Acceptance

Radrook here a once again to offer some suggestions.
Apologies if i offend. It isn’t my intention.
Please feel full free to cast aside all things you deem not helpful.
But if you do be sure its true by being extra careful.

That having been said:

Thanks for sharing this poem concerning a human beings struggle against a neuromuscular degenerative disease. It really is sad to see a human being gradually lose his ability to move until he is rendered almost motionless.

The stress and emotional trauma involved is really unimaginable. Your poem describes the will to live and fear of death accurately. It also describes the final satisfaction of feeling life has been lived significantly and the calm acceptance of that final inevitability.

I suppose that for many some life is better than what they believe will be no life at all. Others who believe that death leads to a resurrection to a better place might rather undergo the transition. I guess it all depends.


Suggestions


I personally would have enjoyed it more with regular punctuation. So my advice is based on that. You see, when each line starts with a capital, I pause because I am not sure whether I am starting a new sentence or continuing the one above.

Sometimes I have to stop and start over because I make the mistake of continuing after a slight pause when I was suppose to come to a full stop. If I pause and then I find that I needed to stop, then I will have misread it and the reading experience can become choppy via a distracting stop-and-start sequence. Here is my attempt to improve reading flow and intended mening. Some punctatuion I had to guess at since you as the author would have been besrt qualifid to say whether yiou intended a full stop or a pause.


Outside, the driving rain falls

[s]imilar to the mortal's hope[.]

Lately, death is making more frequent calls[.] [Not sure whether this sentence was supposed to be part of what follows. Not sure what it means either. Why is death lately making more calls?]

As his life goes down the slope

-

[h]is muscles tire[.]

This disease has taken him from who he is[.] [This is telling not showing]

It intrudes like a wildfire

[a]nd kills physically, anything that's his[.] [Show us don’t tell us.]

-

ALS leaves him cornered[.]

Every little movement he should cherish

[f]or there is no moving forward[,]

Only the next steps towards perish[.]

-

Acceptance is hard to gain[.]

He doesn't want to die[,]

[b]ut would rather keep living with pain[,]

[f]or the thought of death makes him cry

-

But then he realizes

[l]ife is too short

He needs to enjoy it before he dies

[a]nd do everything of each sort[.]

-

So he does make the best of it

[s]ince his time is very near[.]

He does everything he sees fit[,]

[a]nd in the end he has no fear[.]

-

When it is almost the mortal[’]s time to cease

[a]nd he seems satisfied his life has turned out grand[,]

[h]e rests and his eyelids close with peace[,]

[o]pening again, once in the Promised Land[.]



Looking forward to reading more of your work.

I ,personally, think that this is an extremely powerful and profound piece of poetry and I really like it. You have handles the serious topic amazingly well and written a piece that is sure to move people . Rest in Peace, Stephen Hawking! continue with the great work and i hope i can read some of your other work and let you know what i think about it.

I ,personally, think that this is an extremely powerful and profound piece of poetry and I really like it. You have handles the serious topic amazingly well and written a piece that is sure to move people . Rest in Peace, Stephen Hawking!

Hey there Bell,

The name's Scrivener, and this is my 1st review on YWS.

Initial Reaction

Wow, this is powerful stuff. ALS is a deeply moving and emotion-filled subject. I can see you've got personal experience of a first or second-hand nature with the disease. The verses you've written are very rich with sharp imagery and crisp word choice.

This poem has a nice pace to it, and I find that it paints a very comprehensive picture of the experience you describe for its length. Lastly, I find that the poem begins very heavily with lots of darkness before progressing towards a more optimistic ending which seems counterintuitive (from my perspective) to the intent of the poem and its subject matter.

Breaking It Down

Your first stanza is a decent opening, my only comment is that "death has been making more frequent calls" is more passive than the two previous and the subsequent lines. It could be improved through usage of a more active verb tense, such in the first line with "Outside, the driving rain falls."

