Young Writers Society

This is so existential in the most beautifully absurd way. I dig it. Well done! :)

As a lover of both free verse poems and existential philosophical stuff (especially about death) this is basically my dream poem!!
I love the message of living life to the fullest and some of the imagery you use to describe this is gorgeous:
"I will bask in that beautiful, blazing sky/That births unmatched shades of reds, yellows, blues." (and then the reference back to it in the penultimate stanza with thoughts of death being fading to black)
and also this whole stanza:
"I will eat sugary sweet cinnamon pretzel bites/By the bay, along the boardwalk, on a pretty day./I will indulge in passing fancies, like/Catching fireflies, counting comets, kissing kind girls."
wow

The personification of death is also really powerful; using the very human pronoun 'her' but then describing it as cold and unknowable seems contradictory - to reflect the mystery surrounding death.

I think the title also adds a lot to this poem. As religious people often talk about not fearing death because of trust in God, the affirmation that you are an Atheist seems to make this much more meaningful, that you won't fear death not because of the promise of an afterlife but because you have lived fully and made the most of opportunities in life, and so can be at peace when it's over.

I honestly have no criticisms at all - the free verse works perfectly and the structure of uniform stanzas and then final single line stanza for emphasis is very powerful, the gradually increasing line length as the narrator learns to embrace and enjoy life to the fullest is very well done, it's all just perfect!

I may have rambled a bit (and this may not be entirely coherent) because I am absolutely enthralled by this poem and I am now going to go and read all your other poems.
Thank you for sharing this work <3

hey there, just thought i'd drop by for a quick review.

i was really drawn to this poem from the title, so great job there. the poem, to me at least, seems to be the narrator (presumably you) telling the reader essentially that they plan to live life to the fullest, or at least, enjoy life for the limited time that they have. the entire poem has a tone of just acceptance, especially just from reading that first line, "I will not barter with death."

though in the title we are told the your/the narrator's worldview, it's interesting that you still chose to personify death as a person, making it almost a deity even though we know that the narrator is an athiest. in a way, this sort of unites all the different worldviews because regardless of your perspective/religion, the one universal truth is death. it's only what happens afterwards that is still debated. this is also one of the first works I've read where death is presented as a 'she' rather than a 'he,' which I thought was a really cool touch. i don't know if that was your intention, but for me presenting death in this way made the work seem to rebel against the way religion/other works present death.

another one of the lines in your poem that struck me was the last line in the fifth stanza that reads, "So that no one has to wait for a heaven to be happy." this just really resonated with me.

as far as improvements, I can't really think of any. poetry isn't really my strong suit, but I do enjoy reading it. and I really enjoyed reading your poem.