Young Writers Society

(I'm not excellent at reviewing poems, so some things should maybe be taken with a grain of salt).
Hi! I saw this piece pop up and thought I'd check it out, and I'm glad I did! This is a really nice poem!

The way I took this, I imagined it as someone growing up. How a person can be fine with toys and laughter over goofy jokes, then later in life that and their interests be seen as childish, so they try to supress it. Maybe that's not what you meant, but I found it a very nice and wholesome message to take away from this (especially since I've been through a dilemma like that).

I think the ending is my favorite part. It's plain simple and true. Anytime you're happy, others are usually happy too.

Over all, I really liked the piece (surprising, since I'm usually not a fan of poetry whatsoever). It's nice, heartwarming, and carries a great message!

hi there, dear!


i love how many poems you post. keep it up xo

i also have to respectfully disagree with Snoink about tone choice, I think your tone in this is observant and a decent poetic voice overall.

I think your biggest thing you could work on in this poem is the metaphor and imagery you use. I think because of the subject you spoke to more simplistic, literal language, but for me it came off a little cliche in places. Even with the subject matter, there's space for unique motifts— which I know you are fullllyyy capable of because I've seen you weave some fantastic metaphor. I would lean into that instead of relying on imagery relating to broken toys/jokes. And where I will agree with Snoink— the word goofy falls a little short for me. Again, I think there's room for a little creativity with your imagery and goofy is just not as vivid of an adjective as this poem deserves.

this poem lacks your usual cohesiveness of imagery that morphs over time. I don't see any thru-line connecting your stanzas and I feel like that part of the problem is there's not really anywhere for you to go with the metaphors you've chosen. Picking one and expanding it to be more unique and perspective driven might help that. For instance, the "toy" motif could be a decent one if you went beyond just naming it as an object in your poem to base a person's identity on. To that same point, atom bombs or dumpsters could as well (this is building off Seirre's thought here too, I think).

I really like the perspective you're taking of observing someone who seems to have two sides to themselves. I just think you could dive deeper and rely on your natural narrative voice to steer the poem, rather than diving into all these comparisons.

My last critique before I head into praise is this, and something I really want you to think about as you're developing your poetic voice:

the perspective taking of "you" can be very powerful. Sometimes it can be diluted when you also introduce the "i" perspective too. In this case, I wonder how the poem would change if you just shared about this "you" without describing the narrator's thoughts at all. When workshopping this, try just completely getting rid of all the poems sharing the narrator's perspective and focus completely on this "you". See what happens!! And maybe even keep this in the back of your head for the future, to sometimes experiment with how much narrative perspective you show directly to the reader.

My favorite line is definitely "breaking yourself into atoms and atom bombs,
wishing you never existed at all; you climb into the dumpster,". I think this is really where you shine in this poem.

Nice work! I'm excited to see where you take this if you workshop it. <3

Much Love,
Sparkles

<3 Love this.

I understand where Snoink's coming from in her review - like, toxic positivity is certainly icky, and we can't expect our friends to constantly be happy rays of sunshine in our life. That's unfair. But that's not at all how this poem came across to me while I was reading it. I read this poem as being about seeing your friend's mental health disintegrating in real time and wishing you could save them from themself. It saddens the narrator to see a friend experience feelings of self-loathing, and so the narrator is telling this friend that their laugh isn't something to be embarrassed of; that they don't belong in a dumpster; that they aren't a hopeless cause.

I feel like the imagery is sort of disconnected between stanzas. Broken toys and atomic bombs and dumpsters are all very effective images on their own, but without a thread joining them together they loose a bit of their oomph. I think you could work with the images you already have - for instance, it wouldn't be a far cry to connect the image of a dumpster back to the image of broken toys by adding a clause about "you climb into the dumpster / how can you think you and all the limbs of your old polly-pockets / belong there?" <- obviously not exactly that, but hopefully you get the idea!

not embarrassed by your own laughter and shaking
with the joy of a joke that you made up on the spot,

Okay but... goofiness is a nice quality occasionally, but rarely we want to be thought of as merely goofy. We want to be thought of as greater than a clown.

You can love a person for being goofy, but it seems like you (as the narrator) are chiding your subject for kind of imploding after doing their best to play the part of the clown. And it almost comes across as insulting? Like, how dare you lose hope! You should spread more joy!

And I sort of wish, instead of that choosing tone, you went beyond just the goofiness compliment and go deeper into that idea of joy, thanking the person for helping you see joy in places you would not see joy... and almost praying that they look at themselves and see the beauty of themselves for bringing joy to what can sometimes be a cruel world full of suffering.

... so basically, I would shift your poem around so that the accusing tone turns to a wistful, encouraging tone instead, and that it becomes softer and kinder.

Because, really, we aren't meant to be clowns. But to live our lives joyfully and see the world around us and glory in the world? Now that is a wonderful thing to do....

Anyway, I hope this helps!