Young Writers Society

Back again. This one's an interesting beast. On some levels I really like what you have here, but it doesn't quite make it for me.

I read through your other reviews, and I think Lumi hit the nail on the head for me - at times this is very mechanical when it's supposed to be emotional. The formatting really conveys the interrupted nature of the constantly changing partners, and feels very wave-like, but it has the drawback of cutting off the reader in the middle of the emotional build-up, simply because of how much extra white space there is and because the reader has to spend slightly more of their attention on the formatting rather than the words. So, careful not to let this be a robot. Make every verb be as strong and vibrant as possible, let every phrase reveal character.

only to be torn apart

Hey Matt, here for a Review Day review,

Positives:The formatting of this poem is choppy, which works well with the "chops" of the waves that are being drawn for me. I like it when there's a visual aspect to poetry as well.

Our feet move
on the corals
beneath
only to be torn apart
if we linger too long
so we move to prevent the pain
always moving on
to our next partner

we dance our ballad
and then our waltz

Interesting poem.

6:21 start time. Keeping this curt and we'll chat it up.

You start on the ocean floor, and that gives you immediate access to an entire world of imagery unique to that environment. I understand its underuse in keeping with the music and dance themes, but it's a real shame not to see more of the tiny nuances that ocean life can bring.

The white space brought to the game does add a nice momentum shift to give us the dancer's edge, but as someone who uses white space abundantly, I can easily tell you that it's readily available to hinder your flow as much as it is to help it.

There are lots of superfluous words that can and will be cut and trimmed and combed off in future edits because they dampen the flow. One such example in earshot is:

in hopes of finding
the person we
hope
would keep us
lifted above
the ocean floor

Hi, here's a review from me.

I had a little bit of a hard time reading this. The construction of the stanzas was unusual. If you could explain the reasoning behind it to me, I might understand.

That's all.

AnnMath

This is Kaos here for a review!

So there was an interesting usage of white space in this poem and I thought it was a quite wonderful addition to the poem here. You seem to grasp the concept of it well for it putting an emphasis on some of the words but near the end I didn't really like it because it became a little overdone. It puts a stress on the words but at the same time the lines start to feel a little shorter each time and the flow starts to start to feel more fragmented. Onto more of the start of the poem, one of the things that I wanted to touch on was the lack of clarity in stanzas since we didn't really see where each one starts and ends and I think that would be beneficial to the poem.

I don't know if that's like, a problem with the publishing center or if it's something different. The first part with the movements and dancing is something that I would have wanted more detail on with the dancing, I think. The waltz is a simple dance, sure, but you could have brought in distorted silhouettes or something else of that sort that gives off more of an elegant tone to the poem, which is something that I think that would fit.

In the next part we get more of the movement, which is something that works well, but the seashells in this poem aren't even mentioned so I don't know why you titled it that. It's something that I want to know why you cut it out of the poem--what was your reasoning? Perhaps the floor could have been made of sand or at least you could have better described the atmosphere that the two dancers are in.

It would be beneficial to create the atmosphere sort of around them and kind of base it off that since they're sort of the center of the poem now with the dancing and then you can use sensory details to strengthen this. Give us what the sand feels like (if there is sand) on their feet, give us if they're floating on land or underwater.

That's something that actually confused me because I didn't know by the "the person we hope would keep us lifted above the ocean floor" part lacked clarity in what that means. In the last four lines I felt like the ending lacked impact. This is because the "for now" in italics didn't really do anything for me and then the last three lines feel like a cheesy and dramatic song and all I could think of was, "WE. DANCE. ON." and I would have liked something that had more emotional weight attached.

I hope I helped and have a great day!

Amazing Matt, just incredible!

this is beautiful wow