Young Writers Society

Legacy here for a review.

I love how this is written, I was singing it in my head while I was reading it. (The dashes are supposed to be where a note is held right?)

I could see the scene even though you left it so vague. The basic content is of someone leaving their hometown either to somewhere else or dying of suicide (since there is a choice assumed by how the questions are asked.)

This seems to be a chorus of a song, I don't see how it could stand alone. But if you were to add more imagery and more to the story in this lyrical form, I can see this being played on an alternative station of sorts. Legacy out.

This isn't gonna be a review but I just wanted to say amazing job!
I happen to play the ukulele And have been writing (or at least trying to) for awhile now but have never really completed anything.
But anyways this is definitely one of my favorite things I've read today!

Ayyy you two!

My first note is that I really appreciated the use of hyphens to denote holding notes within the piece. I read it a few times through with different methods of approaching the hyphens (as in hard stops, fading, and then back to holding out the note) and it gives me this really chill feeling of a song similar to The Chainsmokers or The Weekend.

Flow-wise, the first two lines are the hardest to parse into a rhythmic meter, sort of free-flowing in my head with no percussion (or maybe loose percussion), and I can hear it over a powerful synth, so it works, but when you hit line three, a sort of rhythm kicks in, and I appreciate that, almost like lines three and four are a chorus of sorts. That would be nice to revisit.

I'd love to know what kind of style you were aiming for here, and what sort of rhythm, time, impact you wanted to achieve. All-in-all, I quite like this, and think it's a powerful showing--just needing a bit of touch-ups with flow if you want it to be tight.

I hope this helps!
Ty

Hi Aubrey and Saruka!

It's so interesting to write a poem with another person! I hope you guys had a really great time writing together and that we'll see some more from you both. That's individual works and works that you've written together!

First I'd like to bring up something I don't always bring up in poetry - the punctuation! I very much believe that a poet can punctuate their work in any way that they like as long as it doesn't damage how a poem is read. That said, I'm not sure that the dashes are actually adding to your poem here. I'm actually getting very distracted by them, because they're great at drawing the eye, so I keep wanting to look back to them even when I'm mid-line - which isn't a great idea! I think I'd suggest that you remove all of the dashes that you currently have, because none of them are working for your poem. If you'd like to add punctuation to show pauses for breath or for impact, I think that you can still use a comma, period or question mark to great effect here. Some of your poem definitely asks for a bit of drama and if you had a single dash (-) after "cried" in your first line, I think that would work really well to keep that drama and introduce your questioning lines.

I like the questions you have here, they're very emotional and demanding. I do wonder if you could add some imagery or description to this so we could know some more of the story. However, I'm not sure that doing that wouldn't ruin your poem, because the simplicity and honesty of your lines is, I think, working for you. I'd personally swap your second last and last lines so you can end on a cyclical note, repeating the first line image in the last. I'd also think about using some metaphors or similes in your lines, or some emotive language, so that your poem can have even more impact. For example you might say "why did you smash everything you loved" and the 'smash' is a very emotive word because we react to it and we know exactly the tone of the narrator and what the persona, the "you" has done wrong. Expanding your poem with some narrative lines, or descriptive lines that help let us actually know the "why" that the narrator is asking might be really helpful here.

I hope my comments help you with your poem and if you do make some changes to this or have any questions, please do contact me. Thank you for posting!

- PenguinAttack