We're all wearing masks...

A friend made this poem, and thinks it sucks, but I snatched it from her and said I wanted to see what other people thought. I know youngwriterssociety has some wonderful poets, so if you could just critique and appraise this, that'd be great!

We’re all wearing masks,
Parading around,
Like courtiers at a ball,
Out true selves never found.

We’re all wearing masks,
Afraid to show who we really are,
Fearing ridicule and scorn,
But our disguises leave a painful scar.

We’re all wearing masks,
But under our flawless façade,
Lies our true beauty,
And under that false front our true selves fade.

We’re all wearing masks,
Someday we must take them off,
Before we become the ones we fear,
The ones that scoff.

We’re all wearing masks,
But we must make a choice,
To show who we really are,
Or lose our voice.

We’re all wearing masks,
Cast off yours and be free,
Risk it all and find those who are your true friends,
Or become those whom you flee.

Can someone please critique?

Don't you understand?

I'm giving you *the chance* to ~gasp~ be as harsh as you like!

Hehe, tell your friend it doesn't suck, just has some ups and downs like every other poem. It's just how good she covers the downs with the ups

First of all, the first line at the beginning of every other stanza, "We are all wearing masks" gets repetitive with time and tends to get the reader bored. I'd suggest she cut that off.

The rhyme scene is well done, yet simplistic. But hey a rhyme scene adds a bit flow, which it did. Since the sentence structure - stanzas 3 and 5 give a nice example - tends to make the whole flow a bit tacky.

And the dots at the end of the last lines in stanzas 4 and 5? If it was her intention to make the sentences a bit longer that way for it to "look" structured, well that wasn't a very good idea. If it wasn't her intention, than there is no reason to add those dots either. We all know the dots at the end " Dots at the end..." which aren't meant to be used in poetry, only in the rarest cases. Why put them at the beginning?

Overall, it wasn't bad and the topic didn't quite excite me it's something that has been done many times before

Keep writing.

Cheerios, Chandni

I'm not really one to give anyone any advice... so I won't. But, I thought it was a pretty cool poem. I actually like how We're All Wearing Masks was repeated, because I tend to do that. Well... not that I write many poems... novels for teen girls... okay, I'll be quiet now.

Chandi, thanks for the constructive critique, but I have a confession. *sigh* I was the one who put the "dot dot dot" at the beggining. Anyway, I just thought it would be cooler if there was a nice long pause there. Well, thanks! And thanks emooly!

Any more critique? Hmm?

This didn't suck by any means....

But it does need some major work.

Have her read it aloud... She should notice some fairly large flow issues. There are several spots with far too many syllables, and severl others with far too few. They should be rather obvious once read aloud, and thus easily fixed.

However, it was nice in it's way. Tell her to come over to YWS and make a proper appearance.

I shall. Thank you.

Anyone else care to critique? What was that? Yes? Well, good then.

The repetition: agreed with Chandni. Usually to make repetition work it needs to be used in different ways each time it appears, and so take on slightly different meanings each time. Not all good repetition does this - but in many instances it does, and it justifies repeating something. In this case it would probably help to just cut the repeated line, maybe having it once at the beginning and once at the end.

Also, this is very abstract on the whole. It's also about a metaphor that's become commonplace. Neither mean it shouldn't be written about -- but when writing about the abstract it should be done [at least in part] in a way that is concrete: metaphor. Imagery, especially, using sensory details to convey a mood and let the reader imagine things, get involved with the situation of the poem. Likewise, with something like masks concealing true selves... it's a good place to start, because the whole poem is a metaphor. But since it's one that has popped up time and time again, it needs new details. What kinds of masks? What do they look like? The literal description of the mask [like at a faerie ball? a tribal mask? a halloween mask? do different people decorate their masks differently?] could reveal a lot about the person behind the mask. What's it like to cast off something you've worn for so long? Do you "lose your voice" because literally the mask gets in the way and what you have to say echos back at you, instead of out into the world?

I think "We're all wearing masks" is to cliche to be repeated so many times. Other than that, it wasn't astounding, but fair enough to get by I suppose. Tell your friend they have potential, they just need to work on their descriptions a little more.

Hey! Tell your friend that I thought that it was really good! I liked the concept 'we're all wearing masks' that was really good. Great job!

Mm yay, harshness.

"We're all wearing masks"...well wippifriggindo. That's only the 98293843rd time I've heard that. Cliche much? It is not bad, per se, to do something that has potential to be cliche....but she needs to find another way to say it other than "we're all wearing masks' to add some originality.

Out of the 98293843 times I have heard that like, 98348 of them were in this one poem. Too much repetition! If you have stanzas in which are 10 lines each, it is okay to have the first line be the same for all of them. However, if you have this many stanzas and they are all four lines long the repetition is liable to drive a person crazy.

Happy Editing,
WM

I love it! I have a weird thing about masks hats and bags. I imagine mine to be big enough to cover half of my face. Which using the metaphore of the poem means I think I only hide half of who I am. ANYWAYS...

People will say that it's repetitive, and sometimes repetitive is good. (this is one of those cases) to me poetry either has to rhyme or be repetitive to a small extent. This fits it, it has a beat, a flow, and has a poetry feel to it.

I like it.

Ok so hi... I am the author of this poem... so I'm making my appearance lol. First and foremost, I would like to thank each and every one of you who has actually critiqued this story!! Those of you who were brutally honest, thank you as well; I've always said that I prefer honesty, even though it may be brutal, to an insincere wonderful critique.
I'm aware that the poem has some flow issues. Some verses are too long, others too short, etc. The mask metaphor is a bit tired, but I like it lolz. Now see... I TOLD my friend that I think it sucks, which is why I've never posted it anywhere myself, but I'm glad some of you really liked it... so yeah.

-Atariel