Pangs of past

Hello! Team Aqua here for a review on Pokeeeeemon Review Day

First of all, I love the way you began and finished this poem.

The very first day when we met,
It's a feeling I'll never forget.
All the experiences that we've shared,
I knew right away that you were rare.

And now as I think about the past, I don't regret,
Yet I wish we would have never met.

We were so happy in our own world,
Bonded in friendship, when obstacles hurled.
Most of them were jealous of us,
Tried to break our connection with lies and did worse.

Though, our relation was special and in order,
But it never crossed the friendships' border.

Hi Blakey and welcome to YWS! You are the oh-so-lucky recipient of my 500th review! You get a cookie! Or you would if I could hand out cookies virtually.

Anyway, congrats on branching out into poetry! It can be a very powerful form of expression. Now, I think there's a compelling story behind this. Unrequited love is a universal experience, but everyone experiences it differently so every author can make it unique.

Currently, this piece could stand out a lot more. As others have already said, the rhyme scheme is working against you here, forcing you into a more generic presentation. Specific images give the reader something concrete to focus on, which makes the piece more interesting.

My suggestions for re-writing: Focus on specific moments and try to show them to the reader. You mention the meeting, happy friendship times, obstacles/jealousy, a "time when it was all hatred", and a fuzzy present/future (are the characters still friends?). Each of these could be fleshed out with images and details. Obviously, you don't want it to be too long, but some of these can be shown in just a few words.

To end on a positive, I liked the phrase "the friendship's border". I think if you continue exploring poetry and developing your skills, you could do some awesome things with it. Happy revising and keep writing!

Rhyme scheme: not workin' for me. I don't disapprove of rhyme schemes altogether, but they are hellish to pull off, and it's not working here. If you have to rearrange structure or force words in or have things that KIND OF rhyme, but not ACTUALLY, then you need to ditch it. It's distracting, it's clunky, and it's simply not working.

Now. I think your writing holds a good amount of potential, but if you allow yourself to breathe, then you will actually be able to properly speak. Right now, your lungs are cramped and screaming and are downright angry with you. Breathe. Through your stomach, through your honest parts, and this will become a lovely piece. You need to humanize your writing by incorporating small parts of yourself-- oftentimes we avoid putting really specific details in because we want everyone to be able to relate, but people actually relate BETTER to those kinds of things. They're human. We want them.

Good job overall. Please lose the rhyming. Let me know if you have questions.

Hey there Blakey!

Starleene here!

It’s review day! And I can’t wait to review the piece you have here! I know you said it’s your first poetry piece but I won’t go easy on you! I think that improvement only comes with constructive criticism. So that out of the way, why don’t we start your review, hm?

“The very first day when we met,
It's a feeling I'll never forget.
All the experiences that we've shared,
I knew right away that you were rare.”

I really enjoyed this first stanza though your rhyming scheme is a little simple, I think that it’s perfect for a beginner to learn off of. I like that right away you introduce us to the narrators mind and his (her?) thought process


“You see, it's hard to find someone like you,
Usually they're too good to be true.
A fool I was to believe that something was strong,
Between us and I thought it would last long.”

Boom! You introduce us to the problem. I think that right here though you lost your rhythm and it made the piece seem kind of botchy, like it wasn’t thought out very well. Consider rethinking this and see if there’s a way to fit it back into your scheme?


“We were so happy in our own world,
Bonded in friendship, when obstacles hurled.
Most of them were jealous of us,
Tried to break our connection with lies and did worse.”

Alright, so I like this stanza but I’m not in love with is. Again, look into the rhythm you want to convey to the readers and try to stick to that. When you’re reading your own poetry in your mind you’ll notice that you’ll naturally fall in to the rhythm that you created. If the rhythm is off, you’ll definitely notice.


“Though, I was unsure of my feelings for you,
Thought it as a crush, but it was something true.
I never confessed my feelings, it was my mistake,
But then what you did, left my heart in ache.”

For the first two lines of this stanza I feel like something’s off. If you read those first two lines as a complete sentence there would be something wrong with it. I think you should add a semi colon after “you.” Maybe that would read better, what do you think?


“Our trust was something sacred,
Then came a time when it was all hatred.
All I wanted was to make you happy,
I know sometimes I would act sappy.”

