This is my draft for my YWS hunger games. The theme was I had to write a piece about some part of history that is taught in school, so I chose 9/11 (I think, I need feedback)
I've decide it is not being used for YWSTHG anymore but feel free to review and like anyway ;)
We worship at this memorial.
The day rolls around every year,
Time ploughs on like a steam train
Never stopping to commemorate
The memory of those poor unfortunate
Souls who it stole that day.
Nine eleven.
The day the world stood still,
But time did not.
At 8:46 flight 11 destroyed that building.
Smoke rose like from a chimney
And concrete fell like the bitter snow.
Yet time kept rolling out,
Like a malevolent being it dragged
9:03 around and that second tower
Screamed out to anyone.
Mother, Father, Sister, Brother,
God.
Anyone who could save them
But no, time did not stop to give them
A chance. Instead seconds dragged out
Like shotgun shots as people fell from the sky.
Specks of dust in the middle of a storm.
They tumbled down with screams
Composed by madness and fear,
And time let them fall like rag dolls
Discarded by children.
Nothing stopped them.
Those we called heroes ran up stair cases
They did what they could
But time did not stop for the saviour after.
Backdraft sent infernos up spiralled
Staircases. Those men and women
Were chased by the devil and all
They could do was scream and burn.
But still time did not stop.
At 9:37 189 people died at The Pentagon,
Their names now etched onto concrete walls
Somewhere, but they seem like statistics
But again time would not halt.
It kept charging on like bull
Chasing reddened silken cloth
And eventually we get to
9:38 and any soul left had not a chance left.
David got his lucky shot on Goliath
And he tumbled like the mighty
Fiend which he was.
At 10:28 his brother fell,
And those once mighty structures
Which used to rest in that skyline
Became pillars of smoke.
Cascading towards the heavens
Taking the souls of those killed to their
Maker’s gates.
Nine Eleven,
The day the world stood still.
Every year we see on TV those widows
Who lost their husbands.
Draped in black, tears leaving
Mascara lines along pale and weary faces.
We see sons saluting their father’s memory.
We see sister’s laying flowers and
Asking why did it have to happen to her?
We see those wounds ripped open,
We see them weep at the thought of that day.
Their legacy now rests with those two numbers,
Those numbers now are part of them.
On the chambers of their hearts
It is tattooed as a memento of that day.
The day the world stood still,
But time refused to.
Points:
Time spent:
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Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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137,476 Literary Works • 672,034 Reviews
Hello!
This was a powerful poem!
First of all, I think I touch of formatting. I can see that there might be a reason for not having stanzas, just letting the words flow and wash over the reader like the realization of what was happening washed over the people who witnessed 9/11. However, I think this would be more powerful and easier to understand if you broke it up into stanzas. That way you could really break your poem down into concrete sections. If you need any help (although I'm sure you've seen this before) How to format your poetry on YWS
Okay next thing about formatting kind of thing is line breaks. Again, I can see that you might want to have line breaks in the places that you have them to make the poem sound more desperate, to add to that tone. But I just think in a few places they don't really work. Read through the poem like you had no idea what you were about to say next, and see what works and what doesn't. Most of the time I thought the sentence ended at the end of the line break (I guess I'm in a habit of that) but then it kept going and it made little sense to me. Also, you shouldn't break up noun phrases, so this line:
sounds awkward because the reader thinks "poor unfortunate" is the noun, but it turns out that you're going on to the next line. You don't have to follow the rule of not breaking up noun phrases, but following it make things easier on the reader.
I loved lots of your imagery here, and I loved your theme that the world stood still but time didn't. You use a lot of similes in this. Here's a screenshot of them:
Spoiler
They're pretty good, but that one place where there's three in a row, they get a little noticeable. You might want to spread them out, or change them or something so they aren't so noticeable.
I just took a peek at Birkhoff's review, and I feel like I like this better in the essay format XD
But you do what you want with that.
I have little else to tell you. I enjoyed reading this, and I thought it had a lot of valid points about 9/11. Thank you for writing it! It encapsulated the spirit of that time too. ^_^
I hope this was helpful!
