Young Writers Society

Hey Shady! <3 Apologies that this review is much delayed, thank you for your patience!!

So let's take a look!

Form
Love the idea of graph poetry being blended with definition poetry; and I think this hit some of the right experimental notes for me of the "is this poetry / is this art question" that makes me excited to imagine that the piece itself is opening up the definition of poetry for me just by the experience of having read it.

I'm glad you overlapped the definition on to the graph as I think it'd feel a bit disjointed without this. I also liked that the cross-out lines were every-which way as this made it feel more organic like a person was crossing them out, or like this was a draft of a science experiment, I think extra cross-outs in the graph section (or even errors in the number-range!!) might have brought more connection into the two pieces.

The one formatting piece I wasn't crazy about was the different font styles in the graph -> I didn't feel like the fonts really vibed with what was being said "i was born" felt like a bit cutesy - micky-mouse sort of font, and then the bottom two felt very academic, and the top one was like elegant, and I think for me it didn't necessarally make the message come across clearer -> though if it was supposed to create a chaotic vibe? then maybe it was actually successful!!

Meaning
As with some of your other academic angst pieces (love that you're creating a whole genre over this <3 because #relatable ), but I think the main message is the tension between hard facts and mistakes, and the heavy expectations contrasted with lived-experience.

I think you could also expand avenues for interpretation by adding labels to the number section! like "frequency of success" on the right maybe, and "two hundred years of failed hypotheses" or something else related on the bottom axis. Even the four notes on the graph could have been arrows pointing towards points or dots in the graph rather than just words floating, for more impact.

Another kind of random suggestion, but I think given that you let the drop down option for definition hang out in the poem itself (clever inclusion!) it would be kind of ironic if you had left the mouse clicker in to be pointing to "ignore all" or "add to dictionary" as an extra little detail

Highlights

I really enjoyed the "did it simply hit its peak" being towards the peak part of the graph, I thought that was a clever extra visual. I also liked the definition included on the 2nd one for "the omission of expected or required action" I think that is such a loaded definition that really showcases the tension between expectations and results.

Suggestions
I have a few suggestions!!

I think you could have milked some of these images and phrases a little bit more perhaps with a related stream-of-consciousness poetic interlude in the middle or something, the poem just felt very brief for me, and I felt after reading it that I wish I could have lingered with it a bit longer.

I'd swap your username in the first definition section to just "me" or another more neutral name indicator to make the poem more accessible, and allow the reader to put themselves in the blank.

Also I thought the first definition was a bit strange; is the economic one really the first definition that comes up, or is that something you modified? I didn't feel like that one felt like it connected to the content of the poem as much as the other phrases you've included.


Overall
Overall this is an interesting poem! It conveys meaning / emotion very clearly - of frustration and maybe uncertainty/anger about the impossibility of expectations, and you've put in a lot of clever formatting pieces tat made the poem feel really unique / creative without distracting from the message the poem was sending.

I love poems that do something I haven't seen before and widen up that definition of poetry for people a bit. For me my favorite personal reflection was probably that squiggly lines can be poetry; especially because when placed on the lines of a graph they do in fact portray linguistic and emotional meaning -> and accepting squiggly lines as poetry isn't something everyone would be willing to believe, but I'm hoping your poem opens up a few more minds to the range of possibilities of poetry. It's important! And beyond just being an artistic pursuit actually does what the narrator of your poem is doing in subverting expectations.

Thanks for sharing this piece with the site! Keep up the experiments, and keep poeting! I enjoy your poetic reflections and voice.


~alliyah

Alright, Shady, I feel bad that I referenced your poem in a review without having given you any feedback, so I guilt-tripped myself into reviewing for you. Let's jump in!

There's a lot in here to unpack, so I suppose we should start off with the positives. I really dig the way you've put the definition at the top of the poem, as it seems like a logical start to the poem and establishes a nice basic structure. I also enjoyed the writing along the graph line, as it was an interesting yet fairly readable and understandable way to structure the poem. Alternating between placing the lines on the underside of the graph and above the graph was a good stylistic call, in my opinion. Moving onto some critiques:

This could be my perfectionism, but the fact that you have not only straight AND slanted lines to cross out the suggestions, but you also alternate the direction of the slanted strike-throughs, and it really bothers me xD Take that as you will. Another stylistic choice that didn't sit quite right with me was the different fonts that you used throughout the poem. I read through some of your explanations of the reasoning behind that, and while I think that you could definitely use different fonts to convey the idea of chaos and scatter-brained-ness, you use so many different fonts that it just becomes chaotic. And as my final stylistic point, I found the percentage points on the y-axis to be somewhat distracting. It's up to you whether you remove them or not, since that's a little scientifically dicey, but they don't really add a whole lot to your poem, and there's a decent amount of content there since each value is like, 7 sig figs.

