Young Writers Society

0₩0 dear satan why is your poetry so good and delightfully written.

I LOVE this poem from start to finish. My mind is wandering but I totally agree with this part of @Pompadour 's review:

"your concept is concrete, the emotion carries through well, and your imagery is solid; the poem's also constant in keeping with the birds/flight images. wings are a really solid metaphor for what you're going for here--artistic rejuvenation, self-care, etc.--and to me the poem served both as a response to a person [friend? lover? family?] as well as to the general doubt that people tend to express towards art//self-care, which is often seen as selfish. i'd like to conjecture that the piece can be seen as having been aimed at oneself, too, but the tone suggests otherwise. the distinctions between 'me' and 'you' are very obvious. the only place the lines are blurred would be in stanza two: the poet speaks of how their 'heartbeat ...[will shake] /your/ ribcage awake'. while i interpreted this as being taken to mean that the poet's writing--their thoughts, feelings, and emotions, will awaken the addressee aesthetically, it contradicted the idea that the poet is investing into themself. while poetry does seek to awaken thoughts and ideas, i think the idea the poet meant to articulate was that they were entering a self-awakening? the way this section is structured creates confusion, but i'll get back to this point later."(Again Pomp's words not mine)

ANYWayS I can say for sure that I have no complaints with this poem. I loved it marmssss staahp giving me good thoughts and warm feelings like cocoa and a blanket and movie on a cold winter day

Your buddy,

~ Em

Hi,

Pure thoughts. I don't lie. It is awesome. I sensed the feeling of love. "She calls me selfish" It is a nice ending. There is no better ending than this. I love to tear off more poetries from you like this. I loved the concept. The essence is good. I loved all the ingredients you put in this. Superb. What a poetry!....I loved the ending.

"until the only thing............" what a stanza it is.

Nice work.

Hey Marms,

I'm going to keep this short while I stretch my reviewing legs again. I haven't been that active lately and your PM poked me into doing something, so here I am. Thank you.

All in all, you're right on the right track, but you're falling into a conundrum of "I don't want to say chest/breast, but I want to indicate that area. OH, RIBCAGE" and "Hey, broken bird wings. DRAMATIC" which both have been really overdone. If you check out work by PenguinAttack, Button, or even Iggy you'll find that they tend to come off with the same sort of sound, and back a few years ago, there was an obsession with the word "ribcage" that swept through the poetry circles, so it feels overused to me.

Let's think about it logically. If someone shakes your ribcage, they're reaching into your flesh, grabbing your bones, and shaking you about. That would not only wake you up, but it could kill you, or at least maim you. Even if you just are going direct path, and straight in, you'd still have to grasp the ribs to "shake your ribcage" which isn't an easy way to wake up. Basically, use a different word there. Look up synonyms for chest, like torso! Use a variety of words, but internal things might not be the best. Especially if you want it to be a gentle waking. That's not gentle.

As for the bird wings part of it, I can see what you're going for, and again, it doesn't fit with the ribs thing because they are two very different tones "gentle cooing" and "shake the ribs!!" are so different. I digress. I think you need to reevaluate what the point of the poem is because at this point, it feels disjointed between the ideas of violence, and softness. Perhaps that duality is what you're going for? If so, you might want to separate the metaphor better from the meaning. The third stanza feels weird because we go from "the artist's mind behind it" to talking about a broken bird? How do those two things relate? Is the poet's mind a broken bird?

Why? What's broken about their mind? Why is that detail important? Why did they break? There are so many unanswered questions. I mean, is this the songbird from earlier or a new bird? Did we break out of the metaphor just to go back into it? I'd like to have more of the poem to figure it out, to put all the things together, but right now, I'm left with assumptions. You might be able to fix it, or repair parts of the missing context with grammar, like periods and semi-colons, but you'll have to be careful not to rely too heavily on punctuation to do everything, and make sure the content is actually there.

Try reading the poem again when you can't predict what you're going to say next, when you feel like you didn't write it, and see if you can puzzle out what you were thinking just from the clues you gave in the poem itself. If you can, good job! If you can't, then add to it, make it a little bit more detailed. See if you can shove it in there.

Also, as a note, I'm pretty sure you need spaces before and after dashes? Don't quote me on it though, just go look that up, see if you can find it.

So, overall, I think you're doing really well with your poetry. I'm really glad to see how far you've come. You've improved a lot since last I read. Your goal should be to watch out for connotation errors. Things that don't make sense visually even though the words you're using, or replacing with new words [better words, unique words], would traditionally make sense. Those words like "chest" are overused because they're what we use in everyday discussion. To replace them, you have to be careful about the new connotations of the words.

