Young Writers Society

*waves cheerfully*

As poems go, this is one is distinctive. The opening metaphor of the movie set is unexpected, but unique, and well-conveyed. It shows the attention and activity focused on the other person, who sounds warm and gracious. In general, it's something that I would love to see expanded upon, whether in other participants in the set, what kinds of actions are going on, and how the narrator ties into all of this. This may be because there aren't too many other metaphors in the rest of the poem, though its direct nature does add to the narrator's sense of separation, loss, and former love. Then again, there is the "you can lead a horse to water" allusion, which I was impressed by. It's a nice way to specify the narrator's devotion to the other person, complete with an ultimate lack of an impact on the narrator. Despite their close relationship, it seems that, for one reason or another, the narrator was too shy to pursue it further or cultivate anything of value from it. As it's now falling apart, as described by the last stanza, the theme of your poem is definitely saddening. On a related now, the final stanza explains the tears in an earlier stanza, and does a nice job of tying everything together, so that I'm left with a consistent message that defines both the past and present parts of the poem.

There are a few things I want to note. The dashes should probably not be directly attached to a word, as in "water-", but be separated by a space. I also want to point out that "quinch" is misspelled - it should be "quench". Beyond that, the fourth stanza comes out of nowhere for me, because I'm not sure what it refers to, it contradicts a later position of the narrator, and just doesn't fit into the style of the poem. It could possibly refer to the tears, but this stanza uses the past tense, and the one with tears is in the present tense; and, if that were the case, I would have to call them disjointed. Lastly, I'm not sure if "like the snow that buries our secrets behind" is an appropriate final line. There hasn't been much of a mention of secrets beforehand (except for not drinking water, but that doesn't count because the narrator doesn't recognize it until after the fact), and I would have to imagine that the melting of snow would reveal those secrets, which there also doesn't seem to be many signs of. Regardless, this is a good poem, and I was happy to read it from start to finish. Great job!

Hey there Goose! I'm here to give a review. Rather than my usual reviewing style I'm going to try to use @LadyLizzLovelace's KotGR guiding questions to complete this. So here we go:

1. What are your first thoughts after reading this poem?
My first thoughts are I like the metaphors that are being used, but I'm having a hard time understanding the plot of the poem, specifically the conflict.

2. What did you like and dislike? Why?
Like I enjoyed your stylistic choice to lowercase the "i"s in the piece and the minimal punctuation use. There will always be some people who can't stand this style, but I thought both fit for the tone of this piece and weren't distracting to my reading of it.

Dislike I wanted you to take some of the metaphors one more step to make them more unique. Some of them seemed a bit basic like "colourful roses" -- good metaphor, but its been used a million times, can it be expanded or shaped in a new way? The metaphor about drinking at the end was probably the most solid one in the piece though! I enjoyed where you took that one, and thought it was pretty clear.

3. What did you think the meaning of the poem was?
I interpreted this poem to be about someone who loves someone else a lot, and sees them as this light in the dark as something unique, but they never tell them. And because they leave their love untold, their love never has a chance to blossom or become a full relationship thus the last line with the buried secrets.
Now there were aspects that really fit with that reading (the first and last 2 stanzas) and then there are details that I'm asking myself, "what is going on here". For instance, the part with the smiles and tears, just seems so unexplained. Why are they smiling (just from love?) and why does this make them cry? I'm seeing the emotional physical response of the speaker but I don't see the inner-emotional level of this poem. This is an area I'd like some expansion on -- more interiority.

4. Was there anything that seemed "off" to you? Why did it seem "off"?
The word "quinch" is spelled wrong. The flow of the poem isn't as smooth as it could be. I think this could be remedied by less dashes and more even stanzas and line lengths. I'm not sure having so many little stanzas helped too much either, I would almost put this all in 1-3 chunks rather than 8 little tiny pieces that seem almost randomly divided.

Overall thoughts:
So overall, I think I like the direction that the poem is taking at the end, but I'd love to see a bit more inside the speaker's head. We have a bit of emotion in this piece but I'm not quite seeing it all connect yet. Good work, and please let me know if you have any questions about my review.

-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-
::Its Review Time::

::Negatives::
•Theme - In the beginning of this very poetic drama, I was kinda lost. Instead of coming in head strong, I highly suggest you come in with a better understanding of the moral or theme so us readers could easily detect the message or meaning of this poem. Even though you made it clear near the end of the poem, us readers don't start from the bottom and work our way to the top of a work.
• Capitalization - Throughout your piece, I took note on how you kept the I's lowercase. An "I" is suppose to be capitalized if it's at the beginning of a word or sitting alone. I personally think that capitalizing the I's that sit alone gives them more of a dramatic appearance because they stand out from the rest. So, re-read your work and capitalize any I that follows the requirements listed above.
• Punctuation - Mark the beginning and end of each sentence. This poem is meant to be dramatic, so why not add even more drama with an exclamation point or question mark. Just watching each phrase/sentence entwine with one another seems a bit confusing to me. As I was reading this piece, I couldn't help but cut each sentence short because i needed to breath and make sure everything was grammatically correct. I ended a phrase and start up at the original end of the phrase. Does that make sense? I recommend that you add a bit more punctuation instead of only using commas.

::Positives::
• Notes/Comments - Overall, I think this poetic piece was written nicely. The emotion surrounding the phrases was just...overpowering. And the thoughts were too strong to ignore. I really enjoyed the last phrase so I am going to mark that as a personal favorite. Thank you for sharing a part of your troubled heart. I wish you the best of luck and I hope to hear more of your poetic works in the future to come.