Young Writers Society

Hey Chris!

Not here for a review or anything, just to drop the promised comment on one of your literary works as one of the prizes in the RevMo 2020 Checklist Challenge! <3

This is a sweet little poem~ I love the imagery of nature. The birds songs, seeing your reflection in the cold water - that was pretty neat! I think my favorite line out of this whole poem would probably be that last one because of how quiet I imagine it - if that makes sense? I think of it as like, a quiet voice, in the cold, and it's super interesting!

Well done on this poem! Can't wait to see more from you.

~Liberty

Hello again ChrisDixon!

I like how you've portrayed this morning as something peaceful and in tune with nature. It's a very lovely and gentle read!

However, you can still use these natural elements to build up to the declaration at the end of the poem. For example, "Under the sunlight the cold water reflecting my face, and yours / Under the gaze of the sun, I rest in peace against you." I just slightly modified your lines to hint that there's another person present. You can build off your base of natural imagery to include the "you" that is speaking at the end! And that might better help prepare readers for that ending. Right now, it comes quite suddenly and I'm not sure what to make of it. Alliyah's point about extending the poem could also work well.

You could also build the poem by reordering a few of your lines at the end. Right now, "the whispers of the wind" come right before "I love you." If you moved it so that that image occurred earlier, you could have "the warmth that makes my heart the warmest place" back to back with "I love you." Having those two lines together, I think, would build a more powerful image, and link the warmth of the narrator's heart not just to the natural world, but to the person saying "I love you" as well.

Alliyah also mentioned your repetition; one thing I might add to that is that since you repeat "under the sunlight" so often, what stands out is actually the one line where you don't have repetition. "In the morning under the sunlight" is very noticeable in the middle of your poem. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I think that you could use it more to your advantage. It would be the perfect place to have a shift in tone, with the first half of your poem being, perhaps, mostly nature imagery, then that line, and then building up to the "I love you" with more people imagery. I think that could give your poem some more power; at the moment, that line comes in the middle of your poem without too much significance, and I think that you could really use it to your advantage by making its placement purposeful.

That's all I have for you today! This was a nice poem to read, very pleasant imagery. Let me know if you have any questions!

-Q

Hey Chris! Here as requested!

I think this poem is doing a better job weaving some narrative and imagery together; which is something that really makes a poem pop!

I think that the repetition of "under the sunlight / gaze" was a little overdone - and here's why, repetition should be used to create emphasis (ie. The really, really red truck) to take advantage of sound devices (ie. The sound echoed hollow, the sound echoed from tomorrow) or in a way that each repetition adds new meaning with each the repetition (ie. I loved him all along, he left, I loved him all along). The way you're using repetition here, it's not highlighting anything new so it ends up feeling redundant and the reader may get bored with re-reading it.

Another small critique of this poem, is I feel like you ended it right at the climax of the action! The speaker is reflecting on the loveliness of the day and everything around them in the sun, then suddenly someone whispers to them "I love you"!? Is this the "lord" that was mentioned earlier? Who is this subject? I have so many questions, but we are left hanging a bit. I think you might extend the poem a bit to answer those questions.

You did a good job staying consistent in your punctuation and capitalization, though some of the lines did get a bit long - you might want to break them up midsentence, or just take out some of the first chunks of the sentence to get into the narrative aspect more quickly.

I hope you keep on writing! I've enjoyed seeing your poems develop. Hopefully this gives you some areas to look into in revisions and future writings.

best,

~alliyah

Hey Chris! It's Myth here to write as good a review as possible for your poem.

I must say that the idea's pretty nice and pleasant. I'm assuming that you woke up at five in the morning and saw the sunlight, slowly making it's way to your sight, and decided to write a poem about it. I'll just share a time I had a similar experience.

I stayed up the entire night and then decided to not sleep, when it was finally five in the morning. So, I picked up my guitar and played some nice and pleasant sounds till the sun rose.

Alright, let's get started!

Firstly, I want to say that you really need to put a comma after "Under the sunlight," because it really messes with the flow while reading the poem. It messed with my head a little when I began, but later I got used to it. It's still pretty confusing, so I suggest that you add those in, because it patches up the flow and makes it the pleasant read it is.

Secondly, you've got to fix this line a little:

Under the gaze of the sun, I praise my lord hiz present.

Hi ChrisDixon! Haraya here to review!

If I'm not mistaken, this is a poem about how you feel the Lord's presence while you are under the sunlight. I think this is interesting since you could use the warmth as a metaphor for love and light for presence.

Imagery:

The imagery was all right. I think none of the images seemed out of place, but I think none of them stood out either. I think this poem needed a powerful image especially since it was describing a setting. I suggest experiment with figurative language. Maybe you can say for example,

"A feathered choir sings
As the wind plays the reeds"

Using such language brings your poem to life.


Structure:

I think repeating "under the sunlight" all over the poem was unnecessary. A reader could simply pass by the line without looking because it didn't seem to add much sense. In my opinion, the repetition made the poem flow sluggishly. As a reader, I want the poem to immediately get to the point.

I also fell into this trap in one of my poems. The key here is that if you are going to repeat something, make sure each repetition is meaningful. One way to do this is add variation. I do notice you added some variation but in essence, it was the same but put in different words. If that still ruins the pacing of the poem, maybe it's better to remove them at all.

That's all I wanted to say! I think you can still take this poem further especially since the scene is brimming with details you can describe vividly. Hope I helped out! Best of luck to you in your future works!