I sit in my room
Dreaming of the world around me
Does the world exist?
Do I exist?
Contemplating reality
I look into the abyss
There is nothing
But at the same time
Everything
What do I do?
What should I say?
SMACK
Back to the "real world"
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139,290 Literary Works • 672,524 Reviews
Hello!
This made me chuckle. I'm glad that you listed this under humor.
If you had listed this under satire, I think that this would work really well. It seems to poke fun at philosophers and people who like to stare off into space, daydreaming about the realities of the universe.
That being said, there are a few things you could change to make this better.
This poem is very abstract. I think it would work better if you used something concrete for the narrator to philosophize about. Like a leaf, or something mundane. Blow it up until the meaning of a leaf could be considered the meaning of the universe. Make it longer, more dramatic. Or even something silly, like butterflies. What if the narrator starts out by wondering where butterflies go when it rains, and then get caught up in thinking about the void, and what if they just disappear, and what if butterflies are EVERYTHING? But I digress.
I would also lead up to the smack a little bit. I'm not sure who's administering the smack, but I think that more of a panicked tone would help. It would also be funny if the narrator was having a silent, desperate conversation with themselves. "What should I do?" stop panicking, Joe, you're in your bedroom. Something like that.
The quotes around "real world" are a nice touch. It almost adds a double meaning to the poem. The narrator was thinking about the world the whole time, but many people don't consider thinking about the universe and metaphysical things part of the real world, thought they're real and certainly worth thinking about.
Altogether, I enjoyed reviewing this for you. I hope that this review proves useful to you! Happy writing, and happy review day!
Hey, NoStoryTime! clogs here for a Review Day review!
This isn't a very enticing first line. Sitting in my room is what I'm doing right now. It doesn't do anything to pull me into the poem, as it's very generic. Try to find a stronger opening that will make readers want to keep reading on.
I didn't really like this part of the poem. It kind of felt like it was just trying to justify the title or something, and then it didn't really explain anything else. What was it that caused the "smack", and what effect did it have on the narrator? Also, why is "real world" in quotes? Are you implying that the "real world" isn't real after all?
I don't really think these lines add anything interesting to the poem, yet they're the ones expressing the main idea. I think that since this is the most significant part of the poem, it should be a little better written. The reader certainly shouldn't be left with so many questions, and it shouldn't feel so out of place. I don't really