As a side note, upon closer examination of this graph (by which I mean I zoomed in on the x-axis, found 1995, and then traced upwards), the peak of the use of the word "failure" actually doesn't line up with the peak of the graph. However, I suppose I can find some generosity in my heart and give you this poetic license. As another note on the graph (I'm sorry I keep studying this graph and finding more nitpicks), there are three lines for "failure", and you don't utilize the two bottom ones, so it may clean up your poem a bit to remove those two bottom lines, if you can. You have a lot going on in this poem, so I think it's important to be very selective about the graphics that you allow into the final product.

Before I wrap up, I feel obligated to give you some critique on the actual content of the poem. I'm going to transcribe it here for easy reference:

could it be that "failure"
is judged more harshly than in olden days?
or did it simply hit its peak when
i was born?

Surprise Shady! Me? Reviewing poetry? It's more likely than you think XD

One of the things that I enjoy so much about this is just how much people with anxiety can resonate with it, or people with fear of failure. Everyone's reaction to anxiety is different, but there's this universal feeling that comes with different forms of anxiety, and I think fear of failure is up there as one of the most universal. That being said, you know me and my absolute need to critique XD JUST KNOW THAT I LOVE THIS POEM

Point One: I know you talked about the scratch marks (like, the red pen scratching it out YOU GET IT i hope) add to the erraticness of this, and the feeling of JUST ANXIETY where you have to write something and your hand is moving and then bam sometimes you don't even know what you've written. However, I feel like these red mark outs, except for one, was pretty straight and narrow and not as chaotic as I could feel them being, right? I feel like most of them were like, marks you get from a teacher with that infamous red pen, whereas only one or two were actual marks that I would get from severe anxiety and impulsive behavior. I would just like to see more markings, but I do love what you've done in that part, especially with the "Did you mean ShadowVyper?" Like you called out yourself in this poem in the most spectacular way.

Point Two: The graph itself. I think there's actually two points in this but uhh yeah im bunching them together ahaha. I think it's ironic that the failure that you have your actual poetry on is actually the highest line here in the poem. I also would have liked to see different names on the other graphs? Like, maybe they relate to failure but they're different, or maybe they don't relate to failure whatsoever? Also, if failure is going low in the red graph, that means achievements are getting higher, right?? Ohh that makes my previous point a bit moot BUT ALSO I don't know if you got this grom online or made it but the Y Axis is like a point of a point of a percent so in reality failure is so slim that it's not actually that likely to happen right? But, I know with anxiety it's likely the only thing you can ever think of, even if it is small.

Point Three: what's your reasoning behind the font choices here? They feel random, and for me they don't serve a purpose :/ one of them, the first cursive, is actually a bit harder to read than the others. Is there a choice for these different fonts?

Overall, I quite enjoyed this poem. It's artistic, it is alluring to look at and then invites the audience to look DEEPER which I think all poems should do. It reminds me of one of @Carina's old poems, and I think that is one of the best compliments I could ever give. It's also short, simple, and to the point while allowing room for more than that. Most poems either do one or the other. It's quite an achievement to have one that does both. Great job!

I didn’t understand this at all, I was not able to understand it AT ALL, I never am good at reading this type of things. Can you explain?

Wow, I really love this <3

<3

This was very interesting! I've never seen anything like it.

Oooft this is painful! I love the format but you hurt my poor little brain for a while there.

My only review type comment would be that the top is very cramped, so even harder to read all of the crossings out and notations! Maybe you could expand it ever so slightly if you did something like this again (but please don't because it's a wonderful one of a kind).

Also, this is super picky, but I'd write 'one hit wonder' rather than '1 hit' because it's a dictionary definition. But that is really picky, so feel free to ignore xD

I think the concept of failure is a really interesting one to explore and it certainly feels that we are judged more harshly now. I think part of that is that we now have so much more to compare ourselves against, whereas the world must have felt a whole lot smaller before the internet and you could only compare yourselves to a handful of peers rather than most of the world!

I don't think you're a failure, I think you're pretty great <3

Me trying to read this at 1:10 am is failure XD