Young Writers Society

Hey younger-blue! Speaking to you from the future here!

So, I have a few thoughts on this piece, but first I'll share my overall interpretation so you can see how close it was to your intended meaning.

Interpretation
I saw this piece as primarily being like the opening of a window to feel the fresh breeze. Beautiful, refreshing, but... not much plot, narrative development or conflict. Now poetry doesn't necessarily have to have a plot, conflict, or character although this does help make it engaging! There were a few hints of conflict, primarily at the end, where I wondered if this might be a poetic rendering of the famous "Footprints in the Sand" story about Christ, but there wasn't quite enough for me to make that jump.

My critique on the interpretation side of things is I think that in the last third of the poem starting with the question, "whose form does it take?" there starts to be a little narrative a story development but it ends up being too little, too late. As a reader I don't quite have time to get connected to the question and conflict enough to be attached to what happens. And then the resolution line, "one before left shining face" (which I'm unsure if that's missing a word possibly?) ends up leaving me more confused rather than getting answers to what's going on with the foot prints.

Two suggestions:

A) If you're purpose for this piece is to supply readers with a beautiful image of the beach, then let that be the focus, and really try to hone in on the imagery of that moment rather than inserting conflicts and musings as the end as ultimately these get distracting from the overall image if tacked onto the end.

or

B) Another route you might take, is if you want to keep those types of questions and mystery in the poem, I would try to introduce those themes a bit earlier, so that the reader has the entirety of the poem to ponder those questions and reflect on them. You do this a little bit by the two lines half-way through, "but no one sees
a trail left by traveling feet." But I'd love to see this developed a bit further if you're going the philosophical/narrative route. One thing I sometimes say about narrative poems, is that they should have all of the elements of a good story (dynamic characters, character development or struggle, clear conflict, and clear resolution) -- right now we have thin layers of those things in this piece, but diving a bit deeper in would give readers more of a connection to the poem.

How to heighten conflict and emotional stakes in narrative poetry
And as far as conflict development, you may want to ask, why is the reader going to care about the conflict that I'm writing. If there's not an emotional connection to the narrator, because we don't know enough about the narrator, then the reader is not going to care about the foot-prints either. If you want to heighten the conflict and emotional impact of the piece, something to consider might be incorporating more of an "I voice" for the narrator or giving the speaker more descriptions and placing "I statements" into the poem (for example: "I felt the cool water touch my toes" -- while we don't learn much background about the narrator from that statement, having the "I voice" at least might make readers sympathetic to the speaker if they place themselves within the poem).

Imagery & Description
As I mentioned in the preceding section, I thought this poem took a unique approach to giving a description of essentially a day at the beach. That's a good topic! Filled with plenty of imagery to explore. I enjoyed that your imagery didn't stay tasked on just one aspect of the beach but sort of panned around, this is a good way to keep readers engaged -- you followed the shore, the people, the "boats' wakes" -- all nice crisp images that will help readers recall memories of maybe when they've walked on beaches.

To enhance your descriptions a bit more I have a couple of suggestions you might consider.

1) Try description that goes beyond the visual. In this poem you gave very nice descriptions of a variety of visual aspects of the beach, but it might make the piece a bit more dynamic and layered to explore other aspects like what the waves or seagulls sound like, or what the waves and sand feel like as the brush the narrator's feet. Covering the variety of senses help a reader put themselves right into the piece, so if you might think about adding those other senses (touch, taste, smell, sound).

2) One excellent poetic technique that can push a poem from being interesting to being memorable and unique is the use of simile and metaphor (or making comparisons with your descriptions). I think that taking a few of your key images and turning them into descriptions with similes or metaphors would take this poem up a notch. For instance rather than saying "blue sky" (which is accurate, and succinct, but has likely been said before) you could say, "soft blue sky, painted with milky clouds" - or something with a bit of metaphor or simile thrown in there, to make it a bit more unique and latch the reader's attention as they try to make the connections in the comparisons.

This article I've found to be super clear and concise if you need a few more examples on using metaphor and simile: Kiss My Assonance - 5 ways to improve your poetry (the notes on assonance, alliteration, and consonance might also be something you want to check out to add a bit of wording fun to your poetry as well)

Flow
Now poetic flow is something that is largely a mystery to me. It's pretty easy to tell when a poem has it, not always clear when it doesn't have it, and ridiculously difficult to identify exactly what is the mysterious change that lets one poem have good flow and another have bad flow.

Here are the two methods I use to tell if a poem has "good flow".

