Young Writers Society

Oohh I like when people experiment with different poetic styles.

My first thought is that I don't know if the "[very rough]" is part of the title or an extension of your author's note.

So I like the overall tone you've established in this piece, for me it seems to be really be spinning, like the speaker gets caught up in one thought, a metaphor, than challenges that thought, then goes back to the initial place. Their feelings don't seem settled I guess is what I'm trying to say. There's both an intensity ("agonized whisper") and a wistfulness ("slipped past each other") in the relationship described.

Also you do a good job of using interesting imagery and metaphors in the piece. Especially the last four lines -- which I'm not sure if the reader is supposed to take literally or figuratively.

My main critique of this piece is that although I enjoy the word choice and illustrations you have here, I'm having a hard time seeing the whole story come together. I'm not actually sure what this poem is really about or what's happening.

I have two interpretations.
1) The speaker is in a relationship with someone who works the night shift. This may be a metaphor. So they're like living on these different metaphorical spheres of life, and yet they hold on to each other somehow.

2)The speaker is describing two parts of their identity like the metaphorical sleeping self and awake self, that are spinning or orbiting around each other and the "corners" and "edges" that are breaking forth are some of what is actually authentic.

Those are just guesses, and they are both pretty different and might be wildly wrong, because there just is not quite enough plot here yet for a reader to grasp onto.

There were a few places that the wording could be improved, reading aloud may help with that. One spot I found, "somehow we spun together anyway" I think it should be "we spin" or "we've spun". And I think the last two lines aren't the strongest set-up for the rest of the poem, for me it's just a bit too ambiguous.

Despite a little confusion here and there, there are still some really nice gems in this piece. The 4th line was one of my favorites, "held in the way I say your name." -- really good. The third stanza was also really strong, I just wanted more.

Thanks for sharing your poem, please let me know if you have any questions about my review.

~alliyah

Hello there and happy RevMo (even if I am a bit late to the reviewing party)! I, a bold Knight of the Green Room, am here today to review you.

Now, I like literal poetry and I think it's rather underrated how much you can say through implication by saying other things very literally. Hopefully that made sense. I haven't had any coffee yet.

Anyways, this is definitely rough, but rather than smooth out all the roughness away, I think you could play with it a bit more so that it's still rough, but in such a way that overall it smooths out, kind of like suede or sandpaper. One of the themes in this piece is how all those jagged edges should have been cutting and rough and flow-breaking, but they weren't, so if you could figure out a way to mirror that with the roughness of the flow, I think that would be a great way to reinforce that particular theme.

The one thing that did stand out to me as fluff was "Impossible because" because it's rather repetitious, and also a bit redundant. If you cut out those two words, none of the meaning is changed, and I think it gives the second stanza a stronger start with how abrupt it would then begin, rather than trying to ease the transition with the filler, and also help tie back into the theme I mentioned before.

The first thing that caught me is the word sparkling in the first line. It breaks the flow of the rest of the verse, so I think it would be better if it was removed. In the second verse, the pronunciation of "hardly" breaks the flow as well; I would suggest "scarcely" in its place. It means the same thing, but the beginning sound of the word helps it feel like it fits into the verse more. As well, altering the last line of that verse to "but somehow, we spun together anyway" would help it stand out more. In the last verse, I would suggest a comma after the first word, and a comma after "time." After the dash, I can't make much sense of the verse. A rephrasing might help with that. Overall, I liked the poem. The only problems I really saw for the most part were with the flow.

This has been a Strident review. Hahaha... I love using words that actually mean something as usernames. It'll be funny if you know what strident means. Anyways, I hope this advice is useful to you.