Young Writers Society

Hey there! I thought I'd drop by for a quick review on this interesting poem today. Note that I haven't reviewed poetry in a while, so I might be a bit rusty.

I really like your word choice here - you have a lot of specific, emotional adjectives, verbs, and nouns that do a good job of conveying the general tone of the piece, a sense of loss and regret but also wonder at those precious things that were lost. I also think the reflective nature of the poem is really interesting and so is the formal, poetic style - it raises interesting questions about who the narrator is.

I think the biggest thing that's holding this poem back is that sometimes your syntax is just plain confusing because by trying to be poetic, you wind up omitting essential words and making the literal meaning a lot less clear. A good rule of thumb in poetry is that if you took all your lines and removed the line breaks so it's like a paragraph of prose, if that paragraph is really, really difficult to follow more than a few words of, it's going to be really difficult to understand it as a poem as well. (Some ambiguity and grammatical errors are okay if they're a stylistic choice made consciously, but )

Basically, I have a hard time knowing what you're actually referring to in some of your lines because they seem to sometimes lack words that define the relationships of the nouns and adjectives to each other. And by this I mean simple words like "the", "your" "in" "and", etc. For example:

Autumns growing anxiousness seized heart

Childish spirit which celebrated your mirth
Ceased to mater as layers descended.

In little amount with small actions

And at moments some wise views and words,
They coiled around to form a shell
Enclosing within your fair self,
Lost

Thanks for sharing this narrative poem concerning someone whom the speaker describes as growing up and the effects it has on her. As a reader I was immediately interested in how she would develop since the poem promises a detailed description. There is much imagery used to paint a picture of what was happening and her learnings and transformations, which in a way is good since it distances the composition from mere prose and sets it firmly into poetry.

Suggestion:

The poem has potential but in order to attain it’s full glory it must provide specific explanations for general statements. Otherwise the reader wonders what the generalizations mean and walks away confused.

examples: [that something] [mundane scenes.][small actions][new things] [hazy daydreams, Delusions.][growing anxiousness] [some wise views and words,].

The reader descends into a wondering state awaiting explanations but only being presented with more generalizations over which to ponder and wonder.

So focusing on those two points will make the poem better. IMHO

had began [had begun]