Dry eyes.
Chapped lips.
Late nights and wandering minds.
All the times we've
stayed up too late
to spite the warnings.
New discoveries,
and light
lay to rest.
Never let her go.
Infatuation, curiosity, stars in the sky,
Stars in our eyes.
Forever relying on tomorrow.
Somberly sober
and not so carefully articulated words
spoken.
Expressing
Raw thoughts of restless minds
Raise those hearts,
throbbing in time to the music.
Moonlight bleeding through the
window pa(i)ne and sadness
chased away
We are safe and sound now
no sound left
except our breaths.
Empty lungs.
Authors Note: I struggled with the format of this poem and how to section out the words, and where to add punctuation. If anyone has any suggestions to help me improve that it would really help!
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Canary word: Present
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125,016 Literary Works • 672,851 Reviews
Hi!
I really like this poem. It describes such a simple thing in great detail and its absolutely beautiful! It's kind of like a journey to me. Like, you have this person who is struggling to face his/her demons in the night, and they're just brought back to a safe place by someone else, and together the two of them fight, until sleep washes over them. It's such a wonderful idea and beautifully written.
As for the formatting, I would try to separate each part of the "journey" in stanzas. for example,
"Dry eyes.
Chapped lips.
Late nights and wandering minds.
All the times we've
stayed up too late
to spite the warnings."
Should be a single stanza. The next stanza would go until you have the next period, and that's how I would separate the whole thing. Each period represents the end of one stanza and the start of another.
This poem has wonderful imagery and well-crafted word choice. I hope this helps you with the formatting! Can't wait to see what you write in the future!
-E
Hi there BubblegumGoddess and welcome to YWS! Niteowl here to review this poem for Team Papyrus this fine Review Day.
Overall, I liked this. The short and choppy rhythm seemed to fit with the idea of restless minds on a sleepless night. Just a couple things I'd like to point out.
This didn't seem to fit in the poem as a whole. Honestly, I'd cut it.
This is sort of contradictory. Someone who's somberly sober would probably have more of a filter and sound more articulate. This might be one of those places where having stanzas would help, which you asked about and where I'm going to get to in a second.
As far as formatting goes, it might help to think of a line as a sentence and a stanza as a paragraph. They don't have to be even, but how you break them up can make a huge difference in your rhythm and how the piece flows. Unfortunately, this is something I find hard to explain and still struggle with, so I don't know if I have much advice beyond trial and error. If you had stanzas in mind and are struggling with how to have them show up in the Publishing Center, that's a known bug with several workarounds. My personal favorite is described here: Formatting poetry #3 .
As for punctuation, a previous reviewer said grammar doesn't matter in poetry, and I would say that that isn't quite true. Certainly poets can and do mess with the standard rules of punctuation and capitalization, and that's perfectly fine. However, doing so has a certain effect on the reader and can really muddle up the poem if you don't think about what you're doing. Usually, I punctuate my poetry like I would prose (also known as sentence punctuation) because I find that is the clearest for me and the reader. If I break this rule, it's for a certain reason. For example, I might use no punctuation to create a sort of breathless feeling. A more complete explanation of the different ways one can punctuate can be found here: Punctuation in Poetry.
Overall, I liked the imagery and choppy rhythm of this. Welcome again and keep writing!
Hello, BubblegumGoddess! VegasLights here to give you a review!
All together this poem had a central theme throughout the poem and really good details, which I loved. But like you mentioned, format and structure was a little problem. Like klennon14 pointed out, there was a few obvious points where at least /I/ would have broken the poem at. Here are some lines that I would have broken up.
I feel like the beginning 3 lines could have been separated into one stanza. Basically every 3 lines would need to be split up into one stanza. For example, lines 1,2,3 are one stanza and 4,5,6 are another, and so on. Because I feel like every 3 lines there is kind of a new idea and realm of the poem. I also feel every three lines will make this poem less choppy, no offense, sorry.
Punctuation. In the beginning lines (1,2,3) I would suggest no periods until line 3. At the end of line one I would put a comma so it goes into line 2. Overall, there was just too many periods but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, I mean you could have too little. Again, I would just take out a bit of the periods because I personally think it messes up the flow a bit.
That is really all I have to say for this review. I am sorry it was rather negative, but that only means you will be able to see it from others views. Again, I am truly sorry about that. But your poem was extremely beautiful, it was just those minor things. I see no grammar mistakes, I mean poetry doesn't really have a certain grammatical way. So this is the end of this review and I must say, keep writing. I hope you have a great day and I thank you for your time.
~Keep Writing~
VegasLights
(Previously Steam1244)
Hello there! Overall, this poem has a strong base. I did enjoy the shorter lines and simplicity in your writing style. However, as you pointed out, I would certainly change around a few lines to set the structure of this piece.
As you keep writing poetry, these technicalities will become second nature. It took me a while to catch on, honestly. Your inner writer's instinct will just know what sounds better after so long.
I did enjoy this piece and look forward to reading more from you.
I'm going to take this line by line with you, because there are specific lines where there are obvious breaks to make, at least in my eyes. Every poet is entitled to their own opinion, so if you feel your lines sound better than my revised ones, please disregard them. It's truly all up to the poet and their ears- whatever flows and sounds good to them. But I do have some suggestions
The third line, I would break up into two like this:
"Late nights
and wandering minds"
instead of the one long, awkward line. Often times when you have a conjunction; 'and, or, because, etc.' you can break the line right before or right after the conjunction to give a certain effect. It depends if you want this line more cut off or less sudden.
See how "late nights and/wandering minds" is more sudden than if you were to include 'and' in the next line?
There were several instances in this poem where you can easily break up the lines directly before or after a conjunction word. I felt there were a few instances in which you could actually combine a few phrases or words to make the poem flow more as well.
Let's take a look at this chunk:
"Somberly sober
and not so carefully articulated words
spoken.
Expressing
Raw thoughts of restless minds"
Now, in most cases, at least in a shorter more fast-paced piece like this, you want to keep your rhythm steady. This chunk of lines I pulled has a rhythm that teeters back and forth, but with just a little editing power, you can fix this easily!
I would change this to something like:
"Somberly sober
and not so carefully
articulated words
spoken.
Expressing raw thoughts
of restless minds."
See how this might flow better and sound less choppy? Again, these are just suggestions. Don't feel like you HAVE to change the lines the way I would write them. It's just something to think about
Like I said, this is a great start for your poem. I like the word choice and enjoyed your writing style. Just a few things to clean up when it comes to the structure.
One more thing, don't overcrowd your lines with punctuation. You might only need a period every four lines or so, whenever a thought is complete, you know?
Anyway, good job all in all!!
Happy writing,
Kali L.
Hello from Kimmycat,
This was a good poem, and you asked for some help with sectioning the lines.
The first two lines should be added together with and... but only if you want. It sounds good either way.
As far as punctuation,
POETRY HAS NO GRAMMAR RULES!
just saying...
anyway, great poem!