In the second stanza, the second line is awkwardly phrased. While you wrote "This disease has taken him from who he is," I read that line in my head and aloud as "This disease has taken from him who he is," which still isn't ideally formed. I understand the intention behind this line, but would suggest something along the lines of "This disease which takes/steals/robs all that he is."

This third stanza is excellent. One clever thing I noticed (which would also assuage my grammatical worries) is that you can use a double entendre by swapping the word "perish" with the homonym parish, given that you invoke religion more openly in the last stanza. Just an idea. The final revision would look like, "Only the next steps towards his parish."

This fourth stanza works well enough, but I'll mention it again later on when I discuss rhythm and meter.

The fifth stanza is fine, but I should note that you break your rhyme scheme here, as "realizes" does not rhyme with "dies." It's "ehz" versus "eyes" if that makes sense.

The sixth stanza is good.

The seventh stanza is good.

Things You Nailed!

The rhyme scheme, other than one minor error, is a great ABAB.

The poem uses simple language that conveys meaning effectively, and all of your metaphors, similes, and personifications come across clearly. You said what you wanted to say, and you did so without needing to resort to over-complicated means of delivery. (That's something that I'm often guilty of!)

Your poem has a cohesive narrative, and a sense of identity. It has a direction and a momentum that carries the reader forward, from a strong beginning, to a stronger conclusion.

Things To Work On!

As I mentioned in my initial reaction, your poem is a truly excellent and important subject that should definitely be explored at length, since it is simply full of potential ideas to explore and develop. Given its somber nature however, the poem could very easily have been more of a tragedy, as opposed to a comedy. There are indeed ways that you could have created a more optimistic interpretation, perhaps when recalling the memories of that person's life before their diagnosis, or in an even darker turn, contemplating the relative relief that comes with a victim of ALS's final passing on. I suggest that in reviewing the poem after you've written it, you should examine how the structure reflects the overall tone of your work, and in this specific instance how the narrative reflects the tone and structure, and see what you can do if you tweak it a little.

Moving Forward - Meter in Poetry

I will preface my comments here by saying that I myself am not an expert on meter. That being said, your poem lacks any rhythm or meter of any kind that I looked for. Now, for a deeper explanation of meter and its purpose in poetry, I will direct you to the link below;

https://literarydevices.net/meter/

I hope that the above proves insightful and helpful for your growth as a poet. I myself am still trying to wrap my head around rhythm and meter, and its implementation, to the point that I wonder if I need to take a bloody class to understand it properly. However, an attempt at implementing meter, even if an imperfect one, will go miles in making your poetry much more lovely when read aloud.

I love the content of your poem, and it speaks to me on a tangible level, granting me insight into your experiences with ALS, first or secondhand. When I read it aloud however, the content it overshadowed by the lack of meter. Meter makes your verse flow like music off the tongue, provides your rhymes (or lack of rhymes) with a kind of music, and generally pulls the presentation together. There are arguments that without the inclusion of meter verse cannot even be called poetry. I am not certain that that is universally the case, but all you need to do is read your poem aloud, without any forced inflection, and you might be able to understand what I mean by all this. I promise you that one great big step towards your growth as a poet will be to work on this aspect of your writing. I also recommend reading The Tiger by William Blake for a prime example where the author uses rhymes and meter to powerful effect.

In Closing

Bell, I must thank you for sharing with us a very lovely poem which can only have come from your own personal experiences, and which I truly appreciate having read. I encourage you 100% to keep writing poetry, as this demonstrates that you clearly have potential for growth. Keep writing about important things, things that matter to you personally, and with practice I can only imagine that you will improve demonstrably. And let me know how things go with your practice of meter and rhythm! I'll be following your next published work, and anticipate greatly seeing where you go from here. I hope that for my first review, I didn't do half bad, and that I gave you some good ideas of what to work on to create better poems!

Cheers,

-Scriv