Young Writers Society

Hi there Blue! Tuck here with a review for you.

Overall, this was a beautiful poem. I like that you took some creative liberties and stepped away from the more traditional formatting of poetry to follow the format that is best suited for you. It also felt like an appropriate length: I feel that there was plenty of imagery that created a vivid picture, but it wasn't unnecessarily lengthy. Finally, your ending was strong and solid, as you seem to have an impressive ability to do. Let's jump into a more thorough analysis, shall we?

I really liked the way that you inserted the tasks into the second paragraph. To me, it mirrored the way I can be relaxing and then my thought stream is interrupted by the to-do list that I keep running in the back of my mind. It's an overachiever mood for sure, and I think the way you subtly integrated it into the poem is really cool.

the truth is, I'm not rolling along by chance. not moving because something set me in motion, because something else has yet to stop me.

This is really beautiful and moving Blue, so glad you wrote and posted it, because it puts into words some feelings that are really difficult to describe?

I like the "matter of fact" / removed / cold voice of the narrator because it all comes across even harsher the stark reality of what they're going through, and how they're maybe not processing it because they have to keep moving, so they can even be as dramatic as to say "I'll drown" or speak about death / funeral so mater-of-factly.

Yeah, I absolutely feel like I relate to what the narrator is describing, and I'm guessing a lot of people can. There's a simplicity to the piece, with not a lot of flowery language, but the metaphors/comparison to sharks and the laws of physics really work. I'm taking the meaning to be that the narrator in light of the grief / trauma / burden they are experiencing, does not have the option to slow-down, because if they did either emotionally or physically they wouldn't be able to keep on going - so the metaphor to the Great White shark is perfect with the perpetual motion the only thing keeping them alive, but also kind of what is killing them?

I think more mildly someone could interpret the poem to be about busy-ness-culture rather than like grief / sadness, but from the line about "a funeral, probably" I definitely interpreted it to be more grief / tiredness / sadness - covid related.

Just a few suggestions (again acknowledging that this is very powerful as-is, so these are just additional things you may want to consider)

* Covid vs Timelessness -
I've reviewed a few covid poems over revmo and something I've been thinking about is what is going to make this poem relevant / relateable when we're out of covid? What is going to prevent it from sounding melo-dramatic when we're not in the thick-of-it. The thing is sometimes people even interpret poems by Pablo Neruda as being "melo-dramatic" when he talks about "life and death" (in his cultural context of very literal life and death in the Chilean Revolution because we're so used to life and death being "mere-metaphor". I think to help keep this as "timeless" you could either more explicitly attach it to the historical moment (ie. putting a date as part of the poem, or an author note like "written in covid-quarantine" or just some other little covid note in there).

Another idea is to make it clear that "funeral" isn't a metaphor by adding some sort of link to the virus. Another consideration though, is not all poems need to be timeless! There's certainly validity in things that only make sense "in the moment" too.

* italics / consistency in formatting -
I actually really liked the long lines you used in here, it made it feel more like a "definition poem" and I don't think detracted in any way to the meaning or flow since this poem is short so this made it feel more artsy? unique? to keep the long lines.

I didn't think your second usage of italics worked though as I couldn't figure out it's relation to the first part of italics. The first usage seemed like a definition / quote, whereas the second seemed like a to-do list, but being in italics my brain tried to make it fit into the first usage of italics. I might format it literally in bullet points, or put dashes, or back-slashes in there, or good-ol commas, something a bit more expected so the readers don't have to work so hard to figure out what's going on in the formatting.

YOUR LAST LINE -
I liked what you did with punctuation / capitalization all along the way as it really felt like it fit with the "keep moving" theme, especially with the colons and lines broken mid-phrase. And I really liked that you chose not to close this poem in a period, signaling that the narrator / poem keep going (just like the content of the piece!) the sentence isn't finished. Lovely! The lack of a period actually puts a grammatical nod to hope? or at least continued existence rather than death, and it feels very intentional based on the fact that you used periods at the ends of your other sentences.

I don't know if you've read / watched the play "w;t" or "wit" but it reminded me of the main character's big deal that she makes over the John Donne using a semi-colon to show continuation and I notice, and love that.

roll -
you use the phrase "I'll roll" / "I'm not rolling along by chance" and I feel like "roll" feels really casual to use in a poem this serious. Like when I talk about hanging out with friends and if they're ready to leave, I might say "read to roll?" it's almost slang, and tripped me up to read twice in the same piece. If you were going a bit stronger with that wheel motif, I think it might have fit / worked, but my preference would not to be to have that word there.

the truth is -
I think phrasing-wise most of the poem really made sense, and was really clear/easy to understand. This sentence though is a bit to follow, "the truth is, I'm not rolling along by chance. not moving because something set me in motion, because something else has yet to stop me." I think the trouble is that after reading "i'm not rolling along by chance" I expect to read why/how they are rolling, but then there's like a repetition. Maybe if you put "I'm not rolling because something set me in motion"? I'm not sure, it's just a bit hard to follow what's happening in the second sentence and how it relates to the one that comes before it.

personal-ness
The poem I think is purposely a little emotionally removed from the narrator - as in we really don't hear specifically what's troubling them. On one hand this does allow a person to write in their own concerns / story into it, but on the other hand I think there is a little loss of opportunity for the poem to emotionally connect to the reader as much. That is part of what I'm trying to say in my KB Specificity article - that sometimes an attempt to make a poem feel a bit more open/generic actually makes a poem less-relateable because the problem/conflict feels "blank or empty" rather than something one could relate to.

In this situation though, the emotional removal could be part of that "continuing to move" theme of not really processing what's going on, and actually that was really part of what I really liked about the poem - so I don't really know if it's worth resolving, except maybe going back and forth between cold-removed / emotional-specific.

Hopefully that all makes sense! Thanks for posting this! [200 points well spent!! ]

If you have any questions about my review or wanted feedback on something I didn't cover, please let me know.

keep on writing,

~ alliyah