A new angel

Hey there, NewAtThis!
I'm Euph, and in the spirit of Review Day, I am here to review your poem!
Let me start off by saying that I love your name, haha. Also, I see that you joined just about a month ago.. So, Welcome to Young Writers Society!
I have two suggestions for you that you might want to include in your writing.
More colorful vocabulary to lure your readers in further. This will allow us as readers to get a better visual. This is a key in writing.
Line breaks! In poems, it is key to separate stanzas apart from one another to help readers take a break to allow us to mull over what we read briefly, instead of all at once at the end. It allows us an extra second to have to appreciate the part that we just read and form stronger opinions.
Punctuation and grammar! Eeeeek!
When it comes to line breaks and wording, you might want to adjust it to be something more like this:
“He awakes in the hospital and sees his loved ones
Crying over a body, that’s lifeless and now gone.

Wondering who this person was, he gets a little closer,
His little sister and mother, who was 11 years sober.
Looks at the body he finds it strange
that the man lying there and him were the same.
He hears them crying and saying his name.
"vince" he immediately took blame.
He starts tearing, mouth dropped, so shocked..
Didn’t think his sins would bring him to this paradox
He almost lost it ‘til he heard a voice loud and narrow
"Vince your safe now, Your life’s no longer imperil" 
Right after everything turns white
A beautiful staircase guided by a light.
He said his goodbye and apologized dearly, 
but at the moment he’s never seen anything more clearly.
" Mom, Shauna and Crystal, stay full of love, ill see you one day.
But for now I’ll watch from above.
As he walks up the stairs
his fear dissapears,
His sorrow is gone and so is his tears
He can almost see heaven so joyous and sacred,
so grateful that hes finally made it.
Top of the stairs, on the heavenly floor,
he sees a holy man with wings guarding a door
Doesnt look back, he knows hes ok..
steps forward and isnt afraid
Walking through those gates, greeted by Jesus and Gabriel, 
09/26/09, God gained an angel.


Overall, I really like your poem and would love to read more of your work!
I hope that this review could help you in some way.
If you ever need me, feel free to drop by either on my wall or inbox me something, and I’d be glad to help you out with anything, or simply just to talk about the revisions I have made.

Yours always,
Euphoria

I quite enjoyed this poem, and especially it's serious manner and tone. I like how it gets straight to the point, and it's profound influence in points, namely; the "paradox" of seeing his own lifeless body, the "beautiful staircase" that leads to Heaven, and the meeting of "Jesus and Gabriel" at the end. All of these images struck me, so well done

However, I do have some criticisms, but they mostly stem from grammar so they can easily be ammended. My first question is: did you proof read at all? Throughout the poem, there is a litter of grammatical errors, which reduced the effectiveness of your poem (mostly because they made me squirm everytime I saw them - but that's just me, I'm weird like that :')). Here are a few examples, there's too many to list, but I'll just highlight the worst offenders: "he gets alil closer", I imagine that you meant to say "lil" which is fine, but the "alil" I imagine is an error; "vince" he immediately took blame", proper noun - requires capitalisation; "He starts tearing", I wasn't really sure what "tearing" meant here, was he showing an extreme outpouring of emotion, or was he crying?; "til he heard a voice loud and narrow" should be "till" or " 'til "; "Mom, Shauna and crystal..." again, capitalisation on "Crystal".
A few other problems I had with the poem was not being able to grasp exactly what you meant. For example: "His little sister and mother, who was 11 years sober", a younger reader may interpret this as his younger sister being 11 years sober and not his mother (but I assumed you meant mother!); "... he heart a voice loud and narrow", the problem I have here is trying to hear a "narrow" voice? To me, that translate as a low voice, or a whisper only he can hear, but then arises the paradox of between "loud" and "low".
The final criticism I can offer you is the fact that you sometimes switched tenses: "He almost lost it til he heard a voice"; "Right after everything turns white" - see how you've went from past to present tense there? I'm not sure if it was unintentional, but I think it wasn't as a switch in tense wouldn't have accomplished anything, other than the immediacy of 'everything turning white'.
To summarise, I quite enjoyed the poem, and it hit all the right points - a balance between death, grief, and the afterlife - to have a profound impact on the reader. However, the grammatical errors brought its quality down - I am aware that this is your first submitted piece, so don't go too hard on yourself!, I know I was super-critical but I was trying to be super-helpful too!
I look forward to seeing future posts and keep it up!

P.S. Just realised that you also spelt: "dissapears" wrong, too - sorry if you think I'm being mean, just trying to help!
P.P.S. Also realised the other review you have here, so I needn't have written all those points on grammar, they'd already been cover, ah well, maybe they can help you anyway. Take care!

Hey, Em here with the second review,

Spelling and Grammar:

‘crying over a body, thats lifeless and now gone.’ ‘thats’ should be ‘that’s’ for ‘that is’.

‘Wondering who this person was, he gets alil closer,’ I’m not entirely sure about this, but I was thinking that you might need to put an apostrophe in ‘alil’ like this: ‘a’lil’, but you might need to get an expert opinion on this.

‘"vince" he immediately took blame.’ ‘vince’ should have a capital v: ‘Vince’.

‘Didnt think his sins would bring him to this paradox’ ‘didn’t needs an apostrophe: ‘didn’t’.

‘" Vince your safe now, Your lifes no longer imperil" ‘ you have an unnecessary space between the beginning quotation mark and ‘Vince’. ‘lifes’ needs an apostrophe: ‘life’s’ because it’s saying ‘life is’.

