Young Writers Society

Hey Lightsong! Here (finally!) to review your poem. So let's get started!

1. Romeo & Juliet Story
I love the Romeo & Juliet allusion we've got here, with the forbidden love and the meddling families. I'm not sure it's necessary to take it one step further and make the speaker a butler, because I think after the kiss it's very clear that both members of the couple are men. I think it'd be really neat if you took advantage of the Romeo/Juliet potential though. The last stanza sort of brings the themes up again but dropping some actual language from the play would be really great or more allusions to it, because I think its a fabulous metaphor to root the idea of a same-sex couple having to be in a relationship behind their parents' backs.

2. Parental Emotion - Stanza 2 & 5
I think stanza 2 is really strong in how you portray the parents. In just a few lines - with the mask of anger and the mother threatening to shatter, you say a lot. I think it'd be useful to cover the other person's parents a bit more in that section of the poem since you do mention them later. Also -- a small note -- I would try to keep the capitalization of "Father" and "fathers" and "Mother" and "mothers" consistent. In the last stanza they were lower-cased.

3.Wordiness
So this poem really reads as a prose poem because the lines are quite long. I don't mind this too much because actually the lines were pretty consistent and seemed to kind of break at parts that made sense for flow, but I will say that it loses a lot of the "poetic device" emphasis when this is done. It's harder to appreciate delicate language when something is formatted in a long line like a paragraph - because as a reader we end up reading it more like prose. So again this isn't necessarally a bad thing - because maybe you wanted the narrative to come through more so than the language/wording/figurative language choices.

I do think though at times there were portions in this poem that I thought could be reduced a bit or said more succinctly to get the idea across more quickly.

For instance when you do your lists of descriptions "we cried, we screamed, we tore..." -- I'm not sure saying all three is necessary - the third one almost implies the other two and is much more visceral. In other places you had lists of descriptions and I would recommend focusing on just a few images per emotion or description rather than throwing everyone you have in there. I think this will help readers appreciate some of the more poignant descriptions you have in here.

4. Book Ends
I really appreciated the lines you set apart with italics - it made the poem feel like a story and I think framed the narrative well. - I was hoping it might end on a more positive note, but of course when you start with Romeo & Juliet you know it's provably not going to end well. The line "Just a couple of lovers. Nothing more." I thought was also perfectly succinct.

Lastly the image of waving like a celebrity towards people who are holding up their fists is a powerful one that stood out in the piece. The defiance and yet the vulnerability intermingled within this relationship.

5.Overall
Overall, I liked that you had all the elements of a good story in your poem - conflict, relatable characters, plot/character progression etc. I wanted this poem to feel a bit more poetic though - you certainly have plenty of great descriptions in it, but it felt a bit lost with such large paragraph chunks for me. Even still, I think you chose the perfect metaphor to frame this story and the themes and emotions do pull through.

Thanks for sharing! <3 And please let me know if you had any questions about my review.

~alliyah

A butler and Romeo kissing?

This story seems to be about the animosity that society generally expresses against persons who are of the same sex and openly display their relationship. I missed that very crucial detail on the first reading and my mind had the butler being female.

But then the social animosity made me take a second look and I realized what should have been obvious. Butlers and Romeos don't kiss unless they are gay. In short, I started off sympathizing with the couple and then wound up seeing them as stirring up trouble unnecessarily since that is the customary reaction to that kind of display.

The statement of "Just a couple of lovers nothing more" then came across as gay propaganda striving to get reader sympathy.

True about life being like a play. Shakespeare himself compared it to a play in Macbeth and we to players on a stage. Perhaps that was your inspiration? It is a play where we are expected to assume certain roles. If we deviate from those assigned roles then society will react negatively.

However, if indeed you did not ,mean to have this visualized as a gay relationship, then I suggest a change of profession from butler to something clearly feminine such as maidservant.

Very skillfully written interesting story . Thanks for sharing.

Hello Lightsong,
I truly enjoyed the vision this piece brought upon me.
The delivery is truly excellent and its definitely got me following you now ,your way of writing is enchanting!

With that said i mean no wrong with these corrections, but perhaps they could help the flow of the narrative a lil bit more in my opinion at least.

"He declared me as his and him as mine." in this line i got a bit confused cause of the wording perhaps because you start the sentence in a singular pronoun and end it in a plural type wording but after re-reading i did understand. The declaration carried a lot of weight to me in those first verses but this was a little stepping stone for the flow , perhaps "He declared us as each others , me as his and he as mine" but that is all relative.

Really enjoyed the metaphor about it all being a play , and revisiting the theme had me hooked , would've like to see what metaphors you could've delivered with people like the police and the people who raised their fist , could they have been the crowd or stage hands in the play? maybe the spotlight was of-center who knows.

Non the less really good piece!