Young Writers Society

Hello.

I'll be blunt and say I was expecting a lot different when I read the title. I thought you would be talking about the mental illness, but you ended up talking about illusions. This threw me for a loop, and made it hard to get into the poem. When works are very short, the title becomes part of the piece and is almost read as an extension of it. This lack of coherency between title and poem is confusing.

I think you ended up going too abstract with this particular piece; I can see you trying to capture a general idea and the narrator being calm about falling, and what's going on, but there isn't really anything to hold onto in this poem. What I mean is, poetry often needs to have something stable for readers to slip themselves into, otherwise the work becomes so ephemeral nobody can truly grasp it. While abstract poems tend to try for this result, I've found they still have something in them that can be gripped, seen, or generally sensed (meaning, one of the five senses) that's strong enough for imagery to be formed.

This isn't to say you need imagery, but you do need sensation in the early parts of the poem. Context would help, as well, but it's not needed if you're just trying to achieve a biophysical reaction. If you are trying to achieve a reaction, then really focus on little sensory details that we can hold onto and feel. If you're trying to capture a moment, then add in context.

This lack of substance isn't helped by the repetition, like Kyll said. I'd listen to that point because short poems have every word count more than longer poems. Poetry in general needs to have every single word count, or else it loses all meaning.

Right now, you've got too much junk and not enough solidity to really have any meaning.

Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions.

~Rosey

I thought that this was a very good and effective poem. However, at some times it was a little bit confusing. I was a little confused when you jumped from falling to death and then from death to questions. It seemed like sort of drastic changes to me and it took me a couple times of reading the poem through in order to understand what you were really writing about. I believe that you are writing about dementia. I do not know much about it, but if I was correct and you just misspelled it, then I do not think that this poem really has much to do with dementia. Although I can see the connection at a few points, I think you need to revise the poem to fit your desired topic.

Lastly, I think on the last line you meant to say nothing, not nohing. I think that this poem could use some revision, but it does definitely have the potential to be a lot better if you are willing to put in that time and effort required to revise it. Good job so far, and keep working on it!

Hmmm... this poem is kind of confusing. First of all, what is dimentia? At first, I though it might be a misspelling of "dementia" but if this is the case, then I have no idea what dementia has to do with this poem. At all. It's pretty confusing!

The next thing is... okay, it's about falling. All right. But, it's not particularly interesting in how it deals with falling. Falling can be very interesting in its own right! After all, how many nightmares (and scary ones too) have to do with falling? Also, people often describe having depression as a kind of falling. So, that's pretty interesting too!

But, you just talk about the action. Nothing really interesting, as far as why this is going on. No particular insight. It's just... somebody falling.

I think you can do more! Consider if you were actually at a precipice. What thoughts would be in your head? Would the air make you dizzy?

So, basically, right now you a bunch of obvious statements strung together. This is a good start. But, give us some meaning and depth behind these statements, and I think this will be much better.

Good luck!

Falling,
I had this illusion,
I was falling,
into nothingess.

Death,
hitting the ground,
at this speed,
and from this height,
meant death.

falling into nohing.