Young Writers Society

Hello Nikayla first of all thank you for the review it was really kind of you although you didn't really have to, I was planing on reviewing your poem anyway.

I want to start by saying I absolutely loved your poem so I don't have much to note here. It was very pleasant to read and it inspires (To me at least) very positive feelings.

First of all the use of white space doesn't make much difference to me but I m pretty sure it is just me.

The first stanza was a good introduction, it intrigued me and made me interested in the poem. However I would like to note here that it didn't quite line with the rest of the poem. You started off referring to change but you didn't mention it again. Generally it feels like the first stanza was kind of distant from the rest of the poem. Maybe it is just my opinion but I would prefer an introduction that would be both intriguing and related to the rest of the poem.

Moreover at some parts of your poem I can't see the connection between the stanzas. At some point it felt as if you were talking about a different thing in each verse. I got a bit confused, especially in the third and fourth stanza, I couldn't get the connection between those two.

I understand this isn't about a relationship but for relationships in general, to me this could be referring to family friends or lovers. Although the first impression is that the poem is about a lover.

Other than that I loved the metaphors and the symbolism in your work. My favorite part was "How we embodied light ... I want to be able to tell that story." You managed to create a good imagery with simple phrases and key words that you smoothly connected to the rest of the poem.

The last verses gave a theatrical tone to your poem and I thought it's a brilliant idea to close up with a question.

In general I really liked your poem, it was simple, honest, easy to relate to and at the same time it was deep and heartfelt. I enjoyed reading it and I d love to see more of your work .

i really love this poem even more than i love your other peoms. it's really amazing.

Just a few thoughts on your poem,

Your use of white-space in this poem works really well Nikayla! My favorite is where "in perfect detail" is aligned all the way to the right. Towards the end (last few stanzas starting with "escaping through the"... I felt like it started to go back and forth a bit too much with the align left and right. It no longer maintained the same flow as the first half of the poem and made it feel a bit stilted. The first half I really enjoyed the small changes in formatting though.

Another small piece of criticism is that although the poem seems to be about a learning through a relationship, I think that the idea of learning through life or through mistakes in general is almost more compelling in what we have so far in the poem. In other words, I just don't get much a connection with the relationship aspect of the poem because we don't learn much about the partner or subject the speaker is referring to. In those ways the poem ends up feeling a bit one-sided. I would probably try to lean more into the relational aspect with more details about the partner/friend or lean more into the "living life" aspect -- because teetering on the edge of both subjects felt a tad disconnected for me.

Throughout the piece I enjoyed the language and would say there are quite a few lines in here that really packed a punch, pulling together a complete image/idea.

Some of my favorite lines: "we didn't need ambition / to bring euphoria to ourselves" and "somewhere in the timeline / something shifted"

I like the idea of discovering life is less than two-dimensional, and the sentiment of wanting to make mistakes is really interesting.I liked that you didn't use a traditional format or structure to go with that sort of message, the poem isn't hard or overly formal - the language is fluid and in places conversational although still elegant.

Overall a lovely piece!

~alliyah