Young Writers Society

This is incredible. Every time I read one of your poems I feel like my mind is climbing a ladder rung to enlightenment loll

This is really good. What imspired you? Great use of lanauge. I could clearly piture what was going on in my head. All in all, this was beautiful. You seem like you like to write about nature. You seem to be very good at this.

Hey there, here for the requested review!

This is definitely a thought provoking poem, and it's got birds in it, so you know I'm going to be a fan!


Interpretation -
the poem itself is a bit difficult to interpret. The narrator seems like they are admiring the bravery of nature, as people do, but the last two lines say nature is only brave because it's impersonal, because they're acting on instinct. That's pretty interesting, you use the image of birds dive-bombing the water to illustrate the point, I would love additional examples of this phenomenon too. There seemed to be some stanzas that didn't seem connected to this overall message at the beginning of the poem too - like the whole poem was contained in the last four stanzas.

I think the first few stanzas should give us a bit more of a sense of the narrator in a more personal/concrete level so that there's something to contrast with the impersonal nature of the birds.

Strengths
Your words choice was really good - direct but also kept this sort of academic/philosophical description happening. You are also really good at holding off on clarifying an image or thought until the narrator has something else in mind to create a turning of expectations, which is a fun poetic technique to keep the reader interested. You use this when you have a line break between "no nothing" and "Except" -- it creates a whole different turn when you reach the next line.

I think your imagery was really good with the birds. I especially loved how you used the description of them falling like rocks, but "not dead" - that layers a contrast too between what life is versus consciousness. [You bring up "consciousness" twice in the poem and I think you could develop this theme a bit more in the poem, or remove it]

Formatting

I thought the formatting was a bit distracting in that it was inconsistent.

If you're going to do asides of any-sort make sure that you do them consistently the same way, unless you're trying to send a different contrasting message with the inconsistency. In some places you use commas to off-set a thought, in other places dashes, and then in other places parenthesis. I think if you're going to do the indentation for the two "don't" lines you should use the technique somewhere else in the poem too.

I felt like there didn't seem t be a lot of rhyme or reason to your capitalization either, sometimes you capitalized a line mid-sentence, sometimes mid-thought, the most distracting one was definitely after "no nothing" which created a big contrast, but I think also looked like there was an error because there was no punctuation between the two. Pick a method of capitalization and then stick with it, so that the readers don't get distracted by it.

Suggestions
I think the message could have a bit more clarity, although I thought it was thought-provoking as is. I also think for such a short poem it didn't feel like you really utilized the first three stanzas to set up much. I love the image of the "x and y intersections" but it didn't feel like you completely circled back to this at the end, don't waste a poignant image like that!

Overall though your poem was extremely creative and I think I can say that I've never read a poem on this specific topic either, so your originality was really nice. The poem had good movement, description, and action but could use a bit more emotional appeal - I don't get a good sense of who the narrator is or how they feel or connect to the content by the end of the poem. Keep on writing! I look forward to reading more of your poetry.

- alliyah

Happy Review Day!

I love this poem because I feel like it is so heavily layered. There seems to be so much going on in the speaker's mind, and that means there's a lot to unpack in terms of underlying meaning. One thing I really liked was your word choice -- "emerge", "intersection", "impersonal".. these words all stood out to me as strong and effective in tying the whole tone of the piece together.

My interpretation may be incorrect/vary from your intended message so I apologize if that's the case, but I felt like there was an almost serene sense of hopelessness as the speaker is describing the phenomenon of watching birds "drop like stones". During my first read of the poem, I couldn't help but get the feeling that the speaker is on the outside looking in, sort of like a casual yet intense observer.

I like the stylistic choices you made; you have a lot of variance in terms of sentence structure, which is something that I pay a lot of attention to when reviewing but struggle with mastering myself. The second to last stanza in particular caught my attention because of both the repetition of the phrase "don't care" and your decision to indent the last couple of lines.

This poem comes off as very intentional and thoroughly thought out -- wonderful read all in all.

Write on!! <3

I really loved the last section. It seems somewhat philosophical but it's not that overly intellectual pushy type, rather just something you can take in and accept or chose not to. The birds are animals, they aren't humans that constantly worry and fight or resist. It's their way of life and their instinctual nature. Life and death is a cycle for them and death can come for them at any moment and quite unexpectedly, compared to humans that have much lesser chances. Their way of life and our way of life is different. Some people will try to seek out the simplistic nature that those birds display but it's hard to find. It seems like a pretty calming dream to have and it's great you made a poem out of it.

You mention in the first lines as the narrator it's dim and you're barely conscious, but then a comparison of x and y comes up. It seems to me like there's a theme of simplicity vs. logic or inner knowing vs. skepticism and resistance. This poem makes me wonder what would happen if humans decided to embrace the simplicity and inner knowing like the birds have. In the poem, the birds can't see or understand what's exactly happening, they're just instinctually doing it. They don't have the time to extensively worry about the ifs and whats. Bravery is also mentioned, but your take of bravery here isn't something that is forceful or a show of strength to others. Using the birds in here makes it more meaningful compared to just using it through an all human-based poem.

Overall I really love this poem.