Young Writers Society

Hey Chris,

here for a quick review!

Spelling / Phrasing

So - some of the grammatical/spelling mistakes are a bit distracting to the read, so I'd definitely throw this in a spell-checker. "past" -> should be "passed" in the fourth line, and "chance" -> should be "chances" because it's plural in the second to last line. I also think it might make more sense to just say "death" rather than "the death" because you seem to be personifying it; either way -> try to be consistent on whether you say "the death" or just "death".

I thought overall though the structure of the piece made sense with the short little lines, and the poem felt a bit stilted, but it kind of communicated a serious deliberate mood - especially with the wide spaces and capital letters which made me pause at each line.

Theme

I interpreted the poem to be an exploration on the impact of death, specifically the narrator is trying to communicate that we shouldn't be so quick to forget death, because when it comes the "second chances" are gone, it's final. We need to always be aware of its presence around us. That's a pretty serious topic, and one that I think everyone can relate to, sadly especially during these difficult times.

Repetition

I felt like some of your repetition in the lines didn't seem especially useful, because it wasn't saying anything new, this made the poem feel a bit circular and redundant. Like the line "we forget" and "death comes by" was said in different ways again and again and again in the poem. Repetition can be a useful tool to highlight certain words, or themes, but each use of repetition should bring something new too. I would maybe see if you can use synonyms rather than just using the same phrasing.

Room for Improvement
Some areas you could improve on I think, would be digging deeper into the personification of death; how does death move? (give us imagery) what actions does death take? (inspire empathy in the reader) - answering some of these questions would paint a larger picture for readers to engage with your themes.

Keep on writing! Let me know if you had any questions about my review!


- alliyah



Happy Review Day!

Hi there Chris! Here as requested.

I think you already have received some good reviews that have pretty much touched on all the bases that I think need to be touched on when it comes to you revising this poem later on. Kudos to you for tackling a subject like death, which can be really heavy and hard to convey in a poem. A sense of adventure when it comes to writing poetry is always necessary!

I think a big part of what's missing here is some imagery. We see it at the beginning with "by silent night sky", but after that there is very little. I know that imagery in poetry can be daunting and perhaps you may be unsure how to form solid pictures. I encourage you to take a photograph of your poem: what do you see? How does what you see make you feel? And then go deeper and engage all the human senses. There is a lot of emotion associated with death so you're far from being at a loss content-wise.

With regards to prosody, I feel that it's fairly spot-on. The short lines enable a relatively steady rhythm.

I would encourage you to just do a spot-check on spelling as well - there are some basic errors: for example, "past" should be "passed". I think a previous reviewer touched on this as well.

Overall, I think you have a solid base here! I look forward to seeing revisions.

All the best,
Lav

hello, here to review your work!

Death is such a sad thing that it a minute occurrence. Something that never would make sense to us, and why it happens. Something that hurts us so much we change our whole way of life to show grief. Something that we can barely get past without losing someone else in our life. (as a friend). The meaning of this poem is clear and correct. Death is here whenever we don't want it to be. The second our lives are great it is ruined by something, and the worst thing is death.

What sucks even worse is that grief has so much at stake. It can be years of sadness, then years of anger, and then hopefully a chance to get over it. With the anger that can last for so long, you can lose friends, family, and even your own way of life. What I mean by that is you change, and change isn't always great. Change can make us depressed make us feel things that we never want to feel. I get all of this from your poem. Good job!

I love the way you format everything. The short lines really keep it compact and easy to read. I like that. What's also good about your poem is how you start it. One word is all you need and that's what you did. 'Death' is such a word. A word pack full of so many things that people don't know how to handle. It caught my eye. Also with how you say things just in such a simple way keep me reading. (Along with the short sentence). Great job! I can't wait to read more.

_ From your friend,
@PlainandSimple _

The overall meaning of this poem was relatively clear, but there are some grammar/verb inconsistencies that make it a bit difficult to read through smoothly. These lines in particular caught my attention:

We come and goes

But we never know

When the death

Would be visiting.

A hoy a hoy,

Just here for a quick review, so without further ado, here are some general comments;

The message that you were trying to share in this poem was unclear. Some of the lines seemed disconnected to what was said before them making it confusing to understand what was going on. You could split the different stages of action into different stanzas to help with clarity but otherwise I would also suggest rewriting some of it so that it makes more sense.
In some parts of the poem, death has been personified while in others it hasn’t. I would recommend choosing either to personify it or not and sticking with that for the entirety of the piece to avoid confusing the reader.

Now that’s done, here are some specific comments;

The line, “we come and goes” just doesn’t sit right. I’m assuming this is typo and you meant to write ‘he’ instead of ‘we’ and for this I recommend always double checking in future with a friend to help or using an online grammar tool (I personally use grammarly). If it wasn’t a typo, ‘goes’ should be changed to ‘go’.
A second thing I want to point out is the word ‘comea’. I’m just going to assume this was another typo and reiterate what I said before about always checking what you have written makes sense.

And that’s about it from me. Continue writing!

- H.G