Young Writers Society

Aha! a little birdy told me to come comment on this poem, so I have arrived!

There's a lot of enjoyable aspects of the piece -
You've played with formatting and spacing in a fairly effective way that communicates extra meaning with the form mimicking the content.

You've successfully merged like three narratives into one (the note conversation, the physical search / picking up broken pieces, and then the internal dialogue and extended metaphor about the garbage) - and somehow it all still makes sense! Which is really impressive in a poem this length that it doesn't get confusing but all the narratives work together and build off each other. <I personally am a big fan of a "poem within a poem" so I'm loving how you did that!> I couldn't tell if the losing the note was more metaphorical or actual, but I don't necessarally think it matters as far as overall interpretation and impact.

And you've really nailed some of this imagery, in a way that feels heart-achey and impactful.

Interpretation
The note part is the most straightforward -> I love how you drag the conversation out in the poem to really build up the drama.

I overall interpreted the poem to be about a speaker who has received a note from a friend who is confessing their love, and they don't feel the same way, but this is potentially going to create a rift in their friendship (and they maybe even doubt their feelings on it?) so there's a lot of mixed emotions and lostness in it.

Form & Line Breaks and
Overall I'd love you to be even more playful with the formatting, I think doing experimental formatting really has to be committed to in order to turn out well, or else it can come across as half-attempted and a bit unsure. You've done a few playful switches to how people would expect to see a poem like this formatted, but I'd love even more! The words could be tilty/falling in that beginning stanza and then float away or get buried at the end etc.

I tend to edit all my formatted poems in microsoft powerpoint because I think that's the most straightforward easy to use thing to use and allows you to put a gazillion layers of text on top of each other and then save as a picture at the end.

I thought generally your stanza breaks and italics were really helpful in making the poem's different views stay clear, and I didn't have trouble following the narratives. Punctuation and capitalization choices seemed consistent and effective as well.

breaking at conjunctions -

I have to disagree w/ Morrigan I actually love breaking at conjunctions -> I think it makes the flow feel more stilted but also forces you to read-on. There's also this really cool thing in ancient Hebrew poetry that the presence of a excessive usage of "and" in any series of phrases was an indicator that the writer may be portraying a poem / song / or something to be taken more lyrically than narratively. Yeah, I like it! And I think it works for a poem that is so much about hesitation and getting lost and dealing with difficult things, because I think the added conjunctions and almost awkward breaks portray all that more.

Awkardness in poetry should be avoided at all times... unless the tone is intended to be awkward, and I think in this poem that is somewhat of the tone you're actually going for.

I don't know if the poem is written from personal experience - but it reminds me of an awk-experience I had a bazillion years ago that I wrote about in this poem here (wow the deep poetry archives?) and your poem definitely captures that heart-stop moment much better than my poem did of the "oh gosh there is been a serious miscommunication of feelings here, what am I going to do?" ~ I think a lot of people can unfortunately relate to having those types of miscommunications / situations of one-sided or confusing love and this poem is a really interesting exploration of that.

Overall it's a great piece that pulls at the heart-strings! Keep it up whatcha!

- alliyah

Hey there whatcha! Tuck back with another review for you. I'm feeling kinda rampage-y, and I figured I'd bless you with some disjointed thoughts about your poems I hope you find some use from this!

I really loved the way you danced around this subject with some brilliant image foreshadowing without exposing it til the very end. You still had that grand reveal that left the audience (or me, at least) reeling, and yet all of the pieces clicked into place. It was really truly brilliant. I also liked the way you took creative liberties to play around with some of the formatting of words, and I'd like to jump into some specific thoughts on that!

Now, this may be my Type A, highly organized personality speaking, but I didn't feel that the formatting changes were quite drastic enough to be effective. I found myself skimming over it to find the conclusion so I could absorb the meaning of the words. It seemed to walk on that balance between no change and extreme change, and in most of these cases I felt that it didn't have the contrast needed to create a strong jar rather than just my mild annoyance at not being able to read a cohesive phrase. I apologize if that seems harsh; I think there's potential with this idea to manipulate it further to make it successful, but it's just not there yet.

An idea I have in this vein revolves around these lines:

I want to piece
them back tog-
eth-
er, but I know

I want to piece
them back toget-
eth-
er, but I know

we can talk about this tomorrow, or if you prefer,

pretend you never read this -

Heyo whatcha, Morri here to review your poem.

I am so jealous of how you can dance around a subject with imagery and metaphor and get to the conclusion at the end without giving yourself away. I feel like a half-orc barbarian running in with a battle axe compared to your dainty elven rogue. Well, you rolled a Nat 20 (that's Dungeons and Dragons speak for an automatic success (not sure if you play that or not)).

First of all, I agree with everything that Shady said. So I'm going to bypass talking about that stuff so we can get to some other points in your poem.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me negatively was some of your line breaks. You continually break lines after conjunctions, and while there are no rules in poetry, I found it jarring for the most part. This stanza is the worst offender by far:

the stained tablecloth catches on my jeans and
rips from the table -
I'm not a magician, who can give one majestic tug and
nothing breaks;
the china shat-
ters into jabbing shards and
painful dust.

I'm sorry V., I don't think I feel like that for you but

the china shat-

them back tog-
eth-
er,

I dig
down,

I
d
i
g
d
o
w
n

- I didn't keep the sincere emotions you
scribbled on the back of math notes,

Heya whatcha,

Shady here with a review for you this fine afternoon! Mandatory disclaimer, I am most comfy with prose, so if anything I say strikes you as wrong feel free to disregard, and just take whatever advice might be helpful c:

My initial response to this was "hecking WOW that's good!"

The first stanza is... I hesitate to say cutesy, but I really like the way you put it together. I *really* like how you broke up the word by syllables here:

teet-
er-
ing

I'm not a magician, who can give one majestic tug and
nothing breaks;
the china shat-
ters into jabbing shards and pain-
ful dust.

I'm not a magician, who can give one majestic tug and
nothing breaks;
the china
s h a t t e r s
into jabbing shards and painful dust.

even recalling the words now, the ink is
smud-
ged with blurriness of time;

Hello Rascalover here for a review,

Well, I wish it was a review, but I don't have anything to add or take away from this poem to enhance it. I absolutely love the format of your poetry. I am so impressed you wrote this in a sleepy state!! Im sorry this isn't more helpful!

With love
Rascalover

This is so cool! Even your late night, near-sleep poetry is so beautiful xD