?”, which makes the reader think… like what? Through her enjambment separating the question and answer, Kadie quickly entices her audience to delve further into the speaker’s mind. She then hints at her desperate tone through a metaphor referring to the speaker “sitting in a cage”– she’s afraid that her life will be like that of a bird, that she will feel trapped, which leads to her want to be free to help all others that are trapped. After an exclamatory “No!,” her tone quickly shifts from one of melancholy desperation to independent defiance and drive.
In a series of repetition, Kadie displays all of the powers wanted to be the superhero to heal the world: “I want to…/I want to…/I want to/…”. These parallel lines are emphasized with the poems’ couplet rhyming scheme, which brings the poem together as a whole. I love Kadie’s off-rhyme general rhymes, with paired words such ass “globe” and “known”– it keeps the couplet rhyming from being too singsongy.
I like that the poem’s repetition included “I want,” yet the poem’s title was “I Need,” which did not come into play until the fourth to last line, “/I want, no need, to matter./.” However, I think the point could have been driven home further if “I need” had been saved for the very last line in the poem.
The last two lines in the stanza had me questioning the author’s tone “I want the powers to do, not just say/I want to be a superhero, okay?” Could there be any irony in her words– the whole poem is “just saying”, where is the “doing” in the poem? A great use of phrasal repetition and overall togetherness throughout, can’t wait to read more works.