Young Writers Society

Heya Chaser,

Shady here with a quick review for your poem tonight!

I really like the topic of your poem. I was intrigued by the title, and enjoyed seeing how you were able to write a poem based on such seemingly ordinary items as would be found in a dining set. I'm always a big fan of when poetry is able to combine the tangible with the emotions the poet wishes to express, and I think you did a great job there.

and scrapes and screams.

I particularly liked this line. As I'm sure you know, word choice is so important in poetry, and the "screams" in relation to a piece of china was startling -- but illicited a very specific emotion, so that was awesomely done!

I hate all the times it turns up empty and begging.

This was also an emotion-packed line that I was, honestly, kind of hoping you were going to expand on a bit more. I was wondering if this poem was going to head towards a hunger sort of theme, which seemed to be hinted at here, but at the end it left me wondering if it instead maybe had something more to do with like either an eating disorder or like a dysfunctional family where meal times are tied with bad memories. Just my musings here -- not something that necessarily has to be answered.

But even with all these questions I still have about the t r u e m e a n i n g whatever that is lol I did feel an emotional connection with this piece and that's great!

The one suggestion I do have for you is maybe looking at the flow of this poem a bit more. I know that poetry is a lot more free-spirited than prose so there's no like hard or fast rule that you've got to adhere to -- but at the same time, an allure of poetry to me is the cadence of it. If you can make your words work towards the emotion you're hoping to elicit -- choppy, or flowing, or whatever it is that your topic is dealing with, it can make it a more... immersive? I guess would be the word for it, experience for your readers.

This poem was good and had great imagery and such, but a lot of the flow read more like prose than poetry. I was having a hard time keying in to what sort of meter I was supposed to be reading this in and getting a good flow in my head.

Kiss My Assonance is an article in the Knowledge Base that talks a lot about poetic devices you can use in poetry, and may be worth a read if you're ever interested. The assonance and consonance in particular struck me as I was skimming through trying to figure out how I was wanting to express what I wanted to say in terms of your poem, so maybe playing around with something like that would make this read a bit smoother?

Anyhow, I think that's all I've got for you! Great poem, thanks for sharing!

~Shady