Young Writers Society

Hmm... Nice poem Ari. Quiet Voices sounds so interesting. They are our silent encouragement! Q^v^

Umm... This is probably to short to be a review. But, the first two stanza's sound like they really help. The voices are those of the wise pushing the generations on. -v- Well I hope this reaches you

Hey arianaSarroyo,

So this poem has it's good points, and some things that need to be tweaked a little.

Structure is fine. You've got the stanzas broken up into small chunks of things that can group together well. It doesn't feel forced to be broken up like it is.

There are some consistency errors with your grammar though. The main example of this is that at the beginning of the poem, you set up that, syntactically, you will be capitalizing the first letter of every line. That ends in the second stanza, so it would be better to remove it all together. However, when you remove that, you should also edit your speech a bit in my opinion.
In American English, punctuation goes inside the quotation marks instead of outside of the quotation marks. I have heard a rumor that it is outside of the quotation marks in other countries somewhere, but I rarely, if ever run into it, so I'll just point that out as something to look at for yourself.
I believe that across the board, in English, the first letter of a spoken sentence, regardless of if the sentence has previous statements or not, is capitalized. This means you need to capitalize 'This' in "The angels sing,/'this is your day to shine'..." [stanza 6]. Also, you could do with some more end punctuation in the poem. I feel like you ended the sentence, and instead of ending it with a period, you ended it with a few strikes of the enter key.

Passed the Syntax
The poem itself is cute and somewhat lullaby like in the innocent nature you portray finally believing that everything will be alright because someone told the speaker so. It could use some more depth, perhaps adding in exactly what this individual is scared of, little hints and clues that everything is not okay, would make it a better poem because it would run with our imaginations more, but as it is, I'm left questioning exactly why it wasn't okay, and if Child Services needs to get involved, or if the narrator just needs to punch someone in the face.

I was a little disappointed in the lack of metaphors and similes, but you have some small personification with the sunlight peeking through the window. I would have liked the wind to whisper to really follow through with personifying nature in the poem instead of jumping to angels as an explanation for the voices. It's almost more childlike to the speakers assume it is supernatural, and not religiously so, in a poem rather than jumping to 'god is sending his messengers to tell me it will be fine.' All in all, that's just something you can explore on your own to see if you agree or disagree when you're writing your next poem.

I would suggest you clean up the punctuation, most of all, and perhaps rewrite the poem with the intent of having this person explain what's wrong, while trying to convince themselves it's fine. Something more secluded than others expressing that it's fine would be a good tone for a dark poem like this rather than the light fluffy angels flying in the window and it could really try to push the boundaries of what you were exploring to write the opposite in that way.

If you do write the challenge, I'd love to read it and see how much you've improved since February <3

-Aley

Hi there, and welcome to YWS if I haven't welcomed you already!

Here is my honest opinion. It's filled with good intentions.

I appreciate your idea. A good night's sleep always gives me hope in a new day.

I think the issue with this poem is that you have images, but you don't elaborate on them, and your words are overused. You use "whisper" four times in the same poem. The first time, I was like, yeah, they're whispering. Cool. Second time, I thought, didn't she say they were whispering before? Oh. She did. Hmm. And after that, I became bored with the word. Try using a variety of words to say these things. Don't go to a thesaurus and pick out the longest words you can, but familiarize yourself with a larger variety of words.

[/quote]Away will go my suffering,[/quote]
This line needs to be more specific. I'm not saying you should say, "I'm suffering today because I stubbed my toe," but I'm saying you should illustrate your "suffering" with metaphors and similes. It will make for a more intriguing poem.

When I awake in the morning,
A whisper fills the air and
Sunlight peeks through

The angels sing,
“this is your day to shine".
“Don't let anyone or anything get in your way”, they whisper softly.
“I am here with you right now
and I promise you,

Hi arianaSarroyo, thanks for the poem. Here are some of my thoughts:

It's nice and sentimental, but it is like one of those things that is too sentimental. It doesn't challenge anything. It's almost like you go into a store and buy a Hallmark card and words like these would be on them. As readers, we do like to be challenged a little!

Abstract and concrete

For the most part, nouns are separated into two categories, abstract and concrete. Here you have a large amount of abstract nouns, which isn't really a good thing. In poetry, abstract nouns don't help the reader imagine much of anything. Concrete nouns, on the other hand, give us images in our head that are pleasant. The brain likes to see these images and when you connect those with your abstract ideas, then you're really cooking!

There are quiet voices
whispering gently to me,
"You are loved; never forgotten”
Cherished

today will be a better day”

Hello Ariana! Dogs here with your review today, ok so this is a good piece. I like the idea of it, you have some issues with your rhythm a couple times but that can be easily fixed. I think the biggest problem I have is that you use good imagery but your imagery doesn't have as strong effect on the reader because you use some overused and boring words to describe it. I'll give some more examples of that later in the review, lets dive in shall we?

Ok nice starting point, encouraging the readers interests. I think you had a typo though with the first line, and after "Whispering to me" there is suppose to be a new line instead of the same line continuing with "that tell me..." that'll help your flow and it'll make your writing look smoother.

"away will go my suffering"

Ok here is an example where you can use so much more exciting words, something that would even help your flow more is if you say something on the lines of: ""Away will melt my misery." Just because I used slightly more out of the ordinary words here it helps the flow and it sounds more intriguing for the reader.

"whispering gently to me"

I don't want to tell you what to do for all these lines but here is another example of boring vocab when you can really mix it up. You can say: Muttering mellifluously to me" I used the alliteration to help with the rhythm and it just sounds better and whenever someone reads a well used word that you don't see everyday, it sparks interest.

"cherished"

This line is too short following the one before it, it breaks the flow of the rhythm that you set up so nicely already.

"a whisper fills the air"

You already used whisper, here is where you need to substitute this word out for a synonym. Use a thesaurus, it works like a charm.

" “Don't let anyone or anything get in your way”, they whisper softly.

This line is far too long, you need to shorten it up a little or break it into two lines. Again just simple rhythm stuff.

I like the ending, it's cute and has a good message. This is a good piece that needs just a little polishing and then you'll be raring to go. Let me know if you ever need a review, keep up the good work!

TuckEr EllsworTh