When I read this stanza for the first time I was like “Ok this is good.” Then I read it again and I found a couple things that you could consider revising, such as: add “but” before “then” so that we can see the change in emotions, or something of that degree. The last two sentences are straight out of a Hallmark card, haha. It makes me think of Valentine’s Day and all the sappy, gooey stuff people say. I’m not saying that it’s bad, but do you really want to be compared to a Hallmark card?


“Though, our relation was special and in order,
But it never crossed the friendships' border.
My feelings since then, for sure had changed on a leap,
But I can't deny that the old ones are still buried deep.”

I can totally relate to your character! That’s amazing! I can tell that you’ve been working on your character development! Good job and Keep it up, but like I said before, the pace is really hard to find and keep, so just check into that and see if you can fix it?


“And now as I think about the past, I don't regret,
Yet I wish we would have never met.”

I don’t know why, but this line makes me laugh. It’s like the geek finally standing up to the cheerleader that only used him for his homework (that’s what I pictured in my head). This was actually my favourite line of the entire poem.

Blakey! I think you did a marvellous job on your first poem! You show a lot of finesse for a newbie, just need to polish it up a bit and I think that you’ll be a right fine poet!

Good Luck! Happy Writing!

Starleene Out.

I think you've got the premise of the poem really strongly set up.
It flows well and everything.

Now we get to the bad parts.
The rhyming-- It was cliched, and very childish. Rhyming long and strong? Not exactly brilliantly imaginative. It looks like you went through what grade schoolers would rhyme and put it together to write your poem.
This poem seems to be going for a sort of sad piece about lost love. It falls flat on so many levels, it's not even funny. I'd like to reiterate the fact that this seems to be very immature, mainly because of the childish rhyme scheme, and it is mainly with the rhyme scheme that my problem lies.
This line for example:
"Tried to break our connection with lies and did worse."
What? Did what worse? That line makes no sense at all, and it's only there for the sake of rhyme.

The tense changes here and there are really giving me a headache.

Some of your lines were redundant:
"Though, our relation was special and in order,
But it never crossed the friendships' border."
You've already established the "athough" factor. It's kinda stupid to put in 'but' when you've already got 'though'.
Maybe change it to:
Although, our relationship was special and in order, (again, I really disliked this line--in order? Stupid words that make half and half sense to make it rhyme, again)
It never crossed the friendship border"

It cannot be "the friendship's border".
You can say,"our friendship's border" because you're using a possessive; it cannot be 'the friendship's border, as the apostrophe, here, signifies possession.
You've repeated the above mistakes quite a few times, so I'd recommend looking up simple grammar rules, and reading more.

All in all, I liked the overall idea behind the poem, but I think your current poetry writing skills didn't really help the idea shine as brightly. Don't worry, I'm a poet and I still can't write proper poems, you just need a little practice.
I repeat, for the hundredth time, please stop with the childish rhyming; it really detracts from the piece and ruins what could have been a nice, serious poem, about something extremely heartbreaking. But because of your rhyme scheme, it just made me want to laugh. Over-dramatic writing is only okay when it's backed by impeccable poetic structure, wording, and syntax. All of which, you have not developed yet.
And one more nit-pick:
It's not your first "poetry", it's your first PIECE OF poetry or first poem. Not poetry.

Keep writing, I'm sure you'll improve.

Sherlock.

I love this poem! It has great rhyming and rythym and ut is very lyricial. I think everyone can relate to this just friends but I want to be more relationship. I very much enjoyed the last stanza, the last line in particular. I like the way you never told what it was the person did that left the heart in ache. It's myserious, and it sounds as if this an actual experience you had it's written so emotionally. This is an amazing frist poem and you seem like a natural! Keep up the good work!

Hey Lak!

Here with your review, as requested.

Alright, you've got a nice poem here. A tough break up, longing for our former boyfriend/girlfriend, I think we all can relate. You've got a touching theme, and I quite enjoyed this poem all in all.

The first two lines of every stanza are wonderful. They're emotional, flow nicely, and have a nice rhyme scheme. However, the final two lines in your stanzas feel forced. Like you you forced the rhyme.

All I wanted was to make you happy,
I know sometimes I would act sappy.