Young Writers Society

Very nice. This poem shows great writing skill. It sounds like a love song to me. I think if you put it to song then it would come very easily to write.

Very nice. This poem shows great writing skill. It sounds like a love song to me. I think if you put it to song then it would come very easily to write.

This made me miss my home more than ever. This was such a freaking beautiful representation of someone's love for their home and for someone else and it is unexplainable how powerful this piece is. I saw so much imagery and saw the mountains and the mist and the trees and the coal rivers. I feel this way about my home and I think that is why this really speaks to me. I love it!

Your poetry is always so beautiful. I love it <3

Hello Ladyspark,

You have taken every usual step of an inexperienced writer here.

1. You write about the imagery of the mountain in a way that blends into the voice of every other poet. There is a lack of personality, of uniqueness here that totally destroys the plot of a love story. Instead of admiring the quote for what it's good at (words like honeysuckle, tool sheds, chicken coops) you compare the mist to kisses, breath to breathing, echos to singing back. It's terrible. I'm not intrigued by a reiteration of the same meaningless statements that have been perpetuated so much that they will always lack any meaning what so ever. I'll contribute these to fluff because they aren't speaking for the characters personality which is the only thing you absolutely must do well in a love a story.

2. In the first stanza, your repetition does not work well and you leave it too soon to have a chance at working at all. The 'i will' interrupts the little rhythm you have in this poem and the 'taking us to the mountains' is rather dull and should not be repeated for it is not really a strong enough emotion. This is worse then fluff because it destroys all rhythm.

3. Perhaps the biggest sign of inexperienced writers; just change what the poem is really about half way through. Is it about the mountain or a love story?

4. The fourth stanza is just unoriginal and you literally just start talking without any care for rhythm or anything else.

that is just my opinion anyway, happy writing

Hi Spark! This is my first review in what feels like decades, so don't mind me if when I'm brushing the dust off it lands somewhere near you.

First off, I quite appreciate the sentiment(s) working through this poem. Place is such a meaningful thing and I always enjoy reading people writing about the places they are from. There's such a unique quality in the way we each perceive the places we live that a million writers could write truthfully about the same place and each piece would come out different. So good on you!

That all being said, this poem felt quite a bit scattered to me. We begin with this focus on the mountains which is strong, but then we move into more of an exploration of the landscape in general and the poem becomes more of a love poem than a poem about a place. That's not to say that they can't be both, of course, but it seems that these can't both be the main focus of the poem. One ought to be presented more subtly. Since there's this tension between a poem about a place and a poem about a lover the metaphors and images get pulled in discordant directions and it makes it hard to focus on some of the really lovely stuff in this poem.

In the same way, the straining of these ideas keeps the poem at a pretty basic level. The speaker feels a connection with the mountains as a physical place, and then the speaker relates this connection with the mountains to the connection with their lover. Then, at the very end, there's this somewhat confusing idea that the speaker has never actually been satisfied with the mountains that have embodied the beauty of their soul for the majority of the poem. See the confusion?

I'd like to encourage you to really consider this idea of place, of the mountains. The mountains in Appalachia (I'm assuming here, considering I know the area of the country you're from and the inspiration you drew from is about West Virgina) carry deep significance to many different people, but as I said earlier the significance of this place to you is unique from all these other perceptions. This is what I found most lacking in this poem, the presence of honest emotion rather than constructed poetic emotion. I can see you as Poet back there behind the curtain pulling the strings and speaking into the microphone, phrasing things in a way that feels poetic, dealing with themes and ideas that seem poetic. Relax, forget about an audience, and put your mountains on the page.

The last thing I'll leave you with is this:

they really do, sweetheart. believe me.
listen.