Young Writers Society

You're only 15? Wow, very impressive. You have a mature yet very straightforward style. Very nice. I really liked the concept too. These days, it's hard to find an original idea for poetry, but you grasped it well.

Oh, very nice! I really like how you put the italic lines inbeetween the stanzas.
I love this stanza the most.

"No fear inside,
No tears outside.
The chance to die,
Was all that mattered. "

Bravo.

even i (one who tends to be quite literal and foward in my poetry) think it was a little too straightfoward. but i love the one line stanzas. i think they worked really well.

Yeh Brad pretty much summarised the problems. I'd like to add the sentiment that you're a little literal, I'd rather see more abstraction. But to each their own.

Well, since Brad has picked it apart so well, I'll just settle for saying that the poem was really good.

Oh Morgan...I liked the concept of the poem, or the impression the title left on my imagination. However, you're poems are always too literal. Not overtly literal, but just a little too much for me to consider it poetry but more along the lines of story. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, onto the poem and some specific complaints:

"There's no place to start,
Excepting the ending maybe,
Where you're sure to feel the impact."

I think you should use "except," not "excepting."

"There's no one to talk to,
Except the tombstone maybe,
But you wouldn't get an answer."

Don't use "maybe" again at the end of the second line. It doesn't flow well, as you used it second verse in the first stanza.

And it was a Christmas present.

"His father had left;
His mother, gone to work;
His brother, who knows where or how;
He had no idea,
Why they had left him alone."

Too much description of nothing. Also, punctuation all over the place does not appeal to the structural feel of the poem for your readers.

"And it was from his grandfather.

School was no refuge,
He was tortured and beat down,
Physically and emotionally"

Nothing's great about this stanza, but it isn't a bad stanza. You refrain from being meticulous in your description of the environment, which contributes to a better read.

"Standing five feet tall,
He was a "lame."
Barely over one hundred pounds.
Ridiculed because he was "ugly."
Nothing about him was right."

Do I get the feeling this is more about you than the boy in your poem? For the most part, in real life, it's just you telling yourself those things. For the poem, there was again too much description of nothing. What about how he feels?

"He was just a young boy,
Maybe fifteen years old,
He felt the pressure,
And the desire to die."

One of your better stanzas.

"But he wasn't going alone.
He was taking them with him,
After all, it had been their fault."

Kind of out of place. I want to say cliche, but it isn't quite the right word for this stanza. I think you could have described this better, or even integrated it into the feel of the poem.

"And he knew he had it in his closet.

No fear inside,
No tears outside.
The chance to die,
Was all that mattered."

Nice flow here. Really nice.

"He held it in his hand,
It was just in those three shots.
That he accomplished everything he had ever wanted."

Again, way too much description. For instance, where else would he have held the gun? His nose? His leg?

"Now you see what happens,
When you give the boy a gun."

A bizarre and ineffective end to this poem. You need an image at the end to capture your reader. We want to be captured. Just lay the web.