Young Writers Society

Wow. This is a really powerful piece. I absolutely loved the last few line. I think there are a lot of people who need to read this piece. The emotion throughout was beautiful and I really appreciated that you made each and every word count. I wish I could provide some tips or constructive criticism, but all I can say is that this piece was absolutely beautiful.

Amazing work!

-1nspire

Heya, GodHatesMason! Casanova here to do a review for you! Okay, let's get started.


One thing I had to learn when I started writing poetry was that it does NOT have to have a capital letter at the start of each line, nor does it have to have punctuation at the end of each line. Pick a flow, read it aloud, and place the punctuation that best shows the flow of the poem. Anyway, continuing.

The next thing will be stop with the exact language and base your poem more around imagery, in my honest opinion. Pretty much, use sight, taste, smells, objects, anything like that, to describe it instead of making it seem about something in real life. I'm not saying you can't do that, I'm just saying I'd like to see what you can do with regular imagery based on something that isn't really what you're talking about. If that makes any sense at all.

The next thing would be to stop with the repetition. In some cases it's good, in others it can get a bit hectic to read, and this one is leaning towards the latter.

Another thing- you don't need that authors note at the end. Put it in the description if you have to include that information, it's a bit weird to read right after reading your poem.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on this one, and I hope it helped. If you have any questions or want to talk about something you're writing on, PM me.

Keep on doing what you're doing, and keep on keeping on.

Sincerely, Casanova.

This truly is beautiful and I love the representation in it.

K, I'm gonna do a real, unbiased review now, not a comment. You ready, Mason?

Positives: Honestly, there are a damn lot of positive things to say about this piece.

1: Your imagery is absolutely amazing, especially the line "submerged in an indigo sky, comic books and skateboards littering the pages of her heavy heart." That is a riveting line and one of the best ones in here.

2: I can see Shayne Koyczan narrating this as well as you and what that means to me is that you put a lot of passion into this poem, which is always a very good thing when you're writing, especially with poetry.

3: That part about the parents broke my heart. I hate it when people don't accept others for who they are, especially when it's family. I believe the family should be the most supportive...they want their child's happiness, don't they?

Negatives:

4: The line "It started with an online chat room" is a bit confusing to me. There needs to be more background to explain what you mean.

5: As Kays wrote below, using female pronouns doesn't exactly represent the character very well since he seems to identify as a boy. I can understand why you did it and I think that's a cool idea, but it was a little bit awkward.

That's all! Thanks for posting this great piece! I hope to see more stuff like this from you Bye now!

Hi there GodHatesMason! This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review.

I can't read this poem and not review because I have a couple of issues to tear into not only with the poem but also with the view that's brought. I can see that as the author you're well-meaning with this poem and you're not intending for this...but for the whole poem 'he' is called a 'she'. The problem with this is that the boy isn't a 'she' at all.

I admire the thought of somebody writing a poem about a person coming out and going through a female to male transition--that isn't the problem. The issue is that the piece gets this wrong by calling the boy in the poem by she/her pronouns. This defeats the whole purpose in a way of writing a Trans-positive piece. To further explain, the concept is fine and dandy. There's nothing wrong with that. The issue is that Trans-boys aren't girls. Trans-boys are boys and Trans-girls are girls.

Now that we're fully clear on that and we're able to have a more accurate representation, let's continue! The quality of this shifts throughout in that...the longest lines here are actually the best and most effective? I'm going to suggest making the line length a bit more evened out and keeping the lines that include the bright shades of magenta and indigo skies and how 'they' were obsessed with their daughter being dead/stolen. Those are all well-written, detailed and effective. I'd argue on that third example because admittedly that definitely could've been worded in a way that packs more of a punch and impacts the reader.

What I'm not as much of a fan of is the lines between these beacons of potential. I don't mind the poem being short especially when the point is still gotten across in fewer lines. The length certainly doesn't equal the quality.