‘He said his goodbye and apoligized dearly,’ ‘apoligized’ should be ‘apologized’.

‘His sorrow is gone and so is his tears’ I reckon the second ‘is’ should be ‘are’ since he has more than one tear.

‘but at the moment hes never seen anything more clearly.’ ‘hes’ needs an apostrophe: ‘he’s’.

‘As he walks up the stairs his fear dissapears,’ ‘dissapears’ is spelt, ‘disappears’.

‘He can almost see heaven so joyous and sacred, so grateful that hes finally made it.’ ‘hes’ needs an apostrophe: ‘he’s’.

‘Doesnt look back, knows hes ok.. steps forward and isnt afraid’ ‘Doesnt’ ‘hes’ and ‘isnt’ all need apostrophes: ‘Doesn’t’, ‘he’s’, and ‘isn’t’.

Well, that’s all the spelling done.

Dislikes: Just your poem structure, you have hardly enough commas, and sometimes your sentences are in weird places. I’m not an expert on poem structure, but I’m pretty sure something’s wrong there.

Likes: Your rhyming is done really well in my opinion, and if you’re a beginner at poems, then I believe this is exceptionally well done. Poems are real hard in my opinion. This plot is interesting, seeing the death from the dead’s eyes instead of the family, it adds a whole twist. I especially liked your last line ‘God gained an angel’ I found that really sweet. Your title suits this piece beautifully.

Advice: Every time you go to right or type something, and you come across a (now, for the lack of me, I can’t remember what these types of words are called, but I’m talking about the words that are formed when to words are put together and have apostrophes, such as this: can’t, doesn’t, isn’t, won’t, he’s, and such) those word thingies (maybe contractions?), just take note to add in the apostrophe. When I was writing with a pencil, I wanted to write my y’s and g’s with a curl, so each time I came across them, I slowed down and added the curl, now I do it naturally.
Also, look up a few poems and note how they are structured. Practise writing a poem structured properly, or ask for someone who is a poem Nazi to review your poem for you.


And remember, just because you need a little of improvement doesn’t mean you should stop writing. You, my friend, have great potential.

From Em
(if you have any questions or want another review, just let me know)

Now, this is a rather interesting topic, and a rather specific one at that so I'm not going to get overly complicated on the choice of theme. After all, with the date listed like that only goes to show there might be something far more personal about this poem then originally meets the eye, so I'll try to be as sensitive on the subject as possible.

So first, a compliment.

I like the sing-song nature of this poem. The way the rhyming is somewhat subtle rather than harsh and easily read in a manner that kind of flows quite a bit better than I originally perceived. It also complimented the narration aspect of this poem, with how the voice is portraying the 'story'. I'd like to see that kind of effort in all your work, if not particularly geared towards rhyme schemes.

Now this is where I get into a few critical things so please takes these with a grain of salt.

The topic in itself ended up being rather starchy and prose-like. It lacked a lot of the necessary qualities it takes to write good poetry, though I will say that it has rhythm and rhyme enough to be classified as a poem. Just that, when you read a poem of this variety, there is nothing really deep or meaningful to each line. Each word. You write without subtlety. You write with a one-faceted mind so that the poem comes about being a story rather than something artful and interesting. This could sink your ship quite easily.

Anyways, the biggest problem with prose-y poetry is that it doesn't really have anything aesthetically and inner-ly pleasing about it. What makes this poem special? Why should this even really be a poem if you could make a rather decent short story out of it? Is it because writing it out in stanza's rather than paragraphs seem quicker and easier to put all the thought processes down? You really have to understand the reasons as to why you're writing a piece before you do it.

Then you must think about whether or not the rhyme scheme is really all that worth it.

Generally, I would say it isn't. Poetry shouldn't have to be laid out in such ways to be taken seriously. In fact, most contemporary, new-age poetry comes across as being extremely free-based whereas the poet ignores things like punctuation and capitalization to keep full interest on the words themselves and how they mesh. Poetry now is more geared towards the way the words work together. The images they cause. The multifaceted meanings behind each and every line, which there could be many depending on the topic. Metaphor will become quite a good friend if you learn how to use it.

For instance, let's take an example.

"I hate thunderstorms"

This line is essentially very blunt. It gives you the full ideology of what to expect and why. There's nothing inherently interesting or thought-provoking about the line. It simply bears all intent. But, if we reword this said line;

"bang; like the smack of the ball hitting the pins in
our favorite bowling alley
but dark, the way the floors became slippery and wet
and the lights flickered, casting long veins of
electric shock. bang, again
and there are no lights
bang a third time and my lips quiver."

Do you see how you can take one topic and completely switch it around? I used a bowling alley to symbolize the sound of thunder. This way you get an idea of the thunder clapping loud while the lights flicker and the rain pours. I don't say that the narrator hates rain. Just that their lip quivered which symbolizes said disdain with action.

Words are an essential point in writing poetry. I would suggest trying to get a grasp on poetic forms and structures. Read a few interesting poets or just review poetry to get used to the idea of looking at poetry critically. You'll find that yours will grow quite well if you do as such.

Anyways, much love,
~Walker

That was beautiful. I lived the ending:
09/26/09, God gained an angel.
It ende it perfectly. The only problems I noticed was that the flow wavered slightly, but that's fine. I also noticed a minor spelling mistake, in line 18 you spelled he's hes. Other than that you did great.

my rating:4.9*s

keep it up!

w&w

p.s Welcome to YWS!