Young Writers Society

You have images, you have themes, you have motifs, but it doesn't come together.



Religion, swear philosophy, relationships, abstinence (which goes back to relationships) and loneliness. Let's call these a brick wall, light post, fence post, back board, rim, and net.

You tried a trick shot by covering all these topics in one poem with less-than-cohesive images and the ball ended up in the fountain where a kid just took a leak.

You need to find a narrative to connect the child images to the hospital narrative, find a way to make the lyrical motif of absence work in your favor.

A sickly child who's been in the hospital. It justifies disbelief in gods. Check.

Hearing parents argue over every freaking thing because a sick kid is the worst stressor. Check swearing.

Abandonment issues due to illness. Relationships. Check.

Abstinence goes back to the above. Check, though I really dislike that stanza all-in-all and it should be burned.

Loneliness is easy.

I think the illness narrative with a light touch is the right path and your missing element because right now you just have disjointed machinery that clanks and grinds in the night. It doesn't work well together, and this is partially my fault in pre-writing because I helped you with individual stanzas as you had them broken apart and out of order. I apologize. But all the same, it needs to be fixed and salvaged. And a lesson needs to be learned.

The one thread is all that's missing. Seriously. Otherwise cut the unnecessary crap and bring some cohesion in. Smooth out the robotic sentence structure in half 1 and make it pleasing to read.

Ty xo

Hey, Kaos, I'm here as requested.

So, this is what I jokingly call "deep" poetry, and I am neither very good at writing it nor reviewing it, but I'll do my best.

Let's talk about pacing. This piece is ponderous and slow and thoroughly builds an atmosphere of that absence of emotion that is in itself an emotion. The narrator wonders, but wonders idly, sunk deep into that depression where it's hard to care about anything. So, good job conveying that. Really, very well done.

But that means there's very little motion in this piece, and very little tension as well. I didn't feel like the narrator changed throughout the piece, and since the whole point of the tone is lack of movement, with no volatile emotion, I think your length hurts you a bit. There's only so much time the reader can spend in the same emotional state in a poem before it starts to feel a little hammered-in.

On to imagery. I was really liking the childhood images you built up in the first half of the poem, with safety scissors, coloring, and playing with blocks, and I feel like you really lose it in the second half of the poem. The only thing that really connects to it is the part about innocence, but it's rather loose and abstract, not a vivid image. Especially with the 'playing hooky' from school and mentioning biology, you lose the contrast of the probably teenage narrator vs. the childish actions and setting, which to me felt like the narrator was wanting to almost regress back to childhood. And I liked that, and then it vanished for what honestly felt a little less interesting - almost stereotypical teen stuff. Which on the one hand is necessary to actually know what's going on, but it's just not as powerful and in places feels clunky or shoehorned in.

I look up at the sky,
wondering what it would be like
to be the Almighty Creator.
If there is one.

Innocence is a pair of horns
disguised as a halo.
But really people are more complex than
horns and halos.

Abstinence doesn't make the heart not want it,
contrary to the belief
of my biology teacher.