Young Writers Society

...

Wow, I like the imaginary in this. It's really great.

I honestly can't say there wasn't a thing wrong with this, it was absolutely amazing. I could really picture everything you wrote clearly and that's what I like

Continue writing, please

good luck

That is a really good poem.the way you wrote about the strings i thought was great. i couldn't find any thing wrong with it either.

keep on writing,can't wait to read more.

I started losing you by the end of the second-last stanza. It looked like it was all coming together to a happy end, and then... something happened, I'm not exactly sure what. It seems that the narrator and the other person have grown apart - either physically or emotionally. In the spirit of poetry such differences would hardly matter, but here they do: people physically apart would be able to get back together (and thus a beacon would be of help to them), while people emotionally apart tend to be a bit more difficult to reconcile.

Also I am not exactly sure of the "broken in my mouth" metaphor. If this is a love-related poem, does this mean that the narrator "overused" ("overchewed"?), for the lack of a better term, the other individual? Hmm...

There were some flow problems, since, as this is free verse, there is very little structure (other than stanzas; nothing like meter, assonance, rhyme pattern, etc). This is to be expected of free verse, but it also makes the poem a bit more difficult to read. This aside, I found no technical issues.

Because I am not sure what to make of this poem, I cannot definitely say whether I liked it or not. I'll say that I liked the beginning, but the end confused me.

Best of luck.

I'm sorry if this is a bit harsh, but I mean well. This is an online workshop after all.

I agree with carbonCore. The imagery in the first stanza was good, lines succinctly capturing the "commotion" inside the boy's mouth. I especially like your use of "jostling" in the third line:

blackbird12 wrote:you always covered your mouth when you smiled,
invisible strings pulling your hands to hide
the jostling molars, jutting canines
your mother couldn’t afford to fix,
the teeth I knew as well as my own.

Line 4 suggests the persona knew this boy very very well. The second stanza further develops this, implying the persona does not care about the awful teeth. But in the third stanza

I wanted to unhinge my jaw
and swallow you whole,
our fragments fitting together
like the sky licking the trees—
but you were broken in my mouth.

everything falls apart. Why does the persona want to unhinge his (her?) jaw and swallow the boy whole? Is he so revolted by this sight of teeth? And why are their fragments suddenly fitting together? He swallows the boy whole, doesn't he? Also I wasn't convinced by "the sky licking the trees." And if the persona wants to eat the boy, why is he surprised that he is broken in his mouth?

The fourth stanza

our eyes met and broke, hands unclasping
as the distance between us,
but still a sharp glint far off—
the smile that scissored us in two,
a beacon for our halves seeking each other.

confirms that the smile tore them apart. I object to "...that scissored us in two" because to me that evokes a pretty violent image. Imagine someone getting cut in two. Perhaps "tore us apart" would work better?

I don't know about "a beacon for our halves seeking each other".

I'm not sure either if the persona is male or female. The tone is masculine and some thoughts (swallow you whole) are aggressive. Homosexual perhaps?

Be careful with the line cut. Like in stanza 2, lines 3-4

staring upside-down at
trees stabbing into blue sky—

"at" should be in the next line. It's not advisable to cut a line at a preposition or article. Also, be consistent with your images. First you have the trees stabbing the sky, then you have the sky licking the trees. That's gotta hurt!

I like how you use language though. Perhaps you could revise this and show us the revision.

Best of luck. Keep writing!

The thing is, usually teen poetry is one dimensional and centred on feeling we like to think are unique but are not, and anything better than that (which is where yours stands in my opinion =]) is hard to review by just reading, as the feature you intended to work may go amiss, and I’ll probably find new ones that you did subconsciously. To actually help you with something like this, I’d need some sort of commentary – what you did and why, what you were trying to convey, even if in just note form. Otherwise it’s hard to evaluate if the poem conveys what you want it to, without knowing exactly what that is. If that makes sense. Or at least I find it is, as a good poem is never one dimensional.