Take out parts that are unnecessary (the online chatroom beginning isn't the best opening and instead I see this as a detail that may come up later on at least personally) such as the parts about him being alone or in general lines that don't need to be included/lines that can be condensed/or can currently be considered filler. As for the ending, that's it? There's no bite or sting which I don't mind. The ending wraps up well enough and the audience can see the progression throughout the poem but there's also the possibility of a different ending out there if you're wanting to experiment or play around with that.

I've been ignoring this for most of the piece though I'm going to bring this up and restate what Lareine said--the flow and diction are both awkward and this is mainly due to the punctuation. This definitely needs practice on and Lare for the most part covers most that you're going to need to improve on that aspect but I wanted to go ahead and link ABC's of Punctuation in Poetry and Punctuation in Poetry, both articles in the Knowledge Base that are also quite helpful on the topic.

There's a lot of potential here for this poem to be spectacular, you're just not quite there yet. Keep experimenting and playing around with this! You'll get there after making edits and revisions because I do truly believe that this, with fine polish, can have a powerful message and in general this can be a strong piece. Only after that though can that potential be unlocked, so keep chipping away at the rock that is poetry!

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.

Hey! I haven't reviewed in a while, so be warned, I may be a little rusty.

I have a challenge for you, should you accept: I want you to make me eat my words. Everything I say in the review to follow -- I want you to prove me wrong, justify it in the literary context of the piece, or fix it to where it wows even the staunchest critic.

First: Imagery.

Your imagery in this piece has real potential to be unique. The images you use to portray "socially acceptable" genders is pretty cool, but it does commit the fallacy of assuming those stereotypes are accurate to all people. Yes, your character here is transgender, but that doesn't mean that he necessarily ascribes to all the aspects of a "socially acceptable" masculine figure.

But the big problem comes in when there's none at all. You could build such strong, poignant images around this trans boy coming to terms with his own reality, standing against a tidal wave of people who want to prove to him that he's really a girl -- but instead, the poem is sparse, almost bare of images entirely. The best it gets is the segment where you're describing gender stereotypes, and that just isn't enough to carry the weight of the entire poem's imagery.

There's an internal clash that happens with everyone who stands outside the majority. The clash where they don't fit in, maybe they wish they do, maybe they're glad for it, but they have to reconcile the fact that they are not what people expect them to be. And unfortunately, I don't get a huge sense of his conflict like that through this poem, because there's not enough real emotion for me to hook onto.

Also, "unseen lie" sounds a little awkward. What did you mean by that phrase? I can't quite figure it out.

Next: Punctuation.

Your punctuation in this poem is...awkward, to say the least. It's not all consistent, and because of that, it doesn't feel like it fits. I would recommend one of two solutions:

1: Punctuate this poem like sentences, completely correctly, with punctuation in all the right places. Obviously you can edit this for emphasis (separating some phrases from others with dashes, or adding fragments like you did with "She was reborn. Rewritten." which I actually think would be a decent line if it wasn't a teensy bit misunderstanding/transphobic-sounding).

2: Strip all the punctuation from the piece completely, and add only what's necessary to understand the lines as they're written.

Either way, the piece becomes consistent, which is the most important aspect of punctuation. (The second most important is how awesome it makes the lines sound -- you can figure that out after you achieve consistency.)

Last: Message.

The message of this piece is pretty clear. A trans boy feels unaccepted by his family and the society that surrounds him. It's standard, in today's society -- the part of it that accepts queer people -- the kind of story that you hear on every street corner. We rejoice at the stories of trans youth and adults being completely accepted by their families, but sadly, the majority are not.

It's cute, but I'd like to see something that sets his story apart from the rest -- something that makes him unique as a character, and as a focal point, to give us a different-tasting story than the same sad thing we digest all the time.

Marginalization is the unfortunate truth. Can you show it to the readers through a different lens, one they may not be aware of?

Keep writing! I'd love to see how you do with my challenge.

Amazing. This might be your best yet, Mason.