Young Writers Society

Hello.

O-kay then. Interesting how you have snow in the actual words and I feel like I'm critiquing a snowflake because of the visual you've drawn up here.

Surprisingly, it's legible despite the broad spacing between everything. You managed to get a good flow for the stanzas, or maybe it'd be best to call them "clumps", themselves, with each line falling into the next quite nicely.

As for the content itself.

It's pretty blatantly about racism but I read it differently than racism against blacks, but instead racism against Native Americans. The nature imagery with the snow aids this, and I actually found the blood on snow metaphor clever instead of overdrawn.

The one thing that bothers me is "shades of green", because it doesn't tie back into any of your previous imagery. It brought to mind copper, because copper starts off red and turns green as it ages, but that doesn't make sense because blood gets its red colour from iron and oxygen interacting. So in my mind silver or blue would make sense because those both reference iron and tie into blood more strongly; blue would especially make sense because the term "blue blood" actually comes from racism back in Spain: the Moors were black Africans while the Spanish were mostly white, and therefore you could see blue veins on the Spanish but not the Moors.

Overall, I actually kinda liked this. It's simple, visually striking, and isn't tackling racism I see very often. My one thing is, as I said, the word green.

Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hello,

I like this. I think it has a lot of potential to be something more than just a "random thought" bouncing around in your head!

I'm not going to comment on the formatting of this poem because I know absolutely nothing about visual poetry and the like and so I'm not going to pretend like I do.

On to the content. There are a couple phrases in this that I think weaken the poem a bit. Short poems are really fun but actually harder because you have to successfully deliver a great deal of punch to make it memorable.

Personally, I interpreted this about race, but it's something that's been prevalent on my mind this evening so it could just be me. I will probably review the following with that in mind, so just take it with a grain of salt if that wasn't your intent.

White walls White paper White people.

It's hard to be painted red against a field of snow.

Crossing lines Not drawn By hands.

We find That blood Comes in far more colors

Than shades of Green.

Hello, fellow After Watch member! Review time!

When I first see this poem, I'm almost unsure how to read it. Reading it from top to bottom makes more sense, but I tried reading it from left to right to see if it was double sided and it sort of made sense until the endish. I'm just going to discuss the version from top to bottom though.

I love how you're not afraid to have fun with the formatting of the poem, and I love how it looks completely random, there's actually a structure to it, with the three lines, two lines pattern an also the lines on top of each other being related as well.

I notice it says 'white people' and I'm wondering if it has some sort of racial aspect to it, but if it does, I'm not picking up on it. The poem may deal with race, I think it also deals with more than that.

I like how the first three lines have so much alliteration: all six words either begin with a p or a w (and three of the six words are the same word), which really adds to the idea of sameness in this first stanza-like chunk.

I like the part about the lines not being drawn by hands, but at the same time, I'm not quite sure what they're drawn by. Are they drawn by time? By tradition and custom? By prejudices and ideas?

The first 3/4 of the poem seem to be about standing out and fighting against conformity, but then from the last two bits I'm sensing more like violence vs. peace, since you switch from white to green and green- at least the way I'm interpreting it- represents peace, so you're saying violence and conflict are more interesting, more varied, than peace which is always the same peace; it's more predictable. I might try to relate the conformity and the peace more, and the violence and the standing out.

However, for the line breaks in the "It's hard to be/Painted/Red" and the "We find/That blood/Comes in far more colors" sections, the line breaks don't read as well as they look.

Sorry to talk about formatting so much, but it kind of reminds me of splatter pain, especially since it mentions colors so much in the piece.

It's always a joy to read your work. Hope my review helped a bit. *Salutes fellow knight.*
-tgirly

This review courtesy of