Young Writers Society

Hi Empires! Lovely poem you have here, I'll leave you with some of my thoughts.


Grammar
I believe I agree with Rachel32 that it really doesn't add much to capitalize "Place" so I would keep it lowercase unless you're going to capitalize another odd word. Another grammar thing: I think following the words "Noun", "Verb", "Adjective", "Simile" it would make more sense to have a or hyphen rather than a period.

Formatting
I think you have a really cool concept here, and the first 2 lines are just fabulous

" Poetry: A collection of various terms / that remind me of you."

This is just a great start, to just be defining elegant or literary terms in relation to another person. But as it goes on, I feel like you're somewhat stretching at the definitions and they feel less clever, and less cohesive.

I think it'd be interesting if you had longer spaces of prose in between the definitions so that this poem didn't feel so bleak, the full stops at the end of almost all the lines just make this poem feel very choppy. It's hard to feel connected to a poem that's form is just "word: definition, line break, word: definition, line break" it gets predictable, and by the end you aren't doing any thing that you haven't already accomplished with the first line, in other words, despite the word "resolution" at the end, we don't really go anywhere.

I liked how in the first line you gave a real definition of poetry, and then complicated it with the second line, I'm wondering if that could be done with your other terms as well. Like if for noun you said "a name given to a person or place / once given to you, although you're no longer a place" or just rephrased in some way that it could be read as an actual definition first.

Phrasing
I think you have some interesting language and images in this poem, but some didn't quite work for me, so let's go through the different phrases you have:
"you are still a name to me,/ but no longer a Place" - okay this is really interesting, and a unique thing to say, but I have no idea what it means. Are you just drawing attention to the subject's absence? I would love to see this metaphor expanded in some of the other examples and lines that you have.

"I still do the things we used to do together" -> I understand this but it's very vague, and difficult to connect to. I would try to get the word "things" out of the poem, because it's ambiguous and doesn't really fit with the language and tone of your piece.

"there are no words left to describe your effect on me" -> I love this, I think this is a strong specific line with a little bit of figurative language. It's a bit wordy to all go on one line, but it's nice.


"you ate my alphabet" is really.... unromantic to think about, at least for me, I'm just imagining someone eating a bunch of alphabet noodle soup, and it's funny, but I'm kind of lost on what it's literal interpretation would be.

"I felt like I was in perpetual mourning" - I feel like this line is just way too dramatic for the context of the piece. The reader already understands the speaker is sad, there is no need to spell it out so this line doesn't really add anything, but makes me wonder if they are exaggerating which takes away some of my sympathy. I think if you explained how the mourning or sadness really made the speaker feel, or had a different unique metaphor for being lost/sad/upset this line would be a lot stronger.

And then the last line:

"Resolution: I guess I could always count instead."

I am just lost as to what this means, I think you could use an extra line to clarify. Also if your very last line is going to be about counting, I would work to highlight the counting themes a bit more in the piece - there's some of it there, but I'm still lost as to how it all relates.

Overall
Overall I like your concept of a loss of a relationship changing how the speaker writes and interprets the words in their life. This is a really creative and rich idea. The poem starts out really strong, but by the end I don't know any concrete specifics of the speaker's relationship or loss that I can latch onto. I think there is a lot of potential for expansion in this piece, I think it also might be interesting if you tried to vary the tone, pacing, or format a bit more to make it less predictable. Rather than the whole poem having a sad tone, a few lines about the happiness from their relationship or a funny moment or any other emotion would just add another layer of meaning. Those are all just my thoughts though and ultimately you of course are the author. Thanks for sharing your piece and best of luck in all of your writing!

~alliyah