Young Writers Society

My favorite line, which I'm sure you've heard more than once:

Everyone you thought you loved,
and everyone you thought you trusted,
turned around to stab you,
with a knife that was rusted.

It's a very touching stanza. I enjoyed this one.

However, I must point out how... stiff your word usage is. Trying branching out, using more complex words. It will allow the poem to flow that much better.

~Panda;;

Hi Matt. I'm going to have to break the streak of praise on this one. I'm guessing that the fact that you're posting here means that you want to improve, and although this is better than some of your previous works, there's still plenty you can do to strengthen your writing. The style and language you use in your writing suggest that you're just beginning to scratch the surface of the poetry world. The best thing I can suggest to move deeper into writing is to read as much poetry as you can, so there will be some links in this review to things that I think can help you. I obviously can't force you to follow those links and read them, but I strongly suggest that you do. It's all a matter of whether you want to get better or not.
Alright, let's dive in.

The language you use is pretty basic, which makes the poem seem very flat and gray. Try to incorporate more imagery into your poem that will give the reader something to grab hold of. It's your job to build a scene in the reader's head, and right now all you're giving is abstractions. For example:

Your heart is a shell
of what it used to be.
You used to love everyone;
you used to love *me*.

You can say "your heart is a shell of what it used to be", but that doesn't do much for me mentally. Partially because the language is bland, but also because I don't know why or how your heart is a shell of what it used to be. It's just this idea floating off in space because it has nothing grounding it and giving it meaning.
Now, when I say that your language is basic, I'm not saying that you need to use a ton of big, fancy words. I'm saying that you need to find a way of using the language that will convey what you're saying in the most powerful and effective way possible. Take Lumi's Ivy Rose as an example. There aren't any words that you'll be searching through the dictionary to define, but the language is hardly basic. The images and description he uses give the poem structure and emotional power.

I'd also like to see you try moving away from rhyming your poems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with rhyming in poetry, but it's an extremely difficult thing to do effectively and requires an excellent command of language. For right now, I think forcing yourself to do some non-rhyming poetry will benefit you by freeing you up in your word choice.

My last suggestion for you is to slow down. You jump quickly between topics without ever truly developing them. Example:

A drug addicted father,
and an alcoholic mom;
Now I see why, on the inside,
you were never that strong.

There's enough emotional content in that situation for a whole series of poems, but here you give it a couple lines and then move on, and because you jump to it and back away from it so quickly, its emotional impact is greatly reduced. Don't be afraid to linger on one topic and build off of it. Everything in your poetry should make sense and have clear relevance. This section just left me wondering because it refused to dive deeper into its subject. Readers want detail, they want a backstory. Don't leave them hanging with undeveloped ideas.
Take a look at Kaitlin's anno domini. Do you see how the metaphor of a lover's body being a religious object unfolds throughout the entire poem and comes to a conclusion at the end? If you build strong connections between your ideas in the meat of the poem, then everything will be a lot more likely to make sense at the end.

Matt, your success on this site clearly shows that you're able to connect to an audience, but I hope you don't let that success push you into being stagnant. Push yourself away from doing what's comfortable and recognize that the harshest reviews are the ones that you learn most from. If you do that, your ability to connect to others through your writing will only grow.

Best wishes,
Shade