Young Writers Society

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Hannah wrote:For Rosey's contest.

Touching THE sea and touching THE light,
dancing through a breathless night, or restless night
separating something fright'ning from the carpet where I stand.
'Round me fly the dust specks
IN the light from lamps which now wane dim: in&diM isn't a rhyme and you should put that IN to the beginnning of 5th stanza
even there the el'ment lingers, as a frenzy-grasping hand.

Made from gravel base as any,
formed to ornaments by many,
shining in the sunlight like a thousand secret diamonds found, This verse, as many others, is quite long and it's messing up the rhythm.
dimmer than the jewels we kept
as guard of our hearts as we slept,
though any moment, any man or any blow makes break and sound. You put comma before "or"-not...

Crashing through the dreams we dream "I like"
as if to ruin and meant to ream
essence-sands and heat from man-made source, o, whence this crystal rose.
Sound cracks two find halves apart.
The glass caves in around my heart.
Materials of sea and fire turn now to bitter, sharp echoes.

All in all, these ideas you spilled on this paper (or binary system) are very good. I noticed that you have many motives and you use them carefully. But on the other side, this verses that are twice as double really ...try to shorten them or something... Keep up with the good work. *clicks star*

Okay, admittedly, now I'm just going to troll through your writing obsessively.

I say again, I adore this.

The lengthened lines are a tad cumbersome to work with before you get the hang of them, but so is Poe, at times, and this gives me the distinct feeling that you have had a strong influence from Edgar Allen Poe, or the better of Frost's work.

I agree with your use of in and dim, as well. Perhaps not an exact rhyme, but very close assonance, and so, to my mind, just as good as an exact one. Indeed, it shows your ability to bring in another useful tool to convey what you're saying without having to radically restructure--and quite possibly diminish--part of the poem.

Oh, do so write more! I have a feeling we're going to be good friends.

Sincerely,
Tanner John Evans

Ah, m'dear, it is only fair that my very own CBF gets my first critique as an Instructor, ya? Perfect timing to post a poem. You must have been waiting for my application to be accecpted.

Touching sea and touching light,
dancing through a breathless night,
separating something fright'ning from the carpet where I stand.
'Round me fly the dust specks in
the light from lamps which now wane dim:'Wane' and 'dim' have about the same meaning, and give across the same impression. Perhaps change 'wane' to 'grow'? Unless you think that would be too contradictive.
even there the el'ment lingers, as a frenzy-grasping hand. I think you could either cross out 'as' or change 'as' to 'like'. It seems to flow better.

So far this is very beautiful! Very much a mouthful too, but I believe that just adds to the tone of the poem. There's something very mysterious about your word choice, too.

Made from gravel base as any, Hmm. I believe, for this to be grammatically correct, that you'd need an 'as' after 'gravel'. But, that would put the rhyming scheme slightly off. Think about it: would you rather have something that doesn't make much sense and could possibly be grammatically incorrect, or would you rather disrupt your rhythym? Your choice entirely. Or you could rephrase this, of course.
formed to ornaments by many,
shining in the sunlight like a thousand [s]secret[/s] diamonds found, It fits the rhythym more if you cross out 'secret'.
dimmer than the jewels we kept
as guards of our hearts as we slept,
though any moment, any man, or any blow makes break and sound.

I love the concrete rhyming scheme you have going! Your rhythym is so very steady, also, give or take a few extra syllables here and there (which I have brought to your attention). Normally I'd be telling you to tone it down a bit-- after all, this is very complex and intense --but, like I said earlier, it's a personal style that you've chosen for this poem. and it works. It wouldn't work in prose, but here it works.

Crashing through the dreams we dream I'd change it to 'the dreams we're dreaming' but that's just a personal opinion. It works fine either way.
as if to ruin and meant to ream
essence-sands and heat from man-made source, o, whence this crystal rose. Capital 'O', or lowercase 'oh' would look best, methinks.
Sound cracks two find halves apart. 'Found halves' you mean? Because 'find' doesn't make sense.
The glass caves in around my heart.
Materials of sea and fire turn now to bitter, sharp echoes.

