Never mind the fact that I hardly eat,
Oh, how some of you worry over me.
To and fro, this little world goes,
And here I am, suffocating underneath.
Gather round, for I need the ones who will help.
And not leave me to perish.
In and out, this monster goes,
Never leaving me alone.
AN// Bear in mind that I wrote this in about two minutes. Nit pick this as much as you want!
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140,790 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Hi Fumadiddle! I'm just stopping by to leave a quick review.
A few suggestions:
Theme
While there are several strong aspects of this poem, one issue that did come up for me was the theme. The theme is entirely too vague in this one I'm afraid. And for such a small poem, that is really something where having a focused theme or narrative is important because you have such few words to make an impact. Here we've got a mixture of several different conflicts all compounding one another - suffocation, eating disorder? or starvation, anxiety, imminent death, and a "monster" - and the title and the acrostic clue give us no further information with which to figure out the conflict. Because we have this melting pot of 5 different conflicts without a connection of any of them to each other it becomes difficult as reader to connect to the speaker. We also don't know as readers which of these conflicts are metaphorical and which are meant to be taken literally. While that in itself is interesting, without more to work with there's not enough to explore into that theme.
There are two remedies to the above problem (that I can think of at least)
1) Be more specific or more focused especially in regard to conflict. By making your writing focus on one problem rather than several different ones you'll be able to really explore the issues of whatever conflict it is you're meaning to discuss. I'll leave a link to my specificity article here, which does a clearer job of outlining exactly how to add specificity to poetry: Specificity in Poetry
If when you wrote this, you actually did have one single conflict in mind, and these already connect together to that one conflict, then I would suggest making it more explicit.
For example:
Rather than saying, "I am scared of dust. I am afraid of death. I am running from a tornado" (3 conflicts with only implied connections that don't really say much) I suggest actually showing the connections -> ie. "I run from the tornado, I don't want it to kill me, because it's too soon for my body to decompose and become ashes and dust". [While my example is highly unpoetic I think you get the point. The reader can't read your mind, so make the connections for them if they're important.
2) Solution option two. Use some alternate theme to link all of the conflicts. If you'd really like to link all these conflicts together in one poem, I think you could make it work by giving an overarching conflict that links them all - like anxiety or maybe playing up the monster idea a bit more. This way even though the plot isn't connected within the text, there is still something framing it so that the reader can understand why they're all within one poem.
Form
Now as far as form, I see that you're continuing to do acrostic poems. Some people hate em, some people love em, but if it's your style - good for you! I would softly suggest, that sometimes the best poetry is done when we take a break from our personal style and try experimenting with something totally new - so if you ever want to try writing more free form poetry or even prose poetry I think that'd be totally awesome.
As far as this poem, it's a bit distracting that there isn't a stanza break between line 3 & 4, so that the reveal answer to the acrostic is one word "NOTAGAIN" rather than "not again". It's kind of like if you had to squeeze a few extra letters in there to make the poem make sense like "Nawtt Againn" it just sort of loses the effectiveness of the acrostic.
Good Stuff
Now you did well in several areas of this poem.
Your capitalization and punctuation seemed spot-on throughout, and not distracting.
You made sure to have some of the lines bleed into the next rather than each letter be a new sentence (this really helps the flow for acrostics). And your word choice was actually pretty interesting - you used a combination of formal/olde sounding phrases (to and fro, perish, gather round) and then some more modern casual phrasing in the first and last lines.
Hope you're having a jolly Christmas Season! Let me know if you have any questions about my review.
Best,
~alliyah
Thank you! A few of my more recent poems are free styled. They flow better and I like it but I will always come back to acrostic poems.
I really liked this poem. Another great job.
Are you okay, though? I feel like this might be a call for help. If you don't feel comfortable talking, I get it. I just want to make sure you're okay.
*chuckles* I'm good. Your like the tenth person to ask me if I need to talk. Its a nice change.
Okay. I'm glad you're doing good. (Excuse my grammar XD) if you need to talk, feel free to PM me:) )
Thank you!
Greetings! Katie here to review your excellent poem!
I really like the acrostic idea. Very creative.
This reminds me of some of the old classics. I can't really find anything to nitpick about, apart from the not again bit. Did this happen before? Maybe elaborate on this part a little. I can't believe you wrote this in two minutes! That's amazing!
I'll be back for more reviews later!
All the best
Katie xxx
I have some more poems in my portfolio like this. And thank you!
Fluma, if this is a poem call for help, I will be the first one you shall go to when you're in distress. No, I may not have known you for that long, only for a week or two, but I feel like I need to help you, whether you like it or not. It's not a threat, but bear with me here, I don't want you to fear being alone here. I haven't been on here all night, so I a responding to you at 5:44 in the morning. I need to check my notifications now, ttyl bud!:)
Thanks lake! Um, PM me if you really feel like you need to know everything that troubles me. Or the little things.
Hello, Flumadiddle! I'll be reviewing this for you today, so let's just go ahead and dive right in!
I love the acrostic poem idea! The issue with the lettering, however, is that both of the "n" letters start with the same word (never). I know this is super nitpicky of me, but it is something that poked out at me. Also, if you wanted to, you could separate the stanza to two stanza, splitting up both words to make it clearer to see. You would probably simply have to change punctuation in a couple of places. I mention this to you to really consider format as a next step in your future. Don't overdo it, but use it to your advantage, if you think it'll benefit the poem!
End this line with a comma, not a period, or else the next line will be broken apart from it (though it's meant to be one sentence).
As much as I love the mystery of this poem, the "monster" inside you, I would love more to it. It's vague which can sometimes be good but can also be bad. I would suggest toying with it. Change it up or add something?
Not sure how I like the "oh" you have going on here. Would suggest switching out the word for something else. The thing with acrostic poems is, you feel strained to write a line starting with a specific letter, which can butcher the creativity and flow. That's why I feel like the "oh" is a little unnecessary/exaggerated. I think that there are better alternatives.
The "underneath" is a little questionable. Do you mean underneath the surface? Underneath vision? Perhaps edit this out, it's not really necessary, actually. Even adding something like "suffocating and trapped" etc. would be an alternative. The "underneath" doesn't make sense.
Sorry if I was a little nitpicky. I wanted to get as much out as I could (even though it wasn't actually much). This was very good for just two minutes of writing! I've read some other works you have written and I have to say this is a good piece, probably one I liked more than the others. I can definitely see you improving!
As always, keep writing, and I hope I helped in some way!
neptune
Heya, Flum!
Firstly, I liked the poem quite a lot, but I didn't understand it completely. For example, if the monster goes out, then technically it does leave the narrator alone, right?
I love the way the first letter of each sentence HOIN to form the word "Not Again"! It's so sweeeeeeet <3
The third last line is a bit vague, don't ya think?
I really love these sort of poems! Keep it up!
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