Young Writers Society

Lin! Here we go. I'm in the mood for brutal honesty today, so bear with me if I sound harsh.

Dead as the rat's dying carcass
Lying on the side of the road

If the leaves are as dead as the rat's dying carcass, than that means that they're not quite dead yet, correct? I dont know. These two lines are a bit funky. The repetition of 'dead' and then 'dying' throws off your rhythm, even thouh I like the analogy of the carcass.

-Ing words

Ooh. I'm not really liking this overload of -ing words. Staring, standing, drooping, chriping-- it's just too much. Find a way to get this imagery across without so many of the same type of word. Try something a bit less jarring-- something less obvious.

A different feeling than with any other
It's different, yet powerful and mighty

I'm sure you just missed that, but the repetition really doesn't work here. >_>

A dying king of the skies

Ooh, I like that line! =D

Alright, so. I'm going to stop here in the middle of the poem and bring up capitalization. You capitalize the first letter of every line here, but I really don't think that's giving your poem the best effect possible. I think it would be to your benefit to only capitalize when you actually start a new sentence, you know? It joins the lines more, connects them into pure and compelte thoughts instead of breaking them up into just lines of words.

And, of course, I think this could use some punctuation, too. In some poems that are heavy on the emotion, it's okay to go without commas and periods and such. But in a poem like this, that mainly tells a story, those kind of stops are necessary for your reader. We can't just have line breaks to tell us when a thought ends. We need to whole kadoodle.

Covered in rainbow colored spots

I don't know. This symptom doesn't seem magical or serious enough for me. The poem turns into a sort of joke when you think, "Oh, she's covered in ranbow polka-dots! Tee-hee!" But really, it's not a joke. It's supposed to be the tragic punishment for taking from someone who has already lost so much, yes? I like the parallels you drew between this and the story of Adam and Eve, the tree of good and of evil. I just think there needs to be another ailment that causes her death rather than being spotted with rainbows.

Maybe she just freezes as a child, looking like she's only sleeping? Something more magical, but less fantasy-ish. If that makes any sense.

Alright, overall, I wasn't too crazy about this. I think the meaning and the story was wonderful, and some of your stanzas had beautiful description, but I think part of my issue was the stanza-formation. With such short lines, you end up having a kind of choppy flow, and you can't have long, flowing ideas and imagery with such short lines. You didn't use rhyme, so the poem didn't have ryming to tie it together. I was just...underwhelmed. I wanted some of that amazing imagery. I wanted metaphors that dazzled me and similes that blew my mind away. While this certainly wasn't a bad poem by any means, I think you could spruce it up with some really interesting analogies and descriptions. Use that metaphor of the tree/king. Mention how it roars in battle with the kingdoms around it. Something like that.

I hope this was helpful, Linkidy-Caterpillar! ^^ I understand that you had a crazy time limit, but I'd love to see this brought up a notch to something truly remarkable.

~Evi