The light does

King here

Hello there! I see that you are new here (well, kind of?). I may be late and you might have been here from awhile but I still want to say welcome to YWS!

I know that many have already told you that but I will still say what I think like everyone else, stating my own mind.


The first thing I noticed and I want to say is that I think you need to seperate this work by stanzas. Each four lines being one stanza is a good option also. I wish to see it in that version. The other problem is the repetative word light and the seperation will make this better even if repeating one word just makes the work seem plain. The word loses its meaning if you use it so much.


You talk about the light but at the same time I do not understand anything about this. I understand that you try to describe the light and what it does but there is lack of scenery and imagery into it.


The lines are short and the pauses when each line ends is not the best, it stops the flow that every single author wants to create. Maybe you could change the verb in the lines where you include the light which is every second line. I think this can be edited and all that but for the first of all works you will be having, it is good as a start.

Hey Look Here Some Words Are Shooting Your Way

So, like...don't force rhymes, if you don't have to.

Your language doesn't bring anything to mind, and so the "light" repetition is just like a spotlight turning to constant nothing.

Poems need some kind of focus. Just stacking words on each other because they sound the same doesn't work, not hen they don't apply to anything clear. Slaughter is incredibly vague, falter is not descriptive when there is no image.

The ending doesn't mean much when the Light hasn't really been personified before this, with no way to really know why. The "light" is your subject, really, but nothing about it i really known, despite so many lines.

There seems to be a narrative, but all the points of actions are stiffed . Character coming at the end, when it's too late to matter.

Keeping them all so short makes a lot of the lines awkward, feeling incomplete in either structure or idea.

Don't tie yourself to so many rules, break out of forcing things into a box. Use the form/style/etc, but also leave it if it is hindering you. Add more imagery, narrative, personality to the lines. Complete your ideas.

This may come off harsh! And I'm not really apologizing for that tbh! But! these re mostly just general things most poets have to think about while writing, targeted at this specific piece. So...Yeah.

This is Kaos here for a review!

My first problem with the poem is that the rhyming restricts the rest of the poem in a negative manner. It feels forced into the poem and down the throat of the reader instead of flowing and working with the rest of the poem.

Another thing that I felt weakened this poem is that the line lengths don't really vary, along with the punctuation. This type of poem with the second line always being the same tends to have the weakness of that, and my suggestion is to put a ~ in between every two lines, it helps separate the lines and make them seem more independent.

What I mean by the punctuation not varying is that it all has the same pattern of starting a line, having a comma to the line after, and then a period. Change it up a bit so it doesn't get stale and negatively affect the poem.

A smaller nitpick is the lines in quotation marks felt particularly weak or repetitive, I like the last one best, as it works well with the last line of the poem.

The imagery of the poem is hinted at, but barely there. I wish you would have elaborated on the imagery and made it more of a focus in the poem because from what was there it could have been one of the stronger points, but I felt like it could have had stronger wording or vocabulary, and my suggestion is to look for stronger synonyms for some of the words that you had, such as cutting down the uses of "light" in the poem for something like "fluorescent".

That's all I really had to say about the poem, I hope this helped and have a great day!

Yay! I personally love to encourage and support writer/poets with dabbling their first time every in poetry. Because after all, I was in that place not so long ago and I understand that starting is sometimes a hard part of writing. I do already applaud your courage for posting it here, on yws. Anyways, let's get started shall we?

Ok, so I think that repetition is kind of a cheap trick to make your poem longer. I'm not saying that repetition is a bad thing in poetry, in fact sometimes it's absolutely necessary to have in order to provide emphasis. But in this instance, I really do think that the "the light does" is needed to be repeated after every other line. It makes the reader skim over it, because we know what's coming anyways, so why would (i) care to read a line like 7 times over and over? Therefore, I'd rather you keep our attention by focusing on the unique lines that you have written there.

the light doesn't.

"It will falter,"

the light does

"To the slaughter,"

the light does.

Pretty good for a first poem I would say.

I thought it got a little choppy at times, but I liked the scheme you were trying to go for. I also like the ending. I am a little confused as to what the poem actually means, but I put more blame on myself than you for that haha. If you wouldn't mind answering a few questions...

How does light slaughter someone? Or are you saying that someone is getting slaughtered in the daylight, rather than at night.

Also what do you mean when you say the light falters, and that it won't come back? I'm not complaining, I'm just genuinely curious.