Winter

Hi there! Noelle here to review as requested!

Just a general flyby here (where I basically just tell you what your poem meant to me and what I got out of it):
There is a couple out walking in the snow. It's cold. The speaker is thinking about how good the two of them are together. He/she says "I love you", which are probably the three most important words to ever say to your significant other. Then we learn that winter is the speaker's favorite time of the year.

I've read through the poem all the way through about three times. The first time I read it was just to read it; I wasn't looking for anything specific. When I read through it, I found myself actually smiling as I went through. It's cute in a good kind of way. A nice little couple are walking along during winter, enjoying each other's company. Then when I read it through again, I realized that there's sort of dueling ideas here. What I mean by that is, there are these beautiful descriptions of winter and how it makes the speaker feel, but then there is also the narrative of this couple and their relationship. I feel like there's just too much of both of those ideas to make it one cohesive poem. Maybe if you toned down one of the ideas a bit it would fit well together. For example, focus mainly on the imagery of winter and then sneak in the part about the speaker saying "I love you". Or focus on the relationship and sneak in a few descriptions of the weather since it's winter time. Just be careful when you mix ideas like this. You have to balance it right. You're close with how it is now, but I feel like there's just too much of both the ideas.

Just a general observation here: you switch tenses. Just like in prose, you have to be consistent with your tenses in poetry. The poem begins in present tense, "Cold air nips at us" "Gloves warm our blue fingers". But then in line 12 it switches to past tense, "Abruptly we stopped, shyness invades". As I'm reading it over again though, I realize that it switches back and forth between present and past tense. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it doesn't seem to have a pattern to it. So be careful with your tenses. Really read over your poem again, out loud if you need to (that really helps a lot) so you can see the way the tenses are intertwined.

There is very little punctuation in this poem. Now, I'm not going to sit here and point out every spot that I think there should be punctuation because this is your poem and you know how it's supposed to sound. I'm just going to suggest that you think about using some more punctuation. Commas, dashes, semi-colons, etc. If used correctly they can really manipulate the flow of the poem and create a certain feeling for the readers as they read. And especially since this has bits of narrative in it, you can really increase the effect that the story part of the poem is creating. Think about it at least. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

The length of your lines is pretty consistent. The first couple of lines are considerably shorter than the rest of them, but that's okay. It's like those lines are introducing us to the "story" and then we really dive into it. Consistency in line length is actually quite important when writing poetry. It goes along with the flow of the poem. If you have three lines that are two words long then another line with six words then another with one word then three lines with twenty-six words, what kind of a poem do you have? A jumbled mess of a poem. Keeping the line lengths about the same not only makes the poem flow easily off the tongue, but it is also visually appealing.

So now I'm going to read through and focus line for line. If I see something worth mentioning I will. But if it's just too brilliant I won't say anything about it ^_^

Gloves warm our blue fingers

Um, if they have blue fingers that means that they're not getting oxygen to their fingers and that's a problem. Not really a good picture, or a good thing for them

Think of another way that you can describe their hands. "Red and stingy" would work well. "Frail and frozen" could work too.

Your arm rounds around me

I'm not sure how I feel about the repetition here. 'Rounds' and 'around' have the same sound, because 'round' is in both words, so it's like internal rhyme kind of (at least I think it's internal rhyme. Rhyming confuses me to be honest). It sounds pretty cool when you read it, but this is the only time that there is something like this in the poem. There is no other repetition or rhyme that I see which makes this one stand out like a sore thumb. It sounds really nice, but I feel like you'd have to add some more of this into other places of the poem to balance it out.

That beautiful sound our voice makes

You forgot that 's' there

Falling snowflakes mess up our vision

Just a personal preference here, but I think "mess with our vision" would sound better than "mess up our vision". I would say "mess with" because when it's snowing, sometimes you can see and sometimes you can't. So unless they're in a blizzard, chances are their vision isn't completely messed up. Again, that's just what I think so feel free to ignore that if you don't like it.

Abruptly we stopped, shyness invades

I didn't know that they were moving in the first place. Unless the stopping is referring to them making googly eyes at each other

(man I'm really on a roll with these winkie faces today...)

Yeah, the chemical kind

You forgot the 'h' there. ~~I will not use a winkie face here. Nope, not gonna do it. Control your impulses Noelle!~~

All components for the most wonderfully complicated equation

You forgot the 'c' there

~~drat, I did the winkie face again~~

"I love you" slips out first from my mouth...
..."I love you" slips out first from my mouth

These two lines don't come one after the other, which is why I used the ellipses, but they do relate to each other and I have a concern about it. So, in the first line, the word 'love' is in quotation marks. Since it's not dialogue, those quotation marks make it seem like an idea that the speaker isn't all too fond of or doesn't actually believe in. And then in the second line, the speaker says "I love you". To me, that "I love you" has a weaker meaning to it because of how he/she referred to 'love' in the first line. Does that make sense? The "I love you" would be more powerful without the quotation marks around 'love' in that first line.

With strength it reminds me, why winter is the best

So, to be completely honest, I feel like this last line is a bit of a let down. The whole poem is building up to this time where the speaker says "I love you" and there's a kiss. And the last thing we read is that winter is the best. I'm not sure what I was looking for for an ending, but it was something more powerful than that. I mean, it works well if this poem was all about winter and not so much about the relationship. But it is about the relationship too. Not to mention, the title is "Winter" so we already know that it's winter. Oh, what if you said "why this time of year is the best" instead. Well, that wouldn't really fit with the flow and all that, but you get the idea, right? I was looking for something like that. Using the word 'winter' is kind of redundant. Winter is the title, we know it's about winter. Now the speaker is telling us that "winter is the best". I had assumed that from the title and the descriptions and the narrative.

Overall this is a nice poem. I'm really impressed with your imagery. There are some good images here and they really make me stop and think about all the times during winter that I went outside and experienced these things. I've been blinded by snowflakes all too many times. And I actually like to go for walks through the center of town near my house (when I say near I mean like, 25 minutes away xD) so the line about the snow covered pavement made me smile. Like I've mentioned, the poem flows very well. I had no trouble reading through it and it sounds very nice. The speaker's tone is very upbeat and sort of sentimental which I think was pretty cool. I really enjoyed reading this!

If you just consider adding some more punctuation and maybe messing with the two ideas in this poem, it'll be great!

Keep writing!
**Noelle**

I just have a couple things here. I do enjoy this poem, but there are a couple tips I have.

At "Your arm rounds around me," it just doesn't flow well because 'rounds' and 'around' are so stinking similar. So instead of 'rounds' find a word like 'wraps' or maybe a synonym of it.

Also, in the line "That beautiful sound our voice make," 'voice' should be plural.

In "All components for the most wonderfully compliated equation," you spelled 'complicated' wrong.

This poem has a definite lack of punctuation. Poetry should follow all the punctuation rules. Make sure you at least have sentences.

If you would want this in stanzas, I have a tip. Even if you didn't, I would consider it if I were you. What you need to do is press the enter button wherever the end of a stanza is. In that empty line you need to put a period so it doesn't regard it as a random empty space to be looked over.

I hope this helped! I'm sure anyone who has been in love or who dreams of love will absolutely love this

Great job! Thanks for sharing your art on YWS

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