Young Writers Society

Ah I love this and glad it's hitting the spotlight again. And the metaphor between really knowing / looking at a person compared to reading a book is such a perfect one.

Some favorite lines:

i want to be the one
to swing from your ribs

hair like the wind scribbled there in dusty ink

because you never pay attention, just nod--i can feel you wondering
why i never try harder for you

Let's see if I can come anywhere near describing how I felt about this. Absolutely amazing and completely relatable. You've molded imagery and characters than in poem can only be described as human. E first stanza is my favorite with the description of the ink. This was amazing and heart felt, wrapped in emotions. I am not one usually for poetry. Edgar Allen Poe was as far as I would go but I've been testing the waters here and so far I am amazed.
Remington38

This is both beautiful and relatable. The emotions, thoughts, and frustrations you've described here are eerily familiar. Good job!

Hello, this is pinkie. I am your reviewer for today.

To say, I love this story. I can't stop crying from this. Your words were speaking to me. It is actually remains me of myself when I was little. I really enjoyed this story. Very much!

This is pinkie, your reviewer. And these are your review.

I remember a little while ago receiving some help from you, Sparkles... This is your forte, not mine, so I don't know what help I can be, but I will do my best to review this piece!

As usual, Nitpicks first!

hidden under the onion layers of dried and crusty feelings

but i am smarter than you

ion, just nod--i can

you never understood that you were

neither of us have ever been good at words

Hallo, 'tis Retro here for a review!

Well I most certainly had to review this! I'll make some general comments and then delve into what I loved!

Every stanza is a long sentence, which I'm assuming stylistic. However, you have multiple ideas within each stanza and there are places where it is clear when there should be a full stop. So, personally, I would put them in.

'you never let go of the concept that i might be a good person
hidden under the onion layers of dried and crusty feelings
but i am smarter than you'

I get what you were trying to say here but I just felt the last part threw it all off. It just feels a bit awkwardly worded, but that might just be my reading of it

Well that is it, onto what I loved. This poem is frankly breathtaking. You have some beautiful imagery with is genuinely astounding. There is also pure emotion which is incredibly well written. I don't really have anything else to say other than well done my friend, well done.

*Liked*
Keep it up,
~Retro

stop it!
o my God.
I'm crying......
is this real??? you need to tell her......
oooo, don't mind me at all *in tears*
I'm bee, and I'm gonna review this without trying to show too much emotion.
this was miserable, miserable and beautiful. the words were so perfectly crafted i was drawn from the title down to the last full stop. i didn't find any mistakes whatsoever, not with your punctuations, not wit you grammar because i wasn't looking only enjoying the flow that looked like it will never stop, till........BAM! Full stop at the end and it was gone, silently......i loved the effect of this. this is poetry at it's best. keep writing!

Spark... oh spark...

Sparkie!

Love this! I think you do a great job with all your fantastic and beautiful imagery that in turn give this piece a lot of beauty and heart. There is drama to it, there is tension, I really get this sense of pulling me in, but also pushing me out, which is SO, SO central to its theme so these elements I absolutely adore, and as a reader, I mean, these are feels, of course it was great fun to dive into that and to read and to absorb, so I've no complaints at all as a reader, I actually enjoyed my reading of it (except for the ending which I'll go over).

My review is not really to address what I didn't enjoy, because I enjoyed all of it. Instead, my review is going to go over the craft of this and my thoughts on the craft, only because there were strands here I think can be just more poignant on a technical level, and because even if we enjoy a piece, there can always be improving, yes?

So!

Content wise, I like the idea that we have the relationship of a reader(possibly writer) and an artist (possibly another writer as well), whether romantic or not is not really clear and I am fine with that ambiguity. Throughout the piece we're given some insight in their relationship, and I think you do a great job with the voice: that you and I that lends itself to this pulling/pushing tension. I'm going to be using pulling/pushing a lot, so really quick I want to address what I mean -- it's when you have one person who wants to be closer/intimate, and the other person who wants distance. And this plays out both in tone/voice and situations. So you have both an event that the speaker is talking about and the speaker pulls the reader in, and pushes the reader out. And then you have the actual story of this relationship where you have things like:

"you read too many books" --> This seems to be pushing. The speaker is almost like, ugh why do you read so much. You pay more attention to books then to me (this is kind of implied and what I get from it)

"and I watch you, I study you" --> This seems to be pulling, I like that you read a lot, I'm going to read you.

