Birth of a Poet(edit) no new title yet

[dukealien]

What it is to be
born with the sun
under a rose-dusted sky
 
caught between the dream
and not, a mind split
by that cutting light, 
 
mysterious; a glimpse 
of shadowed edges,
what exists at the seams
of the world.
 
Alone, standing revealed
before the mirror, 
windows unshaded.
 
Then whittled.
Cut to find the heartwood,
their penknives so sharp;
trimmed, shaped, made beautiful?
Something reborn.
 
To bleed
in that birthing.
 
To find that hunger
for your own blood.


This is a poem I have reworked formerly titled "Critique".

In moderate critique, my first difficulty is the title.  The subject (even the viewpoint character here), it seems to me, is the poem rather than the poet.  Hence it is birth by or from rather than of.  In the title, though, "Birth From a Poet" doesn't work... perhaps something like "Born From a Poet?"

A small suggestion would be to separate "penknives" into "pen knives" or "pen-knives," suggesting the correcting instruments of pre-digital editors and critics (the expression used in the military of my time, upon seeing a report or communique red-penciled profusely by an instructor or commander, was "he bled all over it").

My other suggestion is to add a stanza suggesting the loss of whole body parts - words, phrases, even (Heaven help us) rhymes, along with more fluid and replaceable blood.  Turning a Petrarchan sonnet into free verse, or vice-versa, is a transition that puts humans dissatisfied with their birth sex to shame.

(Now I'll go back and view the other critics' bladework   )