I hope this is what you were looking for,
-Aley

hey, marms! i haven't reviewed in a while, so excuse the clunkiness. this might also be more like a commentary than a review? let's just see how it goes~

your concept is concrete, the emotion carries through well, and your imagery is solid; the poem's also constant in keeping with the birds/flight images. wings are a really solid metaphor for what you're going for here--artistic rejuvenation, self-care, etc.--and to me the poem served both as a response to a person [friend? lover? family?] as well as to the general doubt that people tend to express towards art//self-care, which is often seen as selfish. i'd like to conjecture that the piece can be seen as having been aimed at oneself, too, but the tone suggests otherwise. the distinctions between 'me' and 'you' are very obvious. the only place the lines are blurred would be in stanza two: the poet speaks of how their 'heartbeat ...[will shake] /your/ ribcage awake'. while i interpreted this as being taken to mean that the poet's writing--their thoughts, feelings, and emotions, will awaken the addressee aesthetically, it contradicted the idea that the poet is investing into themself. while poetry does seek to awaken thoughts and ideas, i think the idea the poet meant to articulate was that they were entering a self-awakening? the way this section is structured creates confusion, but i'll get back to this point later.

your style is refreshing! it's sparse, but also not, if that makes any sense? at the same time, though, i found the line breaks a tad off-putting, and while using commas ensures that the reader pauses at important parts while reading, it doesn't do kind things for the flow. [the comma after 'awake' could be dropped, for instance?] also! remember that commas can do a great deal for how your poem is structured. the reason i cannot tell how stanza two is meant to be read is because of comma placement. for example, i could read the lines as:

'in the early morning,
shaking your ribcage awake.
after months of slumber,
cooing, ''revival''.'

where 'shaking awake' and 'months of slumber' illustrate two different ideas, and are narrator-centred, because it implies that it was the narrator who was asleep, and the narrator who is waking up (as well as doing the waking up, now that they have comes fully to terms with themself!). alternatively, i could also read it as: 'shaking your ribcage awake//after months of slumber', which is a completely different set of ideas entirely. it implies that the addressee has been asleep, that the narrator wishes to awaken them, and that their sympathies are still with them. i could take this as a paradox, perhaps? as the poet wishing to do the addressee one last favour? but the tone of the last stanza is indicative of a complete cutting off of ties, of the addressee viewing the narrator from a distance. the ideas echo dissonant, so that may be what is confusing me.

overall, i enjoyed this! your writing style is reminiscent of rupi kaur's in that you utilise line breaks to make a point, but it's very marms in tone and atmosphere. i think you could rehash this sometime from a different point of view as well? the poem is centred in a current atmosphere, so i'm curious to see how a progression would read.

keep writing! keep it up! apologies for the ramble, and i hope this helped somewhat~

cheers.

~pomp x

ah, this is so good!

Hi marms! Becca here for a quick review.

I really liked this poem, and I definitely think it deserved its recognition in the Literary Spotlight.

In the first stanza, you explain the narrator's conflict/resolve.

The second stanza builds on that with beautiful imagery. I loved the personification of the heartbeat and imagining it "hum[ming] like a songbird." I also liked "shaking your ribcage awake," and the line, "cooing, 'revival'."

I liked the first half of the third stanza, but was a bit thrown off by "and the artist's mind behind it." I'm not sure if I was thrown off because of how it sounded or the concept behind it, though. It does end strong, though, with the image of the wings being snapped and broken, now whole, and spreading out.

The last line on its own was unique. I didn't love it or have a problem with it, neutral I would say.

Overall, great work, and keep writing! Hope to read more of your stuff!

Hello, hello. Gxldencrxwns here for a review.

I really like this poem. I'm assuming this is about a lover, parents, or any loved one. I get a feeling that the person the narrator is talking about has something of Narcissism, which gives you a feeling of self-centeredness.

The second paragraph confused me a little bit. It kind of sounds a bit off topic with the rest of the poem. I also don't really enjoy the length of the poem. I know you haven't written them in a while, and I understand that, but I would've at least gone with four or five.

Overall, this was pretty good. I liked the idea and theme you had in it. I enjoyed it. I would suggest changing the length a little longer, maybe five paragraphs. I don't really understand the second part, can you please explain that to me? Everything else seems pretty good.

And, this review is over, make sure to keep writing!

Really good!

Hello there I m kostia and I will give you a review for your poem.

First of I like the fact that your poem doesn't rhyme.

The beginning of your poem drew my interest and I think you couldn't have started off better. It comes out pretty powerful and it inspires confidence. Very good selection of words, very nice introduction to your poem I have nothing much to note here I loved it.

The second part was more confusing to me but I got the point of what you wanted to say here as well. I presume this poem refers to a lover although it could as easily refer to a parent. You may want to look into that and make it a bit more specific. Regardless I liked the selection of words here too and the symbolism is discreet and easily understood by the reader. I like that.

Now the last part of your poem "until the only thing.... mind behind it" seems kind of inferior to the previous parts. The rest of the poem is stronger in every aspect (wording, symbolism and emotion) while to me the last part feels like you rushed into it to finish off quickly. Moreover in the last verse you refer to art which you didn't mention before and it gives an entirely different view of your poem. If art and poetry is the aspect you want to focus on maybe you should mention it again somewhere in the poem.

Over all I liked your poem but I would like it to be longer and have a stronger ending to match with the rest of it. Moreover you only mentioned the words "she calls me selfish" in the very end of the poem which adds a dramatic and interesting tone in it but since you chose this particular phrase to be your tittle I think you should use it more frequently and try to fit it in some verse.
I enjoyed reading it and I d love to see the edited version.

Keep it up!