"you never let go of the concept..." --> this is like pulling/pushing in few words at once, which is great economy of words to describe the dynamic. Somebody who is pulling towards this idea of a good person, and the speaker pushing away from this concept and I LOVE that. If you can maintain this level of economy in each stanza/line, asdofihasdouifhasdihfsdoifh <3

"you write words in chain...swing from your ribs" --> This seems to be pulling, and I absolutely love the buildup of this stanza and the gain we get is very satisfying there at the end, the swinging from the ribs line is probably one of my favorites of the piece.

"...i put too much thought...you never pay attention" --> pushing here. Now, so this is kind of interesting, but also kind of lacking. SO interesting because so far in this poem we have particular themes of this magnetic attraction, you know the third stanza symbolizes that the best because we have an actual image of an eye/gaze/look acting like a literal chain or braid drawing the speaker in. Conceptual image of attraction.

The pulling/pushing theme also highlights this pretty well which leads me to believe that this is indeed the underlying theme.

There's also an interesting layer adding some dynamics to this piece that we get revealed in the second stanza. The idea of two artists pulled towards one another, perhaps they are each other's inspirations, and we get this added conflict of 'do I/don't I deserve you.

This conflict plays into the theme very well. But by the time we get to the fourth stanza, it's like we're getting a lot of distance (I'll go over distance/intimacy in the Technical aspect of my review). The reader doesn't know much about this relationship, just kind of the conceptual aspect of it, which is revealed in this poem: this conceptual view of a relationship. And so, we don't know details.

We don't know what leads up to the writing of this poem/why it's being written, or who did what to who or what happened, none of that. So in the fourth stanza, we get some information that sort of forces us to rethink the poem, which I loved, it made the poem more real for me! But I think it needed to have been more poignant/executed better.

Up to this moment it was pretty consistent of having the speaker pushing and the "you/guy" pulling, and we get the flip here in the fourth, "You never pay attention, just nod..." of the "you/guy" pushing, and the speaker pulling. And it is both interesting and real, because this is sort of realistic thing that happens in relationships, both sides push and pull and a lot of the problems arises when one side does all the pushing, and all of a sudden, they're no longer doing that and they're pulling instead, and it's almost like the flipping happens to maintain that pulling/pushing equilibrium and YET because of that change of dynamic, it almost always makes things worse! Loved it.

It *did* throw me into a loop in the sense that I had to re-orient myself, so I figure I'd just point that out for pointing-out sake. And indeed, from four up to that last stanza, we get the flipped side -- "I" is pulling and "you" is pushing, and that's interesting! But I say it could be executed better because it took a lot of me slowing down and connecting to see who is doing what and what is being said, and it doesn't come so effortlessly off the page. This is the kind of thing I struggle with too in my own writings, I think the way of fixing it is a precision thing, and trying to make sure that each word is saying what it needs to be saying and to cut away anything unnecessary or needlessly ambiguous.


The ending. Underwhelming. A tie-back to the title, but I don't think this poem needs that? I think the piece in every stanza ties back to the title, so in that sense the end was a more definitive tie-back that I found unnecessary. I think, see what other reviewers say about the ending, but for me personally, I like the end of "don't try to apologize"




Technical

The form of this piece is like the speaker is mulling over his/her experiences in the classic "you/andI" fashion.

The double-edged sword or struggle of writing "you and I poems" (because every form has its positive and has its negative) is that it has the tendency to close the reader off. This is like when you have two people who have an intimate conversation with inside jokes and memories.

Inviting a third person into that conversation (the reader) can either be like, eavesdropping into some juicy tidbits but not really a part of the whole thing (because inside jokes and intimate memories you're not a part of) OR it can open it up to the reader and be of the kind of, hey -- you're revealing these intimate things to me and I feel like you're sharing something personal and I'm becoming a part of this, I relate to this, this was me at some point, or this was us at some point. And so you want to be very, very careful that you lean towards the latter and not the former and it's a delicate balance and this has all to do with voice and where the poem is being specific and giving the reader information, and where it's being closed off and not revealing enough information.


Stanza two is a good stanza for introducing why the speaker likes "you", because at the same time she doesn't agree with the concept of her being a good person, she also clings to it and she likes that "you" sees her in this way. Now, the "but I am smarter" begins to lose/distance us here taking us in a different direction we're not as privy to. Stanza three is a great stanza for revealing information to us and that dynamic of how the speaker feels! Stanza four is kind of like a slap "you never pay attention" whhat, where did this come from? So it distances us again, and so forth.

wind scribbled there in dusty ink. dust

hidden under the onion layers of dried and crusty feelings

but i am smarter than you so i write across your palm with blue paint
and watch it smear on your freckled cheek when you wipe the tears away