~fortis
Hey thanks for the review
in terms
Of format I think that's just my general style of writing for
Poetry. I like cesauras and enjambement so I just use them a lot haha
Hey retro~
I'm going to start out by saying thank you for writing about something a little more modern for the challenge. I think it was a smart play. I keep seeing these ancient things being shown, but this is modern history, and because of that, you're going to get a lot more emotionally involved. It's something most of us remember, and if we don't remember it, it's something we can see videos from on Youtube and in the news.
Now that I've said that, I'll start digging in to this poem, as a poem.
I kind of like how you go about showing us each individual event that happened that day. It was a traumatic day and a lot did happen, so getting a sequential picture is sometimes a really good thing.
The problem is that this is rather lengthy and distant. You have a lot of this language that is more statistical and analytical than emotional.
Instead of taking us to a woman who's sobbing on the streets about the family she lost, we get to see it on TV. This sort of dulls our sense of emotion from the poem.
Then there is the idea that we're jumping back and forth in time a lot too. This is in the present, but the past is what we see as the towers are struck and time isn't stopping. That sort of breaks up our mindset too.
Here we are in both the present and the past. If we have to jump between the past and the present, then perhaps not in the same sentence?
Also we don't really need it repeated that time is moving when you put up the time. If you take out most of the "time would not halt" statements, we're going to get a stronger poem in the end because the poem will keep moving as time did.
I'd like to see this condensed. Take out repeated phrases, work on the pacing so that we get through the events quickly, just like they happened, and give us the emotional reactions in person, in the past, and then draw us to present day later. Put the past in the past, and the present in the present so to speak. I think collecting the two might make us see this less as a statistical analysis and more as something where people were killed, husbands, fathers, wives, first-responders, and we're still losing people to 9/11 from the war, and illnesses that first responders and survivors got being in the area.
Hey Retro!
)
Now, I'm not the biggest poetry fan, and rarely do I review it. However, I'm doing that tonight. Maybe it's because it gives me this unique distinction that I have just read prose.
In fact, I think I have. I just read an essay:
Spoiler
And I think it's a pretty good one as well!
Alright, I'm not going to go on about my stance on free verse poetry, with all of its miniscule imagery, poetic visuals and lack of proper grammar. (Not a fan
However, I can comment on how this reads more like prose rather than poetry.
It feels as if the entire piece is written prose and then broken up into different lines, fitting the format. In the example above, I literally changed nothing except for the punctuation. And a couple of typos. I shouldn't be able to do that with a poem.
This drags on for so long, and a lot of it isn't that necessary. You can conjure up a lot of emotions with a lot less. And not have your message lost in the onslaught of information which I though you wrote way too much of here. I now know the timeline of 9/11 pretty clearly.
I'd want this poem, as with any poem I guess, to be shorter, have a more effective message that hits home, and probably most of all; more poetic content, vivid imagery and better flow.
I wouldn't really think to comment or express this to you, as I pretty much marvel at so many of your other works, but lately I've actually seen quite a few of these works by you. Poetry where you just sort of ramble on, without hitting all the right marks. Pieces I could easily edit into essays and the like. I suppose your other styles just speak more to me. Or feel better in general.
Alright, aside from this, there were a couple of things I did pick up on:
Despite being watered out, you do have a lot of good symbolism in here. And a lot of them hit pretty close to home. (Well it should, it's a pretty rough subject matter). Anyhow, this one sticks out to me. I'm not sure what it could be referencing.
And this one. I'm unsure about what to take from them. Goliath would obviously be the south tower, and David the plane. But wouldn't Goliath be the big bad guys? This flipped it around.
To that end, as you write off the other north tower as his brother; did Goliath have brothers? I'm not sure if he had. But I'm not too learned within that particular aspect of the story.
You have some good repetition going on. I like the 'The day the world stood still' repetition. It's good.
Okay, other than this, there's not much I can comment on. I'm better at reviewing prose.
As always, looking forward to more of your works.
Keep it up, Retro!
Cheers
Birkhoff