Young Writers Society

Hi Horus!

This is a lovely little poem! I'll start by saying I very much appreciate your final stanza, which is where your true meat is. I haven't read Rydia's review, so please forgive me if anything I say overlaps!

On your final stanza: It has the right mix of lyricism and practicality, you're still on the mechanic route and you've done well to keep that particular theme this far. I do think the false sister is an odd introduction but I feel like it's a mixture of the cancer concept and the restore concept. It's likely about a sister who isn't really your sister? That's some pretty heavy stuff to work through, and I think you do it fairly well here.

I'm not such a fan of your second stanza at all, I think you may have been trying to force it far too much, because it turned out awkward and uncomfortable. My first tip (and the one I always give) is to read the poem out aloud, so that you can hear where the natural rhythms are set. I think that using that as a beginning you can start altering the more obviously awkward lines. My most obviously awkward are

So when he cannot find an answer,
he conjures theories a great dear faster,
much like a scientist does with cancer,

Because they feel faulty and unhappy in the poem. They're not natural speech in some way. You can have unnatural speech, it's just better when that unnatural is said naturally. If that makes any sense to you. You have a solid grasp of description, as this poem shows and I think you have an interesting handle on theme and allusion, although one which is a little overt. The mechanic angle works very well with the writing and with the idea of toiling in hard, dirty places for the shiner end product.

I think you could do a little better with word choice, as I pointed out above, and your structure is solid, I wouldn’t change that. All in all, I thank you for a nice poem which I enjoyed.

Any questions or queries, please hit me up.

-Penguin.

Hi, sorry about the delay on this! But now I'm here so let's take a look

Title: It's a strong, straight-forward title so you get a thumbs up from me there. It tells us some of what to expect without giving too much away and it works as a nice key to the poem.

First stanza: the first three lines are great, excellent flow and an interesting statement that gets the reader's mind working. The fourth line however, feels so diisconnected and apart from the rest. It feels like there needs to be another line before or after it as it's too isolated compared to the rest of the poem and being the line it is, that's a glaring 'oh look, this poem is about fixing and mending'. Also, thre isn't an immediate differering in those two words definition wise. I want to know what's the difference between mending and fixing. Like, there's this seris called 'Awake' where one of the detectives makes a comment on how he used to thinking solving and fixing were the same thing, but they're not. It makes sense in the context because they've just solved a case but there's no fixing it: here is a rescued girl who has no parents and is traumatised for life.

If you're trying to use the words with two different definitions, we need a set up that allows us to understand that difference. If not, you need to tell us two things the mechanic does instead of one thing twice.

I'm not sure about the end of the stanza. It feels a little too prosey and the 'Tolkien's Golem' just jumps out of nowhere. It's the first hint of any fantasy theme or anything outside of the box and it's too much for a first step. There needs to be more of a lead in if you're going down that route.

I like the last line.

Stanza Two: Good, strong rhythm to open with and tthis time the first four lines flow together very nicely. You have a natural pause before the fourth but it's still linked and it isn't left on its own. Again you have this dual way of talking though: are 'create' and 'make things new' not the same thing? Perhaps if you mean to make old things new again, to repair, then it works, but you need to make that a little clearer or it's just going to feel like you're repeating yourself each time.

You must mean 'deal' faster and the cancer/ scientist line feels very forced and off hand. It feels too much like it's there to satisfy the rhyme; it shouldn't be your words that support the structure, it should be the structure that supports your words. Try to first decide what you want to say, then explore how you're going to say it. Like, you want to say that while his role seems small, it's actually as important as the scientist and as difficult. It's an element of what scientists and detectives do. Conjures is perhaps the wrong word in sight of that because you're showing us serious professions but then conjures is something we relate with trickery and sleightt of hand, like magicians. It's something very opposite to that analytical, problem solving theme.

Play around with your words. I hope you don't mind if I have a go here, to try and show you how I mean:

So when the solution has gone missing
with evidence amassing, he grabs the ammunition,
(of mechanics in a fashion)
to put the cancer in remission;
He is trying to restore.

Alright so I butchered your structure a little there but I'm trying to show that sometimes structure doesn't help. When it reduces you to using words that feel out of place or phrases that only half fit, it can do more harm than good. If you can bend what you want to say to tthe structure, that's when you'rre a master poet, but if you're struggling, it might be time to let the words take over and then you're a wordsmith.

Stanza three: I'm not sure I like the switch to first person, it's unsettling. Do we need to know you're talking about yourself here? Can't it remain as 'The Mechanic' and your readers can infer from that who the mechanic might be.

I don't understand the false sister line and it's too late to be introducing another character of importance. I'm guilty of doing this myself, but it's better left out if it isn't important enough to build in the earlier stanzas. I've not much more to say about this stanza, other than it gives more questions than answers which dooesn't work. There's too much vagueness here, 'glimmer' 'hidden' 'false sister' and not enough that's clear cut. When you reach the end of a poem, there should be at least some sense of closure, even if it opens up a new question, it should close all those that came before.

Overall

Okay so I like the refrain and if I'm on the ball, this is a poem that compares what a writer doees to what a mechanic and other professions out there do. Perhapps it's also about God: the capital He would suggest that. It seems to me though that it's not definitive enough or quite tied off: it's too open ended. I'd have liked to see more of the logic and the reasonings and less of the comparisons. What I'm saying is I want to see specific examples from these lives. The clock the mechanic painstakingly mends so that it will tick again, the novel the writer composes that closes a rift between the old world and the new. Details/ examples like these will help the reader follow what you're saying and get a stronger visual on the story you're telling us.

As it stands, there are some interesting phrases and a workable rhythm and I have enjoyed reading it, but it's missing coherence and visuals. You can get by with one missing component (this is always the case, whatever the situation or anything at all. There's always one component that can be missing if you're perfect on absolutely everythin else) but two is one too many.

Drop me a pm if you've got any questions!

Heather xxx