What Happens

Funny how I am literally writing a review for this on the 4th of July! This is going to be a speed review today, so it might not be very good. Anyway, I found that this poem was very deep and gets right to the point within the first stanza! Now, usually I don't like when people rush their poetry. However, I can tell that you did not rush at all. Bravo! Overall, this is really good and almost brought my stupid self to tears. Have a beautiful day/night! JESUS LOVES YOU!

Dear Lael,

I was immediately drawn in by the description of this poem, because although it's not a situation I have to deal with personally, I have many, many friends who have similar thoughts and situations. Because it's not my own situation, I feel like I'll never fully understand it, but that with each poem on the topic I read or each essay I spend my time going through I can be a better friend. That is to say that when I am reading your poem, I am looking for a doorway into that emotional situation.

And I felt like your poem was getting toward giving me what I was searching for in the last two stanzas. The moment that I felt was especially strong was the line about "two seeds". The rest of the poem is really straightforward in terms of language, kind of like you're just writing a journal or personal essay but breaking it into lines. With that "two seeds" line, you're bending language and getting at an image that can describe your situation with emotional extras and lyrical sights that we don't get from a journal. I see the green seeds twisting inside you. I feel, without you stating, that there's a type of competition because there's only so much nutrition in the soil.

I also like the image you give in the final stanza of having the language in the back of your mind. I wonder what the poem would feel like if you described some particular moments where you were aware of that language being there, present, but never out in the front.

Also, if this is autobiographical, I feel like I want to so congratulations because it is brimming over with pride, relief, and happiness!

If you have any questions about this review, please PM me and let me know!

Otherwise, thanks for sharing, and good luck!

Hannah

This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review!

The first aspect of the poem that I noticed is that you decided to capitalize the first letter of every line. I don't see what this improves in your poem and suggest that you play around with something different, but ultimately it's your stylistic choice as to what you want to do with your capitalization and punctuation. I just don't happen to see any particular reason or sway to write it in this way, which is why I oppose it.

I'm not all that fond of the repetition that you use in this piece. It doesn't seem that there's a lot of thought put into why you chose to use this repetition. There's a lot more that goes into it than you think, and ultimately it affects how your audience perceives the poem. How often you decide to use repetition, the wording that you use, the structure of your repetition and the dead space between the times you use it all go into how the poem is perceived, whether its seen as that complicated or not. You don't seem to have a thematic way of repetition, which I believe could be beneficial to the piece.

The theme of the poem seems to be the biggest aspect that you focus on, and I believe that this is actually a positive part of the poem, for the subject matter that's here. It's the strongest part of the piece, and I'd like to see you build imagery and other poetic devices around it if you decide to edit through it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I hope I helped, and have a great day.