Young Writers Society

Hey Raven Riters.

First a couple nitpicks so that's out of the way when we get to the real review.

Spun sounds better then span because a span is like an expansive area, a distance, not a good verb for spinning. There is the verb to span something which basically is to cross the entire thing. The carpet spanned the room. The carpet's span would be the entire length of the carpet. The carpet spun would be to have been spinning in circles.

Second thing, the saying is "weight of the world," not "weights of the world" because the world is not split in two creating two separate weights which must be added up, but the weight of a single world, the Earth. This is really just a nitpicky thing with sayings and since this is a poem, feel free to break that because, well, poem. However, if you do break that you have to be aware of a few things: First, you're going against a convention which people will expect so they're going to question why it's different and if it isn't different for a reason which is clearly distinguishable in the poem, it is going to be discounted for the second reason, it can make you look stupid. How, it can make you look stupid is kind of complex, but let me go into it. Basically it's because of dialects.

Now that the nitpicks are done, I'm going to say some broad things of complement and criticism.

I think you did a really good job with the overall tools of poetry using the repetition and the mimicry through the poem to create a mirror image back and forth between the stanzas. I think the end was very well written in that sense. The word choice all feels deliberate and fits into place, so to speak. You have your art to a degree that it should feel comfortable to read, for the most part, and that things flow fairly well.

Now that you know what I think about it, I'd like to point out why I have to say fairly well.

with the tears of the sky
falling on me, on the box, on the ground
I carried the soaked thing inside

The reason I'm bringing this quote to your attention is because I feel like the end stop here is misplaced. When we read this stanza it naturally reads "with the tears of the sky, falling on me, on the box, on the ground, I carried the soaked thing inside." This is because of the line breaks, the meter you establish earlier, and the natural sections of the words. "With the tears" is a complete prepositional phrase, "of the sky" is another, "falling on me" is a verb and a direct object[prepositional phrase], "on the box" is another prepositional phrase, then we get into the last sentence, which is a complete sentence regardless of the rest of the prepositional phrases.

Now if we look at where you stop it, with inside, that's a prepositional phrase too, prepositions are directional words like up, above, below, but also "of." In this case, inside is acting as an adverb modifying what happens with the verb, so it works well, but it also harkens back to the list of other prepositional phrases. This means we're used to the old cadence and this is different, completely different. That's not necessarily bad, but the difference threw me off the first time I read it, especially since you wanted it read "With the tears of the sky falling on me, on the box, on the ground, I carried the soaked thing inside." The difference comes from what "of the sky falling on me" is as a unit. That in itself is highly complex, and I'd suggest breaking that off from the other line in this stanza and jostling thing around a little bit so that it doesn't sound so long. Just cut off "on the ground" because we are well aware of rain falling on the ground. That's where rain falls if it doesn't hit anything, so you just have to say "on the box" and "on me" because those are the important things. However, if you're attempting to indicate that the box is on the ground, or that the "me" is on the ground, then you need to rephrase.

Moving on, I feel like the poem's content could use some work. Your ability to choose the words that work well is not being questioned, I think these words flow very well, but I think the meaning is missing in some places. For instance, how did we get from there's a box on my porch, to I'm nearly fainting. I understand that there's a living thing in the box, but at first we're unaware of what that living thing is, and I feel like as we are unaware, we shouldn't be expected to make this leap to fainting. I don't see why it happened. Not only can this individual give the baby to someone else, but babies usually illicit an immediate reaction to hold and care for, not faint. The two aren't connecting for me and as the author, I need you to make them connect better in the poem.

Clearly you tried to do that by saying the "weight of the world dragged me down until I was useless" but because you jumped for that familiar metaphor, it fell flat. So what? A lot of people feel like the "weight of the world" is on them and they don't stop. Moreover, why did the person feel like the baby was the weight of the world? What made that happen? Was it seeing what was in the box? Was it hearing the crying? Was it a dread? How does the weight of the world feel? Come up with some way to better convey this growing dread instead of the repetition of "slower and slower" because that's not working. It's sort of like saying "very very very angry" instead of "enraged." Find better word that not only fit with the cadence and scheme you have going, but also that match the emotional context of the poem. This is hard, but I think you're up to the challenge. The best way to try it is to write a new poem and focus on unique ways to say it, just exploring all the ways you can say "weight of the world on my shoulders" and then come back to this poem and apply the one you liked the best.

I feel like the triplets of "ringing" and "louder" actually did work despite the earlier ones not working so well. I do feel like you need to watch the repetition of loud because you have it in the stanza before that though, change the first loud and keep louder.

My favorite line in this poem is "one thunk" because it is so simple, yet so descriptive in context. You can read into that and I think that's what you should strive for.

Personally I'd ignore what they're saying about the capitalization. I think this is fine. You might want to add periods, might not. Try it and see if you like stops in it because I think you might find that you have end stops instead of fully working with enjambment which could be very cool for such a well paced poem. Play with it, see what you think, but right now it is very readable in terms of grammar and punctuation.

-Your Family.