Young Writers Society

Wow. I'm no poet, so poetry isn't my strong suit. So, even though I'm no poem expert, I sure know that this was amazing! It's so well written! So beautiful! I loved how you didn't capitalize the I's and you italicized the "they's" to make it all just that much deeper! I thought you did a great job at utilizing literary devices to make your piece one that is super close to perfection! Keep up this amazing writing!

I have nothing to nitpick. I swear to God, I am in awe of this piece. It's the perfect mix of metaphors, attention-capturing, descriptive words, imagery, and literacy. I nearly cried.
Honestly, one of the best poems I've read, not just on YWS, but in my life, and I've read A LOT of poems.
I don't even have questions about the content. I just want to sit here and absorb this, and bookmark it so I can reread it and reread it, and print it out and tape it to my bedroom wall and draw a smoke ring halo above it.
Of course, your overall rating is 10/10. Everything is 10/10, even the title.
Wow.

It's very damning of reviewers that this has scarcely been touched. I know that I gave it a like and didn't review because I generally don't review, but maybe it'll be a new practice for me. There's lots here that can be sharpened, and you know the method: "I don't praise, yada yada; only criticism or analysis blah blah blah."

The firs tic you have is the italicization of they, which really brings too much focus to a general second party that isn't expounded upon. Essentially, it's like shining a spotlight on The Man Behind The Curtain while The Wizard of Oz says his big, intimidating lines. The vilified they works without the attention. Personally, I think you could change the pronoun altogether because it feels a bit juvenile (i.e. 'they hurt me' 'they teased me' 'they made me break'). That's a personal choice--just play around with it. Find the person behind the veil of they and see if it would be more powerful if they were in charge of their own name.

Stanza seventeen:

Sparkly is too weak for a poem of your caliber. Empower your lines always. When in doubt, the word is too weak and should be replaced. You have two vague entities in this stanza, and that makes for a bit of a weakened blow. Consider "all my missing things" and "promises i intended to keep" and see if anything you could place into their personas will make them fill out more evenly. Even if you add new lines to expand the premise of promises or the things you've lost (maybe not even in this stanza--remember that), the strength will likely account for the addition. Being picky, line 3: 'and' is superfluous, and its exclusion from the build really makes me ache for the specificity of 'they'.

Stanza eighteen:

You have a return guest with the vague 'things' that are, this time, better left on the shelf. You could embody this idea with precious things that you actually keep on a shelf for a reason. Specifically a high shelf, particularly fragile things. Spill, I feel, doesn't quite fit in line three, and if my instinct weren't enough, you revisit the word in line five, making it a double-dip. Nix one, or both. Spill is a weak verb. It's precise in that it indicates a mistake, but that's generally it. I think some of the weakness in this stanza can be attributed to the multimath of 'they'--being the antagonist as well as the items on the shelf. Some restructuring would be ideal to make the voice more active. I find it odd that she can cry in this stanza, but by nineteen.two, she couldn't. It can be attributed to the escalation of withering through captivity (i.e. the increased potency of depression over the long term [oops spoilers]).

Stanza nineteen.one:

Spillspill makes a returnreturn, but I don't mind it as much this round. I would restructure this line to make the antagonist's dialogue active, thus eliminating "I should", possibly adding the second person to give a bit more perspective. Think of it as camera angles. "I love you"s should be written like <--- that or some derivative. She's incapable of saying I love you, incapable of sharing a drink because her voices are always listening. Solid sentiment, but you make it a very obvious sentiment with your final line: "and they were always listening." This particular stanza is poking my brain, wanting a scene for its sentiment--and that's something you should consider upon revision. I know that it's just more my particular style, but there's a tiny bit of merit to it. I really wanted to see her struggle over drinks; maybe I'll just write a fanfic.

Stanza nineteen.two:

A bit of a mechanical tidbit. In your first half of this stanza, you gain momentum. This is natural to the reader because of the quick-spatter rhyme of rip and stitches. This momentum is built quickly, but crashes at your hard stop of "so i could cry." There's enough spoken speed here for another two or three beats. Ironically, this is finally the location where I want 'spills' to make a glorious appearance because it would make line four active. "Didn't work" can be better utilized as a refusal of movement, i.e. "wouldn't move" or a relative. The last two lines are keen for the progression of self-oppression.

Stanza twenty:

"The" becoming "my" would better personalize the sentiment. Dust bunny soldiers feels both silly and devastating because 1.) it sounds silly, but 2.) it shows that she's reached arrested development from her childhood, and at the very core still thinks that the childish thoughts are better than the shackled maturity she's trapped with. In the next line, definitely nix "i thought" for flow.

Stanza twenty-one:

This stanza is both redundant and not. Hear me out. When she was twenty, her dust bunny soldiers failed to keep her secrets hidden, and thus are implied to escape, so when you bring it back at twenty-one, it's just like "yeah they escaped okay" so there's a bit of a lull in the solidity of the sentiment. The second part is very necessary, though, because the voices are finally quiet when she's drowning. Again, this begs to be made more active, so it's a hard consideration. I'd find it a bit more impacting if the drowning was read as literal, but that invalidates stanza twenty-two--but I'm not very upset about that. You definitely need it as an ending because stopping at a drowning just doesn't work, but if you could find a way to create synergy between these two pieces, it would create the ending this piece deserves.

So stanza twenty-two:

"Very much" or "completely" or "finally" or "suddenly"--you get it. There are words that can make this tighter, especially considering the absolution of 'alone'. The voices are excepted from the rule, and leave her with a parting sentiment, but the smoke image comes from nowhere. I can also argue that it's just a complement to the halo image, and that makes it work, but from an analytic stance, it can go either way. I generally do like it as a closing line. It's your favorite technique, I think, to reach back to the front and bind it all together. It's a solid technique.

I stand by my message before: u write purty.

Ty

WOW
RoyalHighness has arrived to review.
I would nitpick on capitalization of the "I's," but honestly I couldn't care less about those because honestly this poem was beautiful.
I love the last line most of all. The poem had me enraptured from the first sentence but the last one was like a punch in the face. It was fantastic.
If this poem were a color, it would be a dual tone of red and black because it was intense and dramatic and climaxed at the very end, like a horror movie.
In short, I loved this and I'm going to guess the lack of capitalization was supposed to be the e.e Cummings style.
FANTASTIC JOB. TEN STARS OF TEN.