Young Writers Society

Heyo, Iridescence!

Forgive me that this review will not be of the breadth nearing the others you received, but I hope you'll find it helpful all the same, as I believe in being direct with my notes and leaving clean-cuts between muscle and fat so you may improve your writing in general, and not just the one piece. That said, I'll begin with the cyclical nature of the narrator's speaking.

A simple way to put it is that the repetition of ideas, phrasing, structure becomes cumbersome to the reader. It robs the piece of reread quality, and sets up a sense of navel gazing, almost, in places where--otherwise--there would be desperation or emotional tug.

Your flow is hindered tremendously by the repeated i ams, and your presentation and structural technique, while on the cusp, doesn't do much to the flow or the content. For this, I suggest trying to align the flow and line breaks to your breathing as you, the poet, wrote and read the piece. It may better translate the pacing and momentum. It will certainly help in the publishing world.

All the best,
Lumi

Hi there! In honor of RevMo starting I wanted to leave you with a few more thoughts on your poem.

One aspect that I really enjoyed in this piece was that the message was clear and clean. You didn't take tangents out to different conflicts but really concentrated on this idea of not being able to fall asleep because of all this regret and old memories. I think this is something a lot of people can relate to too, second-guessing themselves and feeling like they're running in circles.

I love how that idea of running in circles ended up having a role in the linebreaks where the words almost contradicted the line above them or made them turn in a new way in some places. For instance, "everything that makes me feel / an onslaught of/ misery" Here first the reader reads that the speaker's reminded of everything the speaker's ever felt but then the line turns to add on that it is misery. Which could mean everything is misery or that only misery they're reminded of. Which are neat turns.

I think I agree with Aley that the progression to marathon doesn't quite work for me. Especially because it messes up the sentence order of those lines. If it was "of a marathon" it could at least still be a sentence, or if there was a semi-colon after "running miles" the next line could just be expanding what the last two said. I also wondered at the last stanza if you could somehow bring this water/drowning imagery into the first stanza or bring the running/race imagery into the last one to give the poem more cohesion.

The last area that I thought read a little strangely was the line "I am not proud ____ of what I have done" when that line follows the statement "I am not the person you think I am" this feels like its less of a climactic moment, or is less important. I'm wondering if the word "proud" could be changed to something more significant. Or maybe that line could come before the line about "I am not the person / you think I am".

Overall, this piece had fabulous formatting and imagery with a really clear theme. There wasn't much I could critique and I enjoyed reading it.

Best of luck in your future writing,

alliyah

They say you cant perfect perfection.
not that i believe in perfection, but this is for sure a master piece.
you as a person know how to express yourself through words and phrases.
its a beautiful talent that you've got here.

"waiting to be tossed a life saver
hoping to be saved from myself."
^these two lines touched the bottom of my heart. its a beautiful play of words and what i feel or the fact that i get connected to your poem, i cannot describe it in words. its something that leaves an imprint on you. and when you are not able to explain what you feel from a poem, its beautiful.

keep writing.
i dont know how to explain this, but this _____ i am spellbound. its beautiful. there are thousands of other people who are going through the same thing, and you've got the talent, go spread words out into this world and save people. Poetry saves lives, it saved mine and i tell you, your poem will save a few lives for sure.

Hello Iridescence,

I'm happy to read some of your poetry! You've got a good way with words here. The way you put this poem together first introducing the setting, then adding the conflict, and then diving into the symbolism and developing the relationship of that symbolism to reality is a good way to go about it. It makes the poem very clear and provides me with a lot of other things I can look at aside from general set up.

Because of that, there are a few parts of this poem which I think could use a little touch-up, but mostly it's just because I think the poem got a little too long. It's not even too long so much as you ended up adding words and phrases that aren't needed in my opinion.

The first one of these is in the first stanza where you introduce the symbolism of an idea running laps. I feel like when you say "laps" and then "miles" and finally end up with "a marathon" that the last two are a little at odds. The idea of these thoughts running marathons makes me believe that it's not that bad because marathons end. You go five or ten miles, and then it's over. I can see how you wanted to progress towards the furthest side of the spectrum here, but I think if you call it a marathon, and just a marathon, you end up cutting out some of the tension. Also look at the difference between the way you say the first two, and the last one. I'm curious about why you didn't write "running a" for a marathon, but you did for laps and miles. It sets "marathon" apart in that regard as well.

Having the poem minorly disjointed that early in it is something that I think you might want to look at. Usually you'd want to wait for something like a turn [a change in belief, or change in thought, or a reveal, or a new interpretation of something old], in order to put in something like that. Here, it just seems like you're trying to transition but your transition is a little too obscure.

The next part that I think gets a little "wordy" or not so wordy so much as could use a little revision of the words, is "i am reminded of everything- / everything that makes me feel" and the reason I bring this section up is because I think you could probably do better. This particular poem doesn't have much in terms of individuality. This is something a lot of us feel and because of that, it's not really unique to you. It's creative, it's well said, but you could be a husband who works at a school with twelve kids who hit a dog, all the way down to an FBI agent who killed someone on accident, or a young woman who's trying to learn to forgive herself for little mistakes that no one else remembers her making. The range of people who this could be means that it probably needs some more specifics to give people a good sense of relationship with the speaker. I think you can do that here.

If you took out the line "everything that makes me feel" and you wrote some of the thoughts the speaker is having, like I know I used to do this and scold myself for "I left the oven on, I still have that late library book, I haven't cleaned my room in ages," and so on, then it would be more individualized because the types of concern your speaker are having should reflect them.

If you wanted to, you could even keep that line and just cap the thoughts with it. My main problem with the line is that "everything-everything" because while I understand the pause, I think it's a little overdramatic for the feeling of this poems. You don't have repetition much in this poem, and I like it that way. The less you repeat yourself, the more concise and clear this poem will be.

I'm sure you can find another way to add in the individuality to the poem if you don't like my suggestion, but I thought I'd offer it so you could see another avenue you have. After all, my suggestion makes the poem longer, but it would add in more interest and less repetition. The words wouldn't be butting up the word count so much as helping people delve into a story and figure out what this person is feeling so guilty over. That can be good for people. Most would enjoy being able to identify with a specific set of guilts.

Overall, I think the poem is written well and I'm happy I read it. Soundofmind has some good advice, and I think we both ended up talking about the same thing, but maybe with both of us saying it in our own ways, you can see what we're talking about.

See you around!
Aley

Hey there!

Ah, good 'ol regret, eh? I just love it when it comes back to haunt me. Seriously, though, it's a very relatable premise for a poem, and it's something that most anyone with a conscience feels at some point in their life, because we all make mistakes. We all just make different ones, some big, and some small, and they stick to us in different ways. With that said, though, because it's a universal emotion/feeling, there is benefit to the more general and vague descriptions in this poem. It makes it easy to relate to, but I also feel (and this is just my personal opinion so take it with a bucket of salt) like because it's so general it falls flat for me. There's no real push or power behind it because I have no idea what exactly it is that is causing the regret of the speaker in this poem. I know that, if this poem is personal and written from your perspective, I can't pressure you to spill about all your regrets and the memories that haunt you. I simply want to plant the idea in there that, to increase the emotional impact of this poem, you could make it just a little more specific. Or, even, you could add different, unique descriptors and analogies to describe this weight of regret and misery that the speaker in the poem is feeling.

'Cause the thing is,

i am now drowning
in a sea of my guilt -
waiting to be tossed a life saver
hoping to be saved from myself

sometimes i lay awake at night
restless

i am not proud of what i have done
I am haunted by these memories-

I am reminded of everything
everything that makes me feel...