Young Writers Society

This is Kaos here for a review!

In the description you said that the punctuation and capitalization was intentional so I'm going to tackle that. I don't really know why you didn't use punctuation in the first stanza but you in other parts of the poem except for the end and the start of the middle. I question it because parts of the flow in the poem are stiff for me and I didn't really see any real purpose to be changing it back and forth. I can make do with the list at the end, because it's in that format, but why the beginning?

So basing this off of a to-do list was something that could turn out interesting, but just because your poem is based off a to-do list doesn't mean it should become one in itself. I had a hard time connecting to the poem itself, but I'm going to try and interpret it best I can. In the first stanza the only thing I can come up with for a "beautiful mistake of nature" is that the person being written to wasn't originally supposed to be born but I feel iffy saying that because that's a rather iffy thing to be saying in itself. What makes me think this further is later in the poem where you bring it back up and I kind of wonder how much it actually relates?

The imagery isn't really there, and for the most part it's not much, but what you have makes me think that if you added more the poem would be a lot stronger. The glasses and the sunrise, the cart, expand on those images. Create the atmosphere for us to experience this poem in. That's one of the things that I did want to mention, is the experience of this poem. That's the strongest part here and I suggest focusing more on that while editing this if you do that. It's more of an experience than anything else that the reader is being taken through.

I think it feeling like an experience is affected by "you" in the poem, and we don't really know who this is addressed to. This confused me because it could also be the general "you" and it's switching into second person, which is an interesting concept. I'd like to see more of it though and it would be good to give more clarification for it.

I hope I helped and have a great day!

Hey there! I thought I'd read this because I thought the idea of basing poetry off a 'to-do' list was pretty clever. I'm not disappointed! This piece is so unique and well-written. There were some areas I found myself reading twice, to get the right tone, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Take this for example: Where did you go wrong wrong wrong. I feel like the 'wrong' is meant to be read like an old record, repeating over and over to emphasise that 'wrongness'. The language you use is quite simple too, there's no massive words, but the feelings come across brilliantly. This line (Your nightmares are about not being able to find the right aisle in the grocery store) was especially relatable to me, because that's something my anxiety makes me freak out about. So it was even more emotional for that reason. I loved the sudden change in tone, when your character is desperate for the light to turn on. The today list was perfect, especially 'try again' at the end. It sees like a 'repeat' prompt, like I should start the poem over again. The only error is in the third line of the list, where 'to' should be 'too'. Otherwise, this is amazing!