Young Writers Society

Hey Here because I told you I would review aaages ago and completely forgot to.

This is a cool poem. I was thinking about writing an apocalyptic piece but never really knew how to come at it, but your way seemed pretty effective. I think you really captured the meaning of an apocalypse here: the nothingness, the deterioration, the 'crumbling'. I have only two nitpicks and one of them is personal preference so will you permit me to ramble compliments first?

I had to read it a second time before I could warm to the blunt endings, and I think mainly it's because they broke the flow. But I think that your intention was to break the flow with these, take us out of the poem for a second and let us feel what you said. I think it actually works really well, despite my first reaction, so kudos. I enjoyed your description of the deterioration of society, first the buildings, then the behavior of humans, then the destruction of the land. You did it really well. Not sure about how I feel as regards your comma use. I know it's a poem and you can bend the rules and what not but still... You don't want to knock us out of the flow TOO much, cause then at the end your full meaning might not really hit us properly. Just a suggestion, but I think using regular punctuation would be better.

Anyway, I loved your ideas and the way you came at this: a view on people rather than the world really. You individualised the apocalypse by talking about how the people are crumbling inside, heroes and victims - this I also thought was great, making the heroes and villains equal. Like, when the world ends it pretty much ends for everybody, no matter their morality.

I think that you could introduce your vocab and your descriptive abilities more - this is the personal preference part - because I just always think that imagery is the key element in dragging somebody into a piece. And although you were going for bluntness, I'd prefer to be horrified, be shocked and emotionally damaged by your poem! It's about the apocalypse, you have so many metaphors and things that you could spin around that. Just an idea.

That's it I guess. I really liked it, I should read more of your work
Yours in ink,
TS.

Hey! Here as requested.

My biggest nitpick with this is the capitalization of words and the punctuation. I'm glad you decided to add punctuation to this, but you start off each new line with a capitalized word, as if you think the punctuation means you must do so. It doesn't. If you're going to use punctuation, then I suggest that you treat this like prose and don't capitalize a word that comes after a comma unless it's something that should be capitalized, despite the fact that it's a new line.

That's my opinion, anyways. You can do what you want, because poetry defies all laws of grammar, but I feel like doing this would strengthen your poem, and not to mention making it look nicer.

About the punctuation, I feel like the commas are in abundance here. Why so many of them? A few of them aren't even needed, so look through and cut those ones out. Otherwise, you have a flow that makes the reader break off at abrupt and odd moments and it's weird.

Despite that, I do believe you did an okay job with describing the scene here. I think you could have done better with the imagery factor and using descriptive words to paint the scene for the reader, but what you have here isn't too bad. It gives me a faint image of this apocalyptic world, but what I want is more. Can't you give us more about the people and how they look and dress? Or maybe the town, or what's left of it. Or maybe something else; perhaps an example of who eats who, and why. Mother eats child? Father eats friend? Something?

Better examples of what, exactly, is going on down there would be better if trying to convey the scene. Other than that, this was a nice poem. Not an original idea for an apocalyptic town, but nonetheless well-written and overall, nicely done.

O.k. this is great, yet I would correct two things that jarred with me as I read through it.
Firstly in the second verse you repeat the word "inside". Normally this wouldn't be too bad, but it jarred because they are both at the end of their lines, which slightly made me think they were meant to rhyme but don't, if you take my meaning.
Secondly the one word last line is clever and emphasizes the last word of every stanza, yet in the case of thethird verse I wouldn't consider that word important enough to repeat.
Thanks for listening, and keep up the good work,
Take That You Fiend!

Hi AlexSushiDog!

This poem is great! I really like it. I like how you leave us to imagine how the world came to crumble down, like, anything could have happened and you're not telling us (that's not a bad thing)! But I would rather advise you to look at some of the endings of the stanzas : such as,

[What they created.

Before.]

This. It would rather flow more smoothly if you said, What they created before, because right now, it's kinda choppy. But if you added this to have some specific meaning that you like, I'm very sorry. The same thing with this :

[Until there is nothing left.

Inside.]


Overall, nicely done. Good poem, fantastic word choices. I really liked where you said whether or not you are the hero or the victim, you're all crumbling inside. That's what I think a lot of times by myself, too (high five).

Keep on writing, Mephis