Young Writers Society

*warning for strong opinion and overall monotone, i'm sure others would like this poem*

i find this to be a very cliche poem-- i've seen quite a lot of 'loss of innocence' stories and it has become rather dull to read, over and over. it is quite interesting when taken at a new angle, but this seems to be one of a common type. i suggest you maybe spruce it up with a change in tones every now and then. its kind of like, i was reading this starting on a fresher, more positive outlook on how it would be, but i sorta hit my zero point towards the end and wasn't really capable of feeling any sort of empathy toward the subject of this piece. i've probably just read stuff like this one too many times.
i'm not at all saying that your work isn't good. there are probably a lot of people who thoroughly enjoyed it. but for me, not very much so. i hope this helped!

Hello, darling!

First off, I really do like the idea behind this poem, but I think it could be fixed up with a bit of spit-and-polish as far as the editing goes. The idea isn't communicating very well due to a few factors, which I'll try to address in this review.

The first thing I really noticed was the redundancy in the images. There's a saying—don't tell me that the moonlight was shining; show me how it glints off the shards of broken glass—that I think could really apply here. In the first two lines, you repeat "moonlight" in two different forms, and that almost instantly breaks the spell of the poetry. It drags the reader out of the poem and makes them aware that they're reading words instead of breathing emotions; find a different word to use, and your image may grow ten times stronger.

In addition, you use commas at the end of every line. Let me ask: why? You don't need the punctuation, it isn't grammatical, it isn't even flavorful, so I can't brush off the fact that it's interrupting my nice quiet reading of this poem. At the end of every line, there's a comma screaming at me to "PAUSE". You don't need them at all.

My recommendation: Scrap all of the separating punctuation in this poem, then add in only that which you need or that which adds something to the text. You can have a poem without any separating punctuation at all, or one with grammatical punctuation, or one with only select punctuation, depending on what kind of feeling you're going for. Get rid of all the commas, then add in only the ones that the poem really needs.

Another point: Your rhyme. What is your rhyme scheme? I tried applying standard rhyme schemes, or even loose rhyme schemes, and none of them fit. Why do some of your lines rhyme and some don't? I would suggest looking at that and fixing it so that you have a set rhyme scheme of some sort, because you switch between every other line rhyming and every line rhyming, and then rhyming in sets of five, and it's all very confusing for a reader.

My big suggestion would be to read a lot more poetry—the surest way to write better is to read better—and to ask someone to help you proofread. Proofreaders can catch errors that you didn't even know you made, or they can point out when something sounds awkward or a comma is misplaced and it's distracting. Having someone else's input might help you catch the awkward, misplaced, or forced rhymes that I'm seeing throughout this, too.

Keep writing!