Here’s my thoughts so far –
While I was generally impressed by the quality of this poem, especially the imagery, I feel you’re missing a few opportunities. It’s a little ambiguous in places to what’s important and what the main point of the poem is, which a few devices could really help with.

I noticed you didn’t use a single capital letter apart from ‘I’ which doesn’t really count. Just something for you to consider, if you did then choose to use a capital letter it would put stress, emphasis, importance on that word. But I couldn’t quite work out why you chose to leave out the capital letters in the first place. What effect does this have? If you’re doing it for the sake of it, without being able to justify it, for how it looks or just by accident, you may want to address that.

The rhythm is all over the place. Yes, it may be free verse, and poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, and some people like expressing their love for poetry that doesn’t rhyme – I’m thinking further than all these comments. It’s a little like the capital letter situation; use consistency so that when you break it, it means something. Sometimes it can be really hard to use rhyme and rhythm, and can even pull you away from the true meaning of the poem as you have to compromise with how it sounds. That means it can be a lot of hard work, but that’s also how you can improve. Quality doesn’t come from talent alone.

The semantic field of teeth is almost brilliant. It would be nice to have the invisible strings in with the metaphor too so there’s more consistency. Maybe instead of string its metal wires (like a brace), or something of your own doing...

I’m assuming the poetic persona is a girl talking about a boy she loves (mainly from the title). The attention to detail is a particular feature of romance, so that all fits. But stanza 3 struck me as strange. Brilliant imagery, but perhaps you were focusing too much on how it sounds and not what you are actually saying. I’m all for staying away from cliché’s but:-
‘I wanted to unhinge my jaw
and swallow you whole,’
This sounds destructive, a tad too far and a generally odd. Maybe they’ll be one, but unhinging a jaw would be an entirely painful act and then swallowing him whole – maybe I’m missing the point slightly, which is why a commentary would be helpful, but I feel like any symbolic meaning I can put to this will be strenuous, tedious and possibly contradictory. What does it mean? Or is it just to follow the semantic field of teeth.

our eyes met and broke, hands unclasping
as the distance stretched between us,

our eyes met; broke, hands unclasping -
the distance stretched between us,

Ok I did that within 30 seconds to make a brief point. No, it’s not perfect, but again I found your use of punctuation mainly for structurally purposes such as symmetry. Here it creates a metaphor - broken and disjointed like their eyes and reaching love. Generally I found the biggest weakness of this poem was control of techniques used. By taking out the connective in the second line, the pace is made racier and therefore more ‘in the moment’, emotional and similarly disjointed.

Please don’t let my comments slide by, even if you feel I’m talking rubbish. I feel it would be helpful for both of us to hear some answers to my questions so that I can re-review this from a writer’s perspective rather than a reader’s. For now, this is all I can do and it may not all be relevant. I hope this has been helpful so far, and good luck with your writing.

Hey blackbird, I'm finally here. Sorry for the huge delay >.>

First, I like the new title. It's less of a mouthful than the original one, and it fits the overall mood better.

The overall imagery and the way you keep up with the metaphor and imagery is great; it's got that edge of painful and physical that contrasts nicely with the way one would normally picture this scene (I'm thinking mostly the second stanza, which you could expect to be peaceful and loving but that you've delightfully twisted with the puncturing of the sky, the splitting of the mouth). Same thing for the third stanza, with the shelter-cage opposition.

The one thing that bothers me right now is that the flow of it is a bit too stuttering at times and you've got some some sentences that just feel out of place.

the teeth I knew as well as my own.

is one of those: it gives a feel of the familiarity and the physicality of the relationship, but it feels tacked on to the end of that stanza and I think you've given enough other hints to it that it could be removed or at least reworked to slot in more nicely. A bit on the same note,

your lips split into a grin.

feels too cut off from the rest of the stanza. In part it's the dash, but I think it's also that it follows the first line of that stanza and is separated by the whole body of it; there's too much distance.

The last two stanzas are the best, I think, though there are some slightly off lines (the last two lines of the third stanza have a completely different rhythm than that of the rest of it, for example). Nice job overall though :D Hit me via PM if there's anything.