Young Writers Society

Hey Tenyo

This poem kind of makes me feel sick to the stomach, which is what a car crash should make you feel like, so you did a really great job capturing that in the poem. It's probably more so done at the end with the vivid sounds than in the third stanza or the second.

The reason I say the second and third stanzas aren't as strong is a simple one, you have more concrete images in the second to last, and last stanza. Even the first stanza has very good concrete images. In stanza two you rely heavily on that "faster and faster till we scream" stanza in order for the poem to be about a crash, yet how much weight can we really put on that? Speed racers race quickly all the time, so just going faster isn't going to cause a crash. There's no mention of an ocean anywhere either, and how could time flip? Is that the clock on the dash, or is it because you do and don't see the sun in such rapid succession? Maybe it's because they've been traveling from am to pm? It's not really that clear.

In the third stanza it doesn't sound like a crash, and really having them stop dead could be that they just stop at the edge of the tide, which wouldn't really be a crash so much. I'd like a little more description than the ocean hurtles towards us so that it's not as ambiguous about where they are. Are they all stuck in a car drowning? Are they actually stopped on the beach? That being said, I think you manipulated the word dead very well in this stanza considering the circumstances, but isn't our speaker alive?

The ambiguity would probably get by a publisher alright because they'll just be reading it for the thrill of the read to see how it turns out, and boy does it turn out, but I'd like to think that we can always improve anything. I wouldn't suggest putting more of the vivid sounds into the second or third stanza because crashes need to be sudden, but adding smells or sights might be good to give us more to see aside from "the ocean hurtles towards us" and "speed down the road". So if you want to change it and try to fit in more of a setting for what they were doing before the crash, it might improve the poem a little.

Really I liked this poem a lot, so regardless of any improvements, I think you should submit it to publishing houses and see what they have to say.

Hello there, Tenyo,

This piece was absolutely riveting. I liked how you were never fond of the car. calling it "some great beast" in the very first stanza. You foreshadowed a death all the way through, but i never expected it to be a child's. I loved this poem. It was so so very captivating and it brings to light some things that are not often thought about or brought to conversations. Tragedys that the world forgets. Something very close in my own heart.

Great job, keep writing,

--Cam