Young Writers Society

I loved reading this. I can feel the sweet and depressing notes from start to finish. I think all of the ”Oh moments” mentioned are things that strike close to home with any reader. One thought I had was that it almost jumped a little to quickly into suicide. I wish it was drawn out a bit more to really emphasize the internal metal struggle that takes place along the way to making that big division. However, I also feel as though it was almost perfect in the way that the decision didn’t seem to be stressed too much because you felt as though it is no big deal, “even in death they didn’t care”. Though a big assumption I felt as though it was coming from a mind that had already made the decision.

Hey there CJ! I'm Tuck, and I'm dropping by with a quick poetry review for you today.

My first and strongest impression of this poem is that it is hard-hitting. It is concise and describes in simple terms what it is like to battle suicidal thoughts.

I also wanted to reach out and make sure that you're doing okay—this seemed like it could be autobiographical, and these thoughts should be taken seriously. It can be easy to feel as if you'd be burdening someone by talking to them about it, or that your thoughts will just go away with time, or that they're not that bad anyway, but any thoughts of suicide should be treated as a symptom of a very serious and deadly disease. I've also experienced thoughts like these, so if you want to talk, I am always here. If you're not comfortable talking to a stranger on the Internet, which is totally understandable, please talk to someone you trust about this. There's hope. It can and it does get better.

Onto the actual meat of the review—

You noted that you weren't sure how to format using Publishing Center, so I have a quick tip for you. If you hold down Shift and Enter, you'll get a single space, whereas just clicking enter will give you the weird, 1.5 spacing that you have now. You can also always just press enter twice as well to show stanza breaks. However, it's definitely something that you need. The repetition in this poem makes it relatively easy to identify where you wanted the stanzas, which is a good sign in terms of flow! Your flow and rhythm were strong throughout the poem for the most part, so excellent job on that! Adding stanzas is a pretty simple but necessary way to separate your thoughts, so I'd definitely recommend that you do that moving forward.

Another area of improvement for this poem is the lack of metaphors and figurative speech. You were speaking pretty literally throughout, and it made the poem somewhat dry. While poems about mental health issues will always hit me deeply because of the ways I've been personally affected by it, using metaphorical speech is a way to really deepen your poems and make them more than just dry statements. Perhaps incorporating some analogies, metaphors, similes, or drawing out a metaphor that explains what it feels like. You had some places where this was strong—particularly the line about the rope. More of that throughout the poem would add some depth and texture.

And finally, I think this poem deserves a better title than "Oh". Titles are the first thing that the reader know about the poem, so it's important to have a relevant and attention-grabbing title. It might take a little bit of brainstorming, but I think if you want to go farther with this poem you'll need to come up with a title that better captures the essence of the poem and catches an eye.

I think that about wraps this up! I hope you found this helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

~Tuck

This is a very powerful poem and the underlying message is made more impactful by your repetition of the word "oh". I feel like this specific word expresses a certain wishfulness, which emphasizes the speaker's strong desire to return to simpler, less painful/anxious days of their life. Very good job with conveying your message and utilizing repetition.

I particularly like these lines towards the end of the poem:

"Oh to be forgotten / no funeral or memorial / Even in death they didn't care, / didn't bury you in a nice material."

This is a saddening, yet powerful sense of frustration that the narrator expresses -- it resonates significantly with me. The rhyme scheme here and throughout the entirety of the poem also ensures that those feelings of yearning and the desire to "care at all".

I also like that the poem is consistent in tone throughout the entirety of the stanzas. Rather than making this a bittersweet, reflective poem, it seems like you chose to focus specifically on one particular feeling: melancholy indifference (and its devastating effects).

All in all I loved this poem from start to finish. Wonderful job.

Hi CJ, Blackblade here for review!

This poem is full of very intense and well-communicates emotion. The repetition of “oh” amplified the speakers’ lament by conveying an irreversible sense of desperation and loss. Though you mostly speak abstractly (“oh time be carefree”, “to feel good”, “to continue your life”, “feel confident”, “heart no-one can mend”, etc.), the more specific details you include make the speaker even more relatable. For example, “not stress about your clothes size” or “wake up and not worry about the day” or “be ignored by those you know”. I like how the “oh”s at the beginning are a little more spaced out, but then at the end you shorten the cadence with the anaphore of four rapid “oh’s”: “oh to give up / oh to lose it all / oh to have no one / oh to fall.” In a sense, the closeness of the “oh”s conveys this sense of pain closing in on the speaker and mental desperation, or almost claustrophobia.

Your rhyme scheme was pretty good. If you are open to editing, you may want to try to modify the liens so that they have a more consistent meter / syllable count. I think this would emphasize your rhyme scheme more and make the poem a little more structured and cohesive. It would still be good to keep your last lines slightly shorter if you did that, though.

You could also play around with your word choice a little more if you wanted. Don’t feel like you have to be too constructed by the rhyme scheme! For example, I’m not sure if “nice material” in the fifth to last line is necessarily the best description for a coffin. This wording takes away from the pain and darkness of a funeral, in some ways.

Anyway, great job, and look forward to reading more of your poetry. Don’t feel like you have to listen to any of my comments if you don’t want to.