Young Writers Society

Alone in this room,
That's full of people.
Alone in my heart,
That yearns only for him.
Talking to everyone,
A smile plastered on my face.
Can't anyone see through this
Pitiful pretense of pleasure?
Joking and laughing,
With all my friends;
Acting like I'm there,
Seeming to think of them,
While my heart,
My treacherous heart,
With a mind of its own,
Only thinks of him.
His laughter, ringing like bells,
His touches, gentle yet passionate,
His voice, telling me of his love,
His flaws, so easy to overlook.
My friends call me loudly,
Jerking me out of my dream,
As I fake yet another smile,
Act like I was just spacing.
And return to the play,
That had become my life.

TWIN!!!!! This is so sad... You've been lieing to me! No, but seriously, I know exactly how you feel. Alright, so nit-pickles:

fluteluvr77 wrote:Alone in the room, The should be this.
That's full of people,This comma should be a semicolon, or perhaps even a period.
Alone in my heart,
That yearns for only him. Switch for and only. It sounds a bit odd as it is.
Talking to everyone,
A smile plastered on my face, This comma should be a period.
Can't anyone see through this
Pitiful pretense of pleasure? I absolutely love the alliteration here. Nicely done.
Joking and laughing,
With all my friends, Change the comma to a semicolon.
Acting like I'm there,
Seeming to think of them. This period should be a comma.
While my heart,
My treacherous heart, Love the word choice here.
With a mind of its own, Love the personification.
Only thinks of him.
His laughter, ringing like bells,
His touches, gentle yet passionate,
His voice, telling me of his love,
His flaws, so easy to overlook.
My friends call me loudly,
Jerking me out of my dream,
As I fake yet another smile,
Act like I was just spacing.
And return to the play,
That had become my life. Adore the metaphor, and really strong ending, but awwww, so sad. Poor Twin.

Love this, Twin. Just punctuation issues and all, but otherwise, it's really good. Gold star.

Wow. What is up with everyone and such sappy, depressing poetry? Anyway, not bad. There where a little too many commas in the middle, but I'll let Elkiza do most of the critiqueing, since that's her job. But as a general message to all, life isn't that bad.

Hey hon, what's up.

Where shall we start? Let's start with your own admission: that this is sappy. If you know it's sappy, there are some really important questions you have to ask yourself. Does it have to be sappy? Is there a different way to express these ideas without making it so sappy? -- There are ways to write about a topic that's sappy without sounding sappy, which, if you think about it, is probably the better course. -- What makes this poem different? What makes people want to read this? How can I make sure others can relate perfectly to this?
Now, with the subject you picked, that last question shouldn't be a problem. Loneliness is a pretty universally felt emotion. Your biggest difficulty, I think, is with originality. There are no new human experiences, and very few that have yet to be written about, if any, and you picked one of the most commonly written about. That makes this much more difficult.
You have to use original language. Find the most inventive words, the most lyrical way of putting them together. And especially, use metaphor after metaphor! Your imagery is at the barest minimum right now. You need pictures and comparisons. Don't just tell us what this person is feeling, show us. That's a lot of what sets poetry from prose, which puts your poem in a precarious position, teetering on the edge of becoming prose that's just been separated into lines.

One more suggestion. The most beneficial thing when it comes to rhythm, I think, is reading the poem aloud. That should help you spot just about any little glitch and smooth it out to perfection. It's simpler than going through someone's line-by-line about your rhythm. I wouldn't say there were any big problems that stood out to me in that area, but all the same, you can never make a poem too perfect, right? =D

Good luck, and let me know if you ever want me to take another look at this!

Here as requested!

Pitiful pretense of pleasure?

This line doesn't have the same meter as the lines before hand. You go from short and sweet words to long alliteration. It makes things stop dead.

His laughter, ringing like bells,
His touches, gentle yet passionate,
His voice, telling me of his love,
His flaws, so easy to overlook.

This is a pretty bland list of what the narrator likes about him. I'm sure a lot of girls will agree with me in that, when you are crushing on a guy, the list here is pretty much what you notice. I would consider nixing this; lists drag poems down.

And return to the play,
That had become my life.

Hmm, this ending brings in a new thread instead of properly tying off old ones. You don't really tell us how her life is a play. Perhaps you should throw in some theater metaphors to make this a better ending, and to make this theme more unique.

~~

Flow: You have an okay flow here, although some lines are slightly harder to understand. Keep things consistently long or consistently short and sweet to make things sound better.

Theme: This theme of crushing on a guy has been done time and again. And the more things have been done, the deeper the writer has to dig to come up with something new. Find a new way to portray being lonely so that things aren't as... cliched.

Overall: I liked the opening for lines. They set a nice tone for the poem, but I find you lose that lovely quality come line eight. After, things go downhill. Stick with the emotions in the first seven (maybe six) lines and find a way to express what's under it more creatively.

~Rosey

I enjoyed this piece. I thought it was good. You drew me into your world and made me become apart of it. I know what it feels like to be surrounded by so many people but in a world of your own. Love will make you do that. Love will stop all things where nothing else truly matters. The thoughts began to invade your mind at first, then it's the depiction of your lover, the weird emotions you feel deep inside that brings out a yearning unimaginable. That's love for you. Your words flowed beautifully and you captivated my heart, mind, and soul. You made me believe that your emotions were uncontrollable and all you wanted to do was be near to the one who holds your heart. Great piece! I look forward to reviewing more of your writing.

Hullo, hullo, hullo! I'm not sure what anyone else has said, so hopefully I don't go repeating others foolishly.

