Young Writers Society

Hey Nightscape!

I always have a helluva lot of fun with late night poetry sessions xD There's something serene about the am hours, so I can get really inspired, or I can be in a sleep-deprived rambling mania, one of the two. Anyway, so I struggled with punctuation as well. I still do, actually. Poetry gives you more creative freedom with punctuation, but I just want to clear up some confusion about it, because there seems to be a lot of conflicting advice floating around the YWS (punctuation is necessary in poems! punctuation is not necessary in poems!)

It's actually more like both are true. It depends on the poem.

Punctuation is for clarifying and for separating sentence structures. In other words, punctuation is necessary when it becomes necessary. If a poem doesn't have any punctuation at all and it is difficult to read because of it, it is necessary. A poem should never be difficult to read because of punctuation, rather a poem becomes difficult to read because of improper punctuation. Punctuation itself, when used correctly, should always clarify and it should always be negligible. You shouldn't even notice it. Where reviewers are saying that the punctuation here is subtracting from the work, I noticed mostly in this piece, it's just comma use - you've just added them in places where they needn't be. No biggie, that's the easiest fix in the world. I do that all the time, too. I know you said something about how you prefer to not use any punctuation in a poem, and whether that's okay, and the answer to that is: does the poem need it? Is your poem creating this effect:



For me, line breaks are a part of a poem's punctuation, because the way we read line breaks nowadays serve many of the same effects and purpose that punctuation do. That's why you see those poems without much punctuation for example, they are separating their non essential clauses with lines rather than with commas. I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion about punctuation. Anyway, I really don't want to make this review about punctuation because I can go for a day and a half - but if you want to chat and discuss punctuation stuff, I'm only happy to do so, just drop me a line ^_^

I like this poem though. I find it interesting that there is this sassy voice, it is very powerful and there is a sense of flow and rhythm, I'm not distracted by the rhymes at all, except that first stanza. For some reason, the "what do I see? /me" line sounded almost nursery-ish xD The rest, I kind of loved - like the undetected/selected - that was interesting. A lot of your slant rhymes too ^_^ I love when people look at assonance for rhyme rather than similar spelling of words. So the voice is powerful and it is almost even scary in the forcefulness of the tone, the "you're getting paranoid, you're falling apart" - it sounds like that inner voice destroying the ego, like a person adopting two personas so there's this theme of darkness and self-hatred. The speaker of the poem I interpret being the omniscient self, and the "you" the person in the mirror (so the poem is self-referential/the speaker speaking to themselves). At other points in the poem, the "you" seems to refer to society. Like at the point where the speaker is slipping into "your world" I have to wonder whether the speaker is saying that they are a person pretending to be someone else, so a wolf among sheep's clothing kind of experience? ORR if the poem is saying that there's a "depressive/cold/harsh" side of this person and that depression is what is slipping into "your" world, as if there are two sides to the narrator. By the title, I am leaning towards the former interpretation, but I do like both sides of it. The ending is really interesting to me too, almost sad in some ways - why are people so hard on themselves, why are they so heartless/cold? OR I suppose it can be interpreted as hopeful, perhaps this narrator was going through a pretense for society and by the end, the narrator decides to "kill" that pretense or be herself.

I'd like to see this a bit more developed! I understand it's a lyrical piece, so that does have its constraints, but it'd be so awesome if we can delve a little deeper into the speaker's world, perhaps have them refer to an actual event and re-tell that event? The "I slipped into your world" part for example, I wanted to see that happen as it occurred. Chat me up, we can talk about it

~ as always, Audy

Hello fellow YWS member! This was very interesting to read. I like how all of your stanzas seem uniform compared to each other; you kept a nice pattern of four lines which I appreciate. As Cailey said, you don't need all of the punctuation. It makes the lines very choppy and hard to read. I like that you actually rhymed every stanza, that was refreshing to see as most poems nowadays don't have much rhythm. This poem makes me wonder if one of my friends feels this way as well, and that makes me very questioning. All in all, I really did like this piece of poetry, because you incorporate a lot of similar feelings that a lot of people feel. Thanks for writing, and have a great day!
Love,
Perks

Hey there! Here to leave a review.

First of all, I read this, but since you had mentioned the punctuation thing I was just distracted by punctuation and was like, what this poem makes no sense, it's just a lot of punctuation and rhyming.
So then I went back and ignored the punctuation and read it again and I loved it! I know that I tend to put up a kind of mask and pretend to be someone I'm not and fade into the crowd so that I won't be noticed, so this really resonated. However, I liked it even more because it seemed like there was an element of anger here and almost malice. Like, this speaker doesn't sound like a shy introvert that just wants to hide his or her emotions and true self, it's like someone deliberately pretending to disappear for some alternate reason.
Really cool.

So, punctuation. First of all, let me just tell you that you do not need to have punctuation at the end of every line. In fact, having that much punctuation makes the poem seem really monotonous and the rhyme seem really forced. Which is totally isn't. A lot of people tend to not be huge fans of rhyming (at least that's what I see from my YWS experience) but I think that rhyming can be great and I think you use it well here. Some of the sentences are inverted a bit oddly to fit the rhyme, but I think that's consistent with the rest of the poem so you do a really good job of making the rhyme fit. But you do not need as much punctuation as you have! You shouldn't have to stop at the end of every line, especially when the end of the line is not the end of the thought.
For example here:
"You cannot see,
beyond the wall.
For I only meant,
to fool them all."
Neither of the commas are necessary, since "You cannot see beyond the wall" is a sentence like that. If you were writing prose you wouldn't write "You cannot see, beyond the wall." So that's one helpful thing to do, write out your poem without line breaks and stanza breaks and then punctuate it, then break it back up into a poem.

Anyway, I hope that was clear. I really like when the poem says "Does it scare you?" since all of a sudden the tone switches from "I pretend to follow the crowd" to, "I am purposely doing this taking you into consideration and you have no idea." Obviously you worded this much better and I'm not sure if that comment made any sense, but maybe it was slightly helpful.

Nice job overall, good luck with the punctuation and let me know if you need anything or have any questions or anything of the sort.
Cailey

Uh....I seriously don't know why I had a blank comment attached to my published work so I just edited it....