As I Am

Hey Biluata!

I'm personally not one who likes to consider reviews that are "harsh" good, but at the same time, I've been considered a "harsh" critic with some of my friends, so I'm going to give you ALL the feedback I can think of, the good, the bad, the suggestions, the ideas for how to keep moving onward and upward, and, of course, the specifics.

To start with, I will let you know that I'm going to layer these so that it's not just a big huge section of "bad" things. All in all, I'm planning to talk about the spacing, tone, capitalization, emotional content, specificity, word placement, and sentence structure. Now, I'm not going to tell you what I like and think needs improvement on that list, but I will tell you that it is a mix.

First off, I really like how you are using the whole page for this poem. Because it's more of a genuine poem, with more of a confessional voice, it makes sense not to have it in any strict type of structure. I feel like the length of the lines and the variety there really lends itself well to the way that the emotions of the poem are somewhat chaotic too. You have this love-hate dichotomy going on with your character, and that's really well replicated by the long-short mix of lines.

That being said, I really really don't like the use of line capitalization. It makes the poem feel really amateurish in this case because you're not using line punctuation! I almost want to see this poem without capitalization all together, If you would humor me, I'd like you to copy the poem into an external word place, and take out all of the capitalizations that are just because it is at the beginning of a line, such as "but" and "come" in the last two lines.

I admit, it doesn't change it much in this poem, but it reads smoother because we're not pausing with each line because "Oh, capital?" although that does drift away after about the seventh line. There are a few other things I'd like to change en masse along with this as well, so keep that handy if you humored me. I think that the reason my attention on the capitalization drifts away for me is because this is in such a discussionary tone.

You do a good job of making this poem talk to the audience, or the single audience member that matters, not that it is me. I feel like I can really read this as a letter from a person in love with someone who doesn't love them back. There's a lot of chances to put that emotional twist on the words here. That's one of the good things that this poem does.

I do have to say that while the tone of it is perfect, and the reading voice is perfect, I think some of the situations and words could be more specific, however. For instance, I am well aware that the general genre of poetry that is broken romances relies heavily on the idea that time drags on and months become years, so having two sections of the poem, basically the central idea of the poem, the introduction of the poem, be something that a genre uses, is not a good idea. It's unoriginal. In that case, I think it needs to be updated and personalized by the speaker. Instead of using time lengthening as the metaphor for how things feel, try explaining it in another way. I understand the feeling, but people have already moved on from "time stood still" to "the world stopped spinning" and they're working on creating "I fell out of this universe" as an alternative, and you're using "time stood still" which is all the way back to the start.

I actually went through and changed the lines and stanzas to my personal preference for this particular type of poetry so I could stop focusing on that, and move onto contextual issues, and what I found is actually quite a lovely poem. I could really understand the emotional content and how you were attempting to add it. I can see the metaphors you added, like the bullet, and it's clear. I like that metaphor a lot. I like the metaphor of limbo for the relationship status too, because that /is/ unique and original. I just don't like the use of the mentioning of time in that manner.

I do think you need to strengthen some of the descriptions. You rely heavily on prepositional phrases and adverbs which can deaden some of the verbs you're choosing and make you lazy with descriptions, which is bad. It's bad because if you're lazy with description, you lose your biggest opportunity to create a unique experience in the poem. Each and every poem should only be able to be written by a single individual, and that individual doesn't necessarily have to be the writer. It should be written by a persona or character the writer creates, unless it is truly in the confessional ballpark, but even then it is more like a memoir than a journal/diary. There are exaggerations, dramatizations, and over-simplifications that have to happen. However, it shouldn't be something that anyone could say, it should be something that only you could write. I shouldn't be able to look at your poem and say "Oh, I could write that" or "Huh, I did write that." In this case, I could have written this poem about my first crush, my third crush, my fifth crush, or my last. I mean, it's a really common set of descriptions you have here which are basically, "they have hands and eyes." I mean, you don't go into detail about this individual, like even personality detail is missing.

So with that said, I really do love the way that you wrote this poem. I think it needs a little help, but I like it overall because you've got a clear voice and you're not trying too hard. That's really hard for people to do. This poem comes across as genuine and believable. Right now it needs some help with those things, and two more though.

Stanzas. I think this is really easy. I think you PROBABLY just don't know how to format on YWS. Here's a guide. How to Format Poetry

Sentence Structure is our last topic. This one is sort of loaded. For regular grammar, I wouldn't suggest this, but for poetic grammar, it's totally something that's doable and recommended. Take out words like "but" when you are working with the beginning of sentences. Sometimes you can take out "and" as well, like when you're working on a list of things. In poems, people are expecting lists so you can do a trick where you actually leave off these conjunctions, and it will read perfectly well with the comma. You also have a bad habit of including too many parts to a sentence! The shorter the sentence, the more impact it will have. If you have a complete idea, make it a complete sentence. This will give you more places you can end and/or start stanzas easier and it will give you more places to breathe, and it will take out some of the repetitive commas, and it will make the poem look more impactful, and it will sound more impactful with better punctuation.

I actually went through your poem, took out the stanzas for each line, eliminated unnecessary words [in my opinion], added in stanzas that looked more appropriate according to topic, and eliminated the line capitalization, replacing it with sentence capitalization. I did this so that I could show you the suggestions I'd like you to take and how they would look in your poem if you did them. Also I wanted to read it through for content with the distractions, and why not share since I already did the work? I really hope you don't mind DX. I also hope that you don't just take what I did for how it "needs" to be, this is just my personal preferences for things like stanza breaks, capitalizations, sentence structure, and the eliminations of particular words, it's not a hard and fast rule by any means. I didn't change the time thing because it's part of your poem, and you'd need to rework/rewrite that part yourself, I just did the aforementioned changes.

I strongly recommend you do it yourself and just consider this an example.

Here is what I got:

Hello! herbgirl here for a review!
For the most part, i liked this poem. You have some unique vocabulary, i especially liked the use of the word "automaton". However, i felt there were a lot of things i felt that you could work on.
First, the line breaks and punctuation throughout the poem made for some awkward pauses. For example, at one point you say "...the seconds echoed only by the/Monotonous drumbeat...", which results in an awkward pause which disrupts the flow of the poem. Later in the poem you say "And remembering hurts but I relish the pain." In this case, you could simply insert a comma, which would eliminate the lack of pause and make it easier to understand. i felt this could be applied throughout the poem, and would ultimately result in a clearer piece. Just read through this again and pay attention for any of those odd pauses or lack of pauses.
Now, my other major suggestion for this poem revolves around originality. It seems clear to me that you put a lot of emotion into this piece. However, the way that you expressed it is difficult to relate to, and, unfortunately, not particularly unique. You use a few cliche phrases, like when you describe the "hours turning to days...etc.". i advise you to go through and add a bit more figurative language, describe your feelings in metaphors that make it easy for others to relate to, but original.
Anyways, sorry if that seemed a little harsh. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
Good luck and good job!
herbgirl

*rips it apart*
I don't know why you wanted me to rip up a poem you spent so much time on. But okay!