Young Writers Society

I love the format of your poem, and how you make use of different sizes, the use of bold font, and indents to create a contrast between the different lines. I feel like it creates a complicated image that reflects the complication of time and the way the past, present, and future intersect in a messy way.
I also loved reading your musings on the idea of time. I love the description of "an unchanging objective thing that was once". I feel like it perfectly sums up the past with the specificity of the details. I also liked the way you structured the stanzas, so it goes from a description of what the past/present/future is, to a description of our relationship to it. I thought the description of how "the future is a theory based on writings from today" was especially poignant, and captured the connection between the present and the future, and how the future is both purely speculation (a "theory") and grounded in the present reality (the "writings from today"). And I thought it was very clever how each separate stanza moved across the page, so the past was on the left side, and the future is on the right side. And then the last stanza is in the middle, attempting to reconcile the positions of each of the three previous stanzas. The use of capitalization in the last stanza was really good, and I liked the way you ended with the word "Forever". Forever is, theoretically, beyond time, since the idea of time is that it is finite and forever is infinite, and so I thought it was a nice way to resolve the poem.
However, the one part that I thought didn't fit was the beginning part. I don't know if you intended it, but the phrase "what we put off till tomorrow" reminds me of procrastination. It seemed like a phrase more focused on human behavior, rather than the nature of time. I liked the first part "what was, what is" and I liked the way you crossed out the first phrase to show the way that time "crosses out" the present and past. But I thought the second line didn't seem to fit with the rest of the poem.
Overall, this poem was amazing! I thought it was really creative and original and I loved the way you made use of so many different tactics to explore the idea of time.

I love the format of your poem, and how you make use of different sizes, the use of bold font, and indents to create a contrast between the different lines. I feel like it creates a complicated image that reflects the complication of time and the way the past, present, and future intersect in a messy way.
I also loved reading your musings on the idea of time. I love the description of "an unchanging objective thing that was once". I feel like it perfectly sums up the past with the specificity of the details. I also liked the way you structured the stanzas, so it goes from a description of what the past/present/future is, to a description of our relationship to it. I thought the description of how "the future is a theory based on writings from today" was especially poignant, and captured the connection between the present and the future, and how the future is both purely speculation (a "theory") and grounded in the present reality (the "writings from today"). And I thought it was very clever how each separate stanza moved across the page, so the past was on the left side, and the future is on the right side. And then the last stanza is in the middle, attempting to reconcile the positions of each of the three previous stanzas. The use of capitalization in the last stanza was really good, and I liked the way you ended with the word "Forever". Forever is, theoretically, beyond time, since the idea of time is that it is finite and forever is infinite, and so I thought it was a nice way to resolve the poem.
However, the one part that I thought didn't fit was the beginning part. I don't know if you intended it, but the phrase "what we put off till tomorrow" reminds me of procrastination. It seemed like a phrase more focused on human behavior, rather than the nature of time. I liked the first part "what was, what is" and I liked the way you crossed out the first phrase to show the way that time "crosses out" the present and past. But I thought the second line didn't seem to fit with the rest of the poem.
Overall, this poem was amazing! I thought it was really creative and original and I loved the way you made use of so many different tactics to explore the idea of time.

Hello JohnKlue! Incoming review!

Your title looked interesting so I'm here for a review! Let's get into it.

I'll start out with critique first. I think the title in the work is a little overkill and takes away from the work itself. I'm not sure if you can strike through in titles but it can be "replicated" such as "-What was-." I think you could still keep the title in the work but just make it a little smaller, but keep it bold.

Another thing is with this line,

The past is an unchanging objective thing that was once.

The present is often not easy to understand.

It is what we are today. It is what we own now.

Should these three realities be Separate or Inseparable?

This question is Forever.

Hey Klue!

So I always love to review a poem that pushes the formatting to compliment the content of the piece, so thought it'd be fun to review yours.

Formatting
On the subject of form, the indentations really did add a nice time lapse to the piece where people naturally assume that time moves from left to right in time (at least in many Western societies, some cultures envision time in different directions though!) and then the centered text at the end was nicely removed to be a sort of "over-view" question. The title also definitely fit the piece without being distracting to the content.

A couple items I didn't think added meaning to the poem.
> The whole poem doesn't need to be in bold, it's a bit like a poem in all-caps, it communicates yelling, which doesn't really correspond to the subject matter.
> I think the title "What was. What. is. What we put off till tomorrow." is quite awkward to read because typically people place question marks at the end of questions, so putting periods in the middle without a grammatical reason immediately makes the reader wonder if it's A) a mistake, or B) a place to take an extra breath - neither of which communicate extra useful meaning to the piece. I'd revise to be "What was, what is, what we put off til tomorrow" or just "what we put off til tomorrow".
> Lastly, you did some highlights with unconventional capitalization, I always advocate that your capitalization should help communicate meaning or at the very least not get in the way of meaning, and so I think capitalizing "seperate" and "inseparable" helps highlight some important words in the poem, but I think in this line "Past, Present, and future" it'd feel more consistent to capitalize "future". More tips on capitalization methods here.

Interpretation
My interpretation of the poem is that the speaker is going through kind of the philosophical states of past, present, and future and that none of it is really tangible - each has an element of not being able to grasp or understand - and so we are in a constant state of unknown while passing through time.

Other thoughts
I like the concepts you're exploring, though in some ways it felt more like a succinct philsophical observation than a poem. I think this piece would be more striking and have more staying power if you used some metaphors or imagery - these really make poems pop! Maybe you could describe a leaf or something in nature passing through past, present, and future or observe some metaphor that goes with each point. As-is the poem is a bit more equational which is fine, but a philosophical treatise may be better experienced in essay form while in a poem I think the reader typically longs for a little more artistry. Adding those artistic elements ideally won't detract from the philosophical points you're making, but only enhance and make it sing.

Good luck in further writing and revising, I hope you continue to tackle these interesting sorts of subjects!

~ A