Gasp! No, your perfect rhyming scheme set off-balance in the very last line. 'Rose' and 'echoes', although they appear to rhyme, actually do not. Why, you ask? Because of syllables. Rose, of course, has the emphasis on the ROSE syllable (the only syllable ), but echoes is more like E-choes. You see? While 'rose' and 'choes' may rhyme perfectly well, you're looking for a rhyme to work with both your accented syllable and your ending syllables.

Stupid English, I know.

Otherwise, this poem is really quite beautiful. You create such a heavy tone that we must wrap our minds around it to even degin to make sense of it, but it's not so heavy that we're trying to wade through a sea of jello. Which would require way too much energy. Here, it's just something interesting to contemplate: and what could Hannah possibly mean by this?

My only issue is that I couldn't particularly tell that this poem is about nature. It seems more like a bunch of amaxingly eloquent phrases thrown together in a beautiful sequence, and that works wonderfully. But, since I already knew that Rosey's contest was about nature, that was the only way I could tell your subject. Then, realizing your theme, I could go back and pick out how all of the things you mention tie in with nature.

How to fix it? Put more nature, so hat we can tell what your poem is about without checking out Rosey's contest. You have 'sea' and 'fire' at the end, which is good. Now, could you possibly add a bit more of that? Wind and water, the clouds that float like lingering dreams...

Ya?

Hope this was helpful, dear, and see you around!

~Evi

I love it, I think that the length of the poem is great too. I don't think you should change "in" and "dim", they don't exactly ryhme like they could, but I don't think that it messes up the rhythme. I don't know what you'd change it too either.

I don't think it messes up the rhythme either when some of the lines are longer then the others.

hi hannah..

i really like it.. i mean, i love poetry with a lot of descriptions.
okay, here i go **clicks**
there! a gold star.. (you're welcome)



so, i'm looking forward to your other works.
keep it up. i know you'll do a lot.

one question: may i ask why is the title "shattered"?

.god bless.

Hiya Hannah!

Since I am now finished the judging for Elements of Nature, it's time to pull up all my entries to critique them! ^_^

I was judging on three items. How you portrayed the element, originality and structure.

Element: Very interesting choice here. I liked how you described glass. And I did take it, considering glass is/represents elements in some cultures. I liked the beauty and frailness displayed here. Very nice.

Originality: Certainly at the top of the list here. ^_^ Glass as an element was a unique choice, although it did take me a few moments to figure it out. You pulled it off though!

Structure: Here is where I wasn't so happy. Once I got used to the long lines I was okay, and I did like how you used them to break up couplets, but they were a bit too long, you know?

Still this was a very nice work. I would enter more contests. ^_^

~Rosey

This piece was interesting. I loved your imagery and use of description. Flawless. I believe that this poem deserves a gold star! Great job. I hope you write more poems.

Hannah wrote:For Rosey's contest.

Touching sea and touching light,
dancing through a breathless night,
separating something fright'ning from the carpet where I stand.
'Round me fly the dust specks in
the light from lamps which now wane dim:
even there the el'ment lingers, as a frenzy-grasping hand.

Love, love, love, love this first stanza!!! it's great with the rhymes, the flow, and the images.

the other ones are okay. i think you need better rhyme structure. just a suggestion.

This is very good!

I especially love the first stanza because the way you describe it creates perfect images inside my head and you descriptions are extremely good as well.

Another thing that I must say I love about your poem is that it's very original, and being original is a very good thing to be!

I must say though that some of your lines were rather long so maybe you could think about breaking some of them up into couplets or something like that. Just a suggestion.

I like the length of your poem as well. It's not to short but it's not annoyingly long either so that makes me feel happy on the inside

Overall I think that this poem was extremely well written, I love your writing style, your descriptions and the images you manage to create in my head!

Keep up the good work and I can't wait to read some more of your wonderful poems.

Keep writing x

Meg x-x