Young Writers Society

Yikes! You fell into the rhyming trap, as I know Kyllorac has already explained. You say this is your first poem, so it's a great start! Everyone does the "must rhyme EVERYTHING" when starting out. (At least, I think they do. There could be exceptions. )

I also wanted to say, kudos on your response to Kyll's review. I'm impressed with your attitude--not everyone is so graceful about accepting criticism.

.....is this awkward of me to say, here?

Anyway, this is a great "launchpad" for your work. Learn from reviews like Cadi's and Kyll's--yes, they do know their stuff. At the same time, they're not perfect and you need to find your own style, so take every single piece of advice you get with a grain of salt. Most of it will be good, and you should listen to it--but again, your own style, your own voice. Learn from the best, and go your own way.

....I have now repeated myself at least twice, so I bid you good day. *tips hat* (Good night, really, but it doesn't quite matter. )

Hey there, Bus.

Now, I don't really do that poetry thing very much, but I thought I'd take a stab at reviewing this one. I find it interesting that you wordwarred it - I usually find that wordwars aren't overly useful for poetry. Wordwars tend to be useful for getting some words on the page - for example, in the first draft of a novel - but aren't so good for the times when you need to focus on which words are on the page.

Possibly because this is a direct wordwar product, there are quite a few things about this that I feel could use some work. In particular, you seem to be focusing mostly on the rhyming. Remember that not all poetry has to rhyme, and that if you do write a rhyming poem, you shouldn't sacrifice the sense or the feel of a line to make it rhyme - forcing it just makes the poem feel unnatural. Lines that feel particularly forced include those ending in 'monger' and 'conger', and the 'bind'/'unwind' pair.

Something that's important to the flow of a poem is the rhythm of the lines. The easiest way to find out where the stresses fall is to read it aloud - try reading your first two lines out loud.

I lay in my room and can feel the dreams coming

In this first line, you've got a quite nice and natural-feeling dum da da going on, and it rolls very easily off the tongue. But then we move to the second line...

when I hear that fateful sound that awakens me, stunning.

...and I'm not quite sure which bits of this to embolden, especially in the first half. It doesn't fall into a natural pattern like the one before, and because of that, the reader is jolted out of the poem's flow.

As a final note, you seemed concerned in chat that nobody would get what the poem is about. I think I'm getting a vague picture, but it's just that - vague. I think that if you polished this up, focusing more on the sense and the flow than on making it rhyme, you could make it a lot sharper and really pull on your reader's emotions.

Feel free to message me about anything I've said here.

Cadi x

This is very moving. It tells the story of something most can't bear to think about and tells it beautifully. You have excellent word choice and decent rhythm. The rhyme scheme is kept throughout, which I believe helps the poem in a way. There are some places where the rhyme is weak, such as "echo in my mind as I lay in a sprawl," I found this line a little awkward, which could be fixed with a little rephrasing. Other than that, I don't see much else.

Great job! I hope this helps!

- Up

Well, first of all, I really like your poem. It's very suspenseful.

I think the rhyme scheme is a little distracting, honestly. It gets in the way of what you want to say rather than enhancing it. For a poem like this I would use slant rhymes a little more, but you're the poet, it's your decision.

There are some places where I think the flow could be smoothed out a little, but adjusting the rhyme scheme would make that much easier.

This is a good poem though, so keep writing, I would love to see more of your work!

Next time, before you go posting right after writing something, please please please take the time to revise it. Please. Your reviewers would greatly appreciate it because then they could focus on the content and applications of technique rather than basic grammar and structural issues.

That said, right in the first line, we have a case of wrong tense used. "Lay" there should be "lie".

The "stunning" in the second line makes no sense grammatically or in-context, and so it is rather obviously there purely for the sake of rhyming. This is bad as it cheapens the rhyme scheme of your entire poem.

Similarly, the third line of the second stanza suffers from forced-rhyme syndrome, though in the third line's case, it's more because "monger" is such an unusual word, it feels out of place. The fourth line of the second stanza, however, has no excuse for being as obviously forced as it is, and it isn't helped by another case of wrong tense; "was" should be "were".

I cannot move even though I want to brawl,

I can feel the proverbial knot as she is in a bind.
I can smell my own urine as I try to unwind.

No one is peeking,
but I know that not one tear is leaking.