You obviously have something emotional you're writing about, which is a great start. There is a handful of things I could cover, but instead of boring you I'm going to try and hit the most important ones. Writing better comes in stages, so expect this to be phase one of "May learns to write amazing poetry!"

Punctuation is your friend!

You are awesome in the first place because you actually have punctuation in your poem! Srsly, I love you for it. However, you kind of misuse punctuation a lot. Remember, poetry has the exact same grammar normal sentences do; line breaks are just there for organization, they don't require commas. So, for example:

Alone in this room,
That's full of people.
Alone in my heart,
That yearns only for him.

Look at this sentence normally: "Alone in this room, that's full of people. Alone in my heart, that yearns only for him."

Funny, huh? Those commas don't belong there. "Alone in this room that's full of people" sounds kind of awkward anyway, and I would probably change it to, "Alone in a room full of people". (I can't figure out if "that" really belongs there, or if "which" should go there. XD)

More or less: be grammatical about punctuation!

How to Inspire Emotion

This topic has a lot of subtopics but I'll try to be brief. I don't want to bore you!

You're writing about something that is very you (or narrator) specific. Poetry, believe it or not, is all about the reader. You want the reader to feel and experience everything in the poem. The best poems inspire emotion, thought, or reaction in the reader. As a write, you have numerous tools to do this:

-imagery: use the five senses to describe things in vivid ways the reader can experience. Don't just say "pleasure", explain the pleasure through feelings. How does the pleasure feel in the pit of your stomach? Does it make you tingle, or want to throw up? Does pleasure taste like honey, or tar? (Hopefully not the latter!)

-Metaphors/Similes: these are both literary devices you can use to create vivid things for your reader. A metaphor is a direct comparison (my heart is an anchor in my chest; heart is compared to anchor) whereas a simile uses "like" or "as" (my heart is like an anchor in my chest).

-many, many other literary devices. You can easily google for different kinds. These include rhythm, rhyme, onomatopoeia, alliteration (which you used!!! yay!), etc etc etc. I'm kind of tired so I can't think of anything right now.

Like I said, poetry inspires something in the reader. It's kind of hard to explain how to do this, and the best suggestion I could give you is to read poetry. Here's a short list of my favorite poets, and I guarantee you can find their poetry online, for free! List: Emily Dickinson, Longfellow, T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, Spenser, Byron, Percy Byshee Shelley. Most of these are old guys and might be a bit confusing, but it's worth a try.

If you have any questions or would like more help with poetry, feel free to Pm me! However, it might take me a while to reply. Either way, I'm here to help! Best of luck to you.

and here i was trying not to think about it...
i can relate to this too well
very well done, you draw the reader in and show them what your going through

now please excuse me while i go crawl into a ball... just joking, i never give in that easily

once again, its pretty well done, though following the advice you've been given would make it even better

-grimy

I liked this poen\m. it made alot of sense and it was deep.

Oh, this is so sad! It's lovely - but sad!!
Ok, I think it starts off well -


Alone in this room,

That's full of people.

This is a very strong image,
and plays on the reader's compassion right from the start.

Alone in my heart,

That yearns only for him.

Also good, and has a nice dah-di-dah sort of rhythm (if that makes any sense at all)
However, the comma after heart is not needed - you can take it out


Talking to everyone,

A smile plastered on my face.

Can't anyone see through this

Pitiful pretense of pleasure?

Now I understand that this part is necessary to convey your message, but the wording is a little awkward and doesn't flow so well. Perhaps you could change these lines, though at the moment I'm not sure how you could do it.

Joking and laughing,

With all my friends;

Acting like I'm there,

Seeming to think of them,

This could, I feel, be condensed down to one or two lines. This may not make any sense at all, but explaining everything in depth is sometimes not as good as just hinting at something. Perhaps use a metaphor or imagery of some kind here.

While my heart,

My treacherous heart,

With a mind of its own,

Only thinks of him.

I LOVE this part. These are my favourite lines. Your use of repetition make it seem more heartfelt and emotional.

His laughter, ringing like bells,

His touches, gentle yet passionate,

His voice, telling me of his love,

His flaws, so easy to overlook.

Beautiful <3


My friends call me loudly,

Jerking me out of my dream,

As I fake yet another smile,

Act like I was just spacing.

Again, a little awkward. Perhaps just take some of this out as it is not necessarily needed.

And return to the play,

That had become my life.

Fabulous ending. (no comma after 'play' though)

I think this poem was lovely, and you really did have some beautiful language in there!
Hope I wasn't too harsh!
Jemima

A lovely piece of art!

Honest and unashamedly personal.
The back and forth nature of your work, the pretence and the reality,
to me evokes the thoughts of a mind tortured by unrequited love.
A line that illustrates this perfectly is "My treacherous heart, with a mind of it's own"

However, my only criticism is that the odd narrative touches, "My friends call me loudly,"
for example, focus the poem solely on yourself, but your feelings are felt universally!
Were it my piece, I would try find a way to open up these lines, perhaps "Friends call loudly",

Feel free to ignore that

Haunting piece "...laughter ringing like bells" Church bells? Lost love means no marriage?

Loved it

When you said it was a sappy poem i was like ohh great but after I read it, it really ddin't seem to be that way at all. It seemed like it was really filled with raw emotion and that you were pulling people into your world. When you said Pitiful Pretense of Pleasure I think it was a bit to much maybe tweak it. aia think you could add more senses and a stronger imagry,try to manifest feeling into other things I;ve read a lot of poems that that has erally helped. Overall really great poem nice work

very nice. depressing and angsty. it kinda leaves you hanging, in a good way.

hey, i forgot to say that you had very good use of alliteration in this line, "pitiful pretense of pleasure?" and i liked your ending, it felt very strong.