Young Writers Society

Dear Holysocks,

I don't have a lot of thought about this poem since my head is kind of all over the place right now, though I do want to say that I really enjoyed the metaphors you added in, especially the last paragraph. "though tears are lava / pouring over my eyelids / they won't kill me." Though now that I read it, it is a little strange that the tears are pouring over her EYELIDS. Either way, this is an interesting poem, that sounds very nice, and I liked that you make all of it lowercase. It seemed to give it a bit of an atmosphere that worked really well with the content.

Beautiful poem! Sounds very nice. Have a good day/night!!!

Sincerely, Bailey Matwiiw.

Hey there! Shey here for a review!

Oh boy, was this an emotional ride. I really, really enjoyed it. A lot. It's rare for me to enjoy a poem so much, but I honestly, thoroughly enjoyed this one. I could really feel the emotion behind this, and it really perpetuated the meaning of the piece. Reading it, I definitely felt like this topic was close to your heart, and absolutely affected you. It definitely made the piece more enjoyable, in a way I can't really put into words.

Admittedly, I don't have much to comment on, and I don't think anything I would comment on could possibly improve this. Nikayla before me made a comment about the flow holding the piece back, but I really don't agree. I think that it's perfect as it is. Maybe experimenting with whitespace would be cool, for accepting and other things, but it's not strictly necessary.

Overall, wow. This piece was magnificent. I apologize for the length of this review, I had little time but really wanted to leave my thoughts on the poem. Really, though, keep up the great work!

What's up, Holly? This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review on Wednesday morning on this poem of yours. With that being said, let's jump right in!

I unfortunately cannot copy and paste these stanzas into a [quote][/quote] bracket so I'll have to do without and comment on them...while scrolling back up. Horrifying, I know. Putting that aside, this poem is pretty interesting! There's a lot of weird imagery here that I love though at the same time...I don't know what to feel? How do you kiss a princess with your hand? I guess that figure of speech (unless there's a pair of lips on that hand, which I'm going to assume there isn't) is just an odd one to start out with. Note that in the third line, 'evergreen' can be spelled as a single word without the dash.

I'm unsure of having the fourth line following the third without any form of punctuation is intentional or not, because no change in flow or pause is indicated, therefore I'm reading this as 'evergreen scum he's free. so free'. Mentioning that last part, I'm not a fan of the flow there because of the awkward diction. I'm not sure what the italics on the word 'so' add either, but I suggest taking those out seeing as it doesn't add much. Your stylistic choice, though! 'Giveaway' is also a compound word and doesn't need a dash, similar to 'evergreen'. Unless that's intentional? I don't understand why one might do that, but seeing that this is done twice, it's a possibility.

The transition between lines four and five is a teensy bit awkward but from the interpretation that I have, the speaker is saying that the freedom is worth more than a trip to the moon (I find this to be a little absurd because who doesn't want to go to the moon). There's cohesion up until the last three lines because of the switch from 'your' and 'he' which makes me assume that there are three people involved in this poem. The speaker, this 'he' figure, and 'you' who might actually be the reader, though I'm not sure. Why should 'you' pray to not visit him? There's no argument brought to the table before this explaining why which is why I'm confused.

Goodness. I spent all that time writing just on that first stanza? Let's continue. The second stanza continues the same theme of princesses and heroes. Arguably this is the most interesting as well seeing as I'm quite fond of the waiting out the storm and cigarette butts and other aspects of this stanza. At the same time, there's still the problem with flow and the last stanza is also interesting with the comparison of tears to lava. I wanted to note that there's not a period at the end of that stanza. Add that in for consistency of punctuation. The syntax isn't always with the most clarity as shown with the trouble transitioning between the sixth and seventh lines in the second stanza (Question: are 20/20s a gun by the way? I wasn't sure).

Overall though, I'm definitely a fan of the ideas and the odd imagery in this poem and the word choice as well, though the flow and cohesion are what hold this back as well as the lines sometimes not making the most sense. This hurts the theme most because I'm not sure what this is trying to say if anything at all. Still love this though! All criticisms aside, this is pretty nice.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.