Young Writers Society

Hi Lightsong! I'm here to review your poem - I have a few areas where I have comments and critiques.

Grammar/Spelling

In the first line I believe "open" should be "opened" or "opens" -> probably just a typo.

2nd Stanza:

"like knowing Mozarts, his pieces sublime."

"Mozarts" should have an apostrophe "s".

4th Stanza:
I think that this line ought to end in a period rather than a semi-colon.

"or the exams, the students’ nightmare;"

Your capitalization was pretty consistent I thought - and overall there wasn't a lot to critique for spelling and grammar - so good editing!

Word Choice/Format
I appreciate your use of rhyme in this poem. I thought that for the most part the rhyming did not seem forced but gave a nice rhythm to the piece that kept me bouncing from line to line.

There are a few areas where you may want to re-visit, because for me the rhyming was a little forced or the word choice wasn't quite on par with the rest of your poem.

First stanza you use the word "things" as an end rhyme. If at all possible I think you should change that - "things" is just so vague and non-descript - it doesn't draw readers in during a crucial part of your poem: the second line.

And in the second to last line "his body trembled, his cries unheard;" I don't think unheard is close enough to "head" - and is somewhat distracting. If this could be re-worked I think it would add to the poem.

I think that one thing that might help some in the first half of your poem is if you tried reading the poem outloud. For instance, I found this stanza to be a bit clunky in places;

"He knows knowledge is best
when it is practiced in real life;
when it is brought to the test
use it wisely like using a knife."

.

"knows knowledge" just sounds a bit odd. And "to practice in real life" & "bring to the test" is a bit redundant. And then where did this knife come from in line 4?

In this line "is the realization he receives when staring ahead;" the word "receives" feels like an odd word in this context, is there a synonym that could be used? Like "gains" or just change it to "is realized when looking ahead".

Another thing that I wanted to make note of (which isn't a critique, but just an observation) is that your line length steadily gets longer as the poem goes on - I don't know if that was an intentional choice or not; but I think overall you kept the line length and syllable count under control.

Overall Impressions

The second half of the poem, I found to be much more engaging than the first half. It almost felt like you thought of the second half and then added the first half to get there.

I felt like this is the stanza where it starts to come together:

"His talent is to write and tell a story,
to transform ideas into tangible words;
a publishing authors he wants to be;
his messages known like the tune of songbirds."

I feel like the first half sort of felt a bit rambling, it wasn't bad by any means but I didn't feel like it added a lot to the overall story. I wonder if a few of those first stanzas could be combined or reduced so that you could get to the bulk of your message sooner?

I think your poem touches on interesting themes about knowledge and satisfaction and the final scene really cements these in.

One area that you could work on is making the poem more personal. That doesn't necessarily mean making it more autobiographical but I'd like to see you giving more scenes where the character is doing things rather than thinking them. And inserting emotions throughout the piece instead of primarily at the end. I feel like this would make it easier for readers to connect with the piece and relate to it.

I like the intent of your final scene - but upon reading it a second time, I feel like it's a little messy. Logistically, how is the pillow wet with tears (like the character is lying down) but he's also hanging from a rope? "Determination wilted" is also a little bit of an odd metaphor for me. Also I'm not sure what the significance of using the word "the" before "rope" is? Is the "rope" a symbol for knowledge or experience? Or is this just emphasizing the word "rope"?

Overall, I found your poem to be an enjoyable read, and the ending surprised me and left me thinking. Good luck in future writing, and I hope you find this review helpful. Please let me know if I can clarify anything that was unclear in my review.

~alliyah