Young Writers Society

Hello!

Really, this was surprisingly enticing. I expected a more scientific/medical poem based on the title.

Your imagery was very strong but I want more emotion. I see the picture, but I don't know how I'm supposed to "color this in". Right now it is black and white from fear/depression. And, I get that it is depicted a phobia but even that emotion is not felt in your work; I only know it is about a fear because of your title/description). So, I would work on adding some emotion to enhance the imagery.


By comparing emptiness/nothingness with a phantom city, you allow the argument of there is no such thing as nothingness... if you have nothing, there has to be something. "Nothing" is empty space, and yet that empty space is something. So, I like how you allow that structure of a city to enhance that argument. Then, with the "phantom" you reveal the emptiness aspect--so basically, a ghost town. You enhance the fear by using phantom city instead of ghost-town and I like that.

I think the second stanza was your strongest one in this poem. There was so much here to describe agoraphobe. You introduce the phobia's description in the first line then you strengthen that explanation with the further imagery for the reader to imagine the setting of the poem.

Overall, I really liked this.

Keep writing!--Louisiana

I really like how you put the title within parenthesis - to shield the words from "wide open spaces" - that was clever! I would have liked to have seen some more neat formatting in the poem itself to mimic the theme.

I just read a book about a woman with agoraphobia called "The Woman in the Window" - which is pretty good if you're interested in the subject. I think your imagery was really lovely in painting this contrast of the safe and the dangerous - and the beautiful and terrifying.

I do think you could have made some of the emotional language a bit more relateable though. The only real emotion language I see is in the last stanza - "there is no longer anywhere to hide."... "the world closes in" and "trapped between jaws of earth and sky".

- I didn't quite get a sense of panic from any of that. I don't know if maybe you could try using synonyms to describe trapped and closed in, but that might be something to explore. I also think it'd be interesting to do a bit more in contrasting the imagery of the fear of wide open spaces with the safety of indoors. As is, there is nothing to contrast the fear that goes through the whole poem, so it's not quite as stark of a picture.

There's so much bodily imagery that can easily go with having a panic attack, that also might be a fruitful area to expand in. Describing the breathing of the person, their heart racing, feeling light headed, feeling a lack of self/grounding etc.

There are also other types of agoraphobia that go with anxiety disorders, in which a person isn't necessarily scared of wide-open spaces, but you fear places you might get stuck, be put in an embarrassing situation, or be in a space with a lot of people and not be able to leave because of anxiety or environmental factors. I wouldn't say I have agoraphobia but at different times in my life, could certainly relate to those types of fears.

I think one area that I think this poem could do a little better in, is I'm just not sure you make the fear very convincing. I don't think most people with agoraphobia are afraid of the outside because they think that phantoms are going to jump out at them, but there is some bit of rational fear that spurs the irrational. If you give the reader the little nugget that is rational, I think they'll be better able to empathize with the speaker.

Good luck in your writing, hope to see more poems from you soon.

~alliyah