Young Writers Society

I feel happy to read your poem. As a fantasy writer, not a poet, I can't go all out and give you advice on how to write your works, but I can say that this is very good. The way that it sparks a person's thoughts into thoughts that are different from usual (as lalarawrmonster has stated previously), makes me feel like you're trying to tell us something beneath what we can see on the top. That's very good! Now onto my personal opinion!This is an amazing work. I feel compelled to say it multiple times to perfect the rhythm of the poem. I love the way you've worded it, and aside from those, I have no words for their beauty. Good work on this, you're very good at writing poetry. - Milaita

This poem was great, very smooth and well written. The two things that bothered me was how large each line was. Try to shorten the lines so it would have a better rhythm. The other thing is whenever you mention a stone heart I think you should call it the same thing every time for poetic reasons. It just sounds better. Other than that, It was amazing!

The symbolism in this piece is truly amazing yet simple when you think about it. It seems like you have so many messages that were portrayed, and I think all are true. You bring forth the obvious that we cannot see and tell it to us. Your whole poem is based off of a phrase, is it not? To have a heart of stone. This piece was truly brilliant. I look forward to more. Btw, normally I don't enjoy poetry, but this was a 5 of 5.

The main strength of this poem lies in the rhythm. You have perfect word choice in establishing the pace of the poem. The line "Whose sorrow beaten shells like stones erode" (gave me chills) is a great example of this. The solemn tone and slightly archaic wording ("deceit" "torment") is also good for setting the modd, it's immersive and does it's job well.

On the other side of this, I'll agree partially with Aley (partially) that in terms of structure it might be a bit disorientating for the reader to use such heavy repetition. In my honest opinion shortening the poem would better suit that slow and slightly bitter tone. It makes it easier for the reader and allows that immersive imagery introduced at the beginning to become strained towards the end

Overall, I love it, I'm watching you (not creepily I swear) for more stuff.
It's good. Cheer up and keep writing.

The main strength of this poem lies in the rhythm. You have perfect word choice in establishing the pace of the poem. The line "Whose sorrow beaten shells like stones erode" (gave me chills) is a great example of this. The solemn tone and slightly archaic wording ("deceit" "torment") is also good for setting the modd, it's immersive and does it's job well.

On the other side of this, I'll agree partially with Aley (partially) that in terms of structure it might be a bit disorientating for the reader to use such heavy repetition. In my honest opinion shortening the poem would better suit that slow and slightly bitter tone. It makes it easier for the reader and allows that immersive imagery introduced at the beginning to become strained towards the end

Overall, I love it, I'm watching you (not creepily I swear) for more stuff.
It's good. Cheer up and keep writing.

The opening line needs a little bit of work in my opinion. I don't quite understand how that is supposed to make sense. Hearts could be rented from chests, or rent chests to reside in, but 'are rent' is a problem for me. I think maybe you need rented, or drop the are for that to work right. In the next line you introduce a metaphor which relates soft hearts to stone things.

After you've related the two, you break the relation and say that hard hearts are like stones, but stones are eroded, so you're contradicting yourself in the poem which just undermines your argument. Consider changing the last part of that line and continue with the shells instead of stones, that will make your argument stronger even though sedimentary rocks are made up of shells and other broken down minerals.

After this, you don't capitalize the names of these all important figures, which shows a disrespect of them and thus makes me believe that they are actually unimportant overall, or rather they are not the true culprits.

I still don't understand your use of rent. Also, a stone heart can be broken, as you put it, it can be eroded. That is the minor chipping over time. There are these things called Tumblers where people put in plastic and metal clippings with rocks and knock them around for a long time, and they come out polished. This kind of reminds me of what would happen to a stone heart in a metal chest. It would be tumbled around, chipped and broken until it was shiny.

As for the end of the poem, it is very similar to the start, so I'm not sure there's much more I can say about the nit-picky things with your metaphor. I would suggest, overall, decide if you're going to make soft hearts related to crumbling, or stone hearts related to crumbling. As you have it now, you contradict yourself when you should be making your strongest message. Also the use of rent is strange. I know rent as to borrow while paying for. The only word I could think of that has that sound is wretched, which is basically to puke, or to be evil/bad. The other option is wrenched, which means to pull out harshly.

Either way it seems like there's something not quite right about that word use.

Overall I did like how you kept a continuous metaphor and manipulated the stanzas to repeat in a creative way.

Kind of like a song. Has a good flow. And a good theme. Very different from the way most people think too. Altogether, I like it. Sad, honest, and deep. Thought provoking.