1) Line Length Consistency
Generally speaking, when a poem's lines are about the same length as far as syllables (not necessarily exact, but at least in the same ball-park) then a poem's flow will be better. There are instances where having a few shorter lines might be useful for a purposeful disruption of the flow to cause the reader to read more slowly. But generally if you want good flow, the best bet is making your lines as even as possible.

In this piece you did a pretty good job keeping up good flow! It especially seemed good near the end with the consistency of line length. I'd suggest maybe merging or lengthening your first three lines though, because each are a mere two syllables which stand out and sound a bit harsh compared to the rest of the piece.

2) Lack of "Tongue Twisters"
Another way to see how you're doing for poetic flow is to simply read the piece out-loud and see if anything causes you to get tongue-tied. Generally tongue-ties happen when two similar sounds are placed right by each other. Like "Paisley Zebra" or "Feather Earnings".

In this poem, again your poem passed the read aloud test, the punctuation helped keep the sentences clear and none of the sounds seemed to conflict. The phrasing of "out of boats' wakes" was a bit awkward, I think just because it's hard to do the apostrophe after the "s" sound. I think it wouldn't change too much of the meaning to change it to "the boat's wake" and that would fix that slight flow issue.

Wording
I wanted to leave one last note on wording here. In general I liked that you used direct language, it fit the mood and tone of the poem, and I was able to read it without pulling out a dictionary. So nice job there, however I would suggest in a poem that's so short, to be very cautious about repeating the same word twice. Unless you are doing it for purposeful, significant, repetition - it comes across as seeming like the author ran out of words so started using the same ones again. I'm thinking a few of the repeated words you used, might be more interesting if you changed one of their uses to a synonym, like for, "blue, beach, or people".

Last Thoughts
Overall, I enjoyed thinking about this poem, and it also brought back some fond memories I've had at the beach too. You have a good start here, but a little development in some of the categories I mentioned will bring this poem right to the next level.

Please let me know if you have any questions about my review or wanted to chat about something in my interpretation of the piece!

Have a great day,

alliyah

Hullo Blue! Cat here for a good ol' review! oh gosh this was written the same year I was born

Overall impression This is a cute little poem! To me it seems like you are describing a beach, as well as a set of footprints and a shining face in the water that nobody notices there. There is a lot of potential here, just a little polishing up is all it needs!

Clarity It did take me a while to figure out what exactly you were describing, but a few re-reads helped out a lot. The part that stumbled me was the face in the reflection of the water. I think what confused me the most is you never said the reflection was a face, just asking who's form it was. I couple things I would suggest; Since you asked a rhetorical question, maybe just format the question a bit differently to suggest that the form is a face of some sort. I also stumbled a bit the first time you mentioned the footprints that no one noticed. I feel like it would be less confusing if you placed the part that no one see the footprints after you mention that it is a trail of footprints in the sand.

Imagery One thing that would really enhance this poem is some figurative language or colorful adjectives! The expression Show, not tell is what I'm getting at here. Just throwing a few adjectives such as fluffy, deep, faint, or large can really spice up your writing. For example: White clouds/blue sky
If we throw in an adjective or two: Fluffy white clouds/wide blue sky
See how just a few words make it more interesting?
If we add in some other imagery we can make it even more interesting: Fluffy white clouds/skitter across the wide blue sky
If this last part takes away from what you were initially trying to get at, then you don't have to add it, but a few adjectives will definitely help!
The one specific line that I would definitely recommend spicing up a little is many people are on the beach. I just feel as this is a little flat. Try describing it a bit more, like instead of beach, you could go for the expanse of sand at the water's edge. That might be a bit long for this poem, but I hope you see what I mean. I'd also go for more than just many people. This poem could really get more immersive with a few adjectives and some imagery.

Flow Flow could be worked on a bit more, but most of the issues I found when reading were solely how and when the lines where divided. This may only be an issue for me, but I found that it just made me stumble, like the lines were randomly chopped in half. Not all the lines were like that, though. For me, the way the lines roll off my tongue are how I judge flow and rhythm. I tend to pause a little after the end of each line as I go on the the next one unintentionally, so this contributes to the flow feeling choppy for me. I also wish there was a way to separate stanzas easily on yws, as that would have helped a lot.

Overall, this was a really cute poem with a lot of potential! Nice work and keep writing!

~Cat

Legacy here for a review.

I dislike the fact that in the beginning you describe blue sky, and then the line immediately after, also describe the blue surf. It is awkward and doesn't feel right.

I love the lines "no one sees a trail left by traveling feet." It is such a beautiful set of lines.

I wish you would have used stanzas in this poem for each individual thought that you discuss in this poem.

Overall, I didn't understand the meaning of this poem. Hopefully I wasn't too harsh with this short review and I was helpful with making this poem better. Legacy out.