Young Writers Society

Hello DrFeelGood, steampowered here with a review as requested! This is going to be a short review, since the poem is short, but I’ll try my best to leave you with some decent feedback.

This is definitely an interesting concept. It’s not uncommon that we see poems told from the points of view of inanimate objects, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something specifically about a shock absorber. So it’s definitely unique.

I’m kind of reading this at face value here, although I’m not sure if there’s another layer to it. Generally, I feel like that if the poem’s meant to be humorous rather than a deep metaphor for something else (and if it is a metaphor, you might want to give the reader some more clues so there’s further room for interpretation) then you should perhaps try and make things more interesting for the shock absorber. I kind of like the way the shock absorber almost hero-worships the driver, but perhaps you could tell us more about the driver, whether he’s a reckless driver or whether he’s a careful driver (thus making the shock absorber’s role less important)

A more technical thing I’d suggest for improving the flow of this poem is to either go with rhyme, or to remove all the rhyme. At the moment, your poem doesn’t rhyme in most places, which is fine, but words like “brunt” and “front” and “pain” and “strain” do rhyme, so in the interests of consistency I’d eliminate these rhyming words.

And I think that’s everything I picked up on. Keep writing!

-steam-

Very very nice. Great job.

Drfeelgood,

We're being taken to unusual places here. A personified shock-absorb-er is such a rich idea. I'm a partly biased reviewer when it comes to rhyme, so take what I say with a grain of salt but I actually think this might read better without the rhyme. The rhyme makes it cutesy, like a Disney's Cars sort of cartoony vibe, or a Dr. Seuss sort of cutesy poem. I think the concept of this poem lends itself to the more serious tones. You can still have a rhythm and a beat and a movement and a musicality without the strict rhyme verses and actually, so many of your better lines here don't use rhyme at all!

One thing I've noticed upon my reading of it and your intentions is when I read it, the poem seems to be about a personfied shock-absorber. What that means is that we're taken into the world of the shock-absorber and viewing it through its' eyes, what it feels, what it wants, what it longs for. This is perfectly fine, the experience of the poem is unique and original and I had fun imagining that world.

However, it seems you're intending it to be a metaphor and the poem is not quite there as a metaphor just yet. A metaphor has two dimensions - it has the vehicle layer and it has the tenor layer. The vehicle is what the poem is REALLY about and what is being invoked and the tenor is what the poem is saying. Your poem has no vehicle. And so, my suggestion for you if you truly want to move away from personification and into metaphor territory is to develop your vehicle.



It can be as simple as title change. See, your title even evokes itself as personification. Your title says, "This is the story of a shock absorber" This poem will read differently if you say instead, "This is the story of a Single-Mother" With a title like that, all of a sudden we're seeing connections between shock absorber and a single mother. But the title might not be enough, we're also wanting to word things in just a way to imply single motherness. For example, perhaps instead of using car-words, we use kitchen-words or parenting-words and we use those words in a setting that is the car and vehicle. See, a car's kitchen might be the engine blowing steam just as a boiling pot of water. You get the picture. The easiest way to do this is a chart. Find single mother related words. Find car related words. See where you might connect the two!

Now, I'm using "single mother" as an example of a vehicle, but you can use anything. A guy named Steve, a bee colony, a laborer in a slave-labor economy, etc. etc. But specificity is key. It can't just be "anybody". When it's too general, there is no need to use a metaphor, because metaphor is all about specifics. If you want to go general and talk about just about anybody, then you write similes. Not metaphors.

So, if you're still down on the metaphor idea -- find who exactly or what exactly you want to be your vehicle the thing the poem is -really about- and be specific, don't just pick "anybody". Then maybe make a chart of words that relate to that idea, and a chart of words that relate to the car idea. And then scratch and plug and invent. Easy as pie!

Why this is not a metaphor just yet? There's only car talk throughout this whole thing. Sometimes, when we're writing a poem, we have ideas in our head and even though you write the poem with this idea in your head of what it really means-- we as readers can only interpret what's on the page -- not what's in your head.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you need to chat this one over.

~ as always, Audy

Hello, los3r lov3 here.

This was a lovely poem. I'm not sure how you could interpret the lines but I saw it as inspirational. If that's what you were going for (or not) this was great! I'm not exactly sure what you could improve on since others have said, 'heart and soul is the same, and blah blah blah.' So basically this compliments. I really love the all the metaphors and such in your poem. In this it's really important to have them or you'd be blabbing on about something irrelevant. Anyway I hope you liked this even if it was useless. Thanks for the read!

lov3,

a los3r

Wow, love the symbolism here! A shock absorber is a bold symbolizer to take on, but I think you tackled it well! There's a few technical things that could be ironed out but I won't nitpick. I like the idea here, it's original, it's fresh and the overall rhythm is good. The poem as a whole is almost-what's a good word...I almost want to say empowering? Because the more the shock absorber is hit the better it becomes.

Really enjoyed this,

Happy writing

Kali L.

This is Yams here for a review!

My soul resides in the driver’s seat,

But my heart’s inside four tires.

I don't know if cute is the ideal word you'd like for me to use to describe this poem, but, it is really cute. Maybe it's just the fact that it's about an inanimate object, but it's just adorable to hear the shock absorber describe it's function and the struggles it faces.

I'm not too familiar with how cars work, but you did a great job of making it really understandable, even in a little poem.

I feel like you did a great job of giving human-like thoughts of the shock absorber. You did personification in a way that didn't feel forced or exaggerated, it felt very natural. I think part of the reason you pulled it off so well was because of how you led into it with:

My soul resides in the driver’s seat,

But my heart’s inside four tires.

It affects me a lot, but I don’t stop my work.

The more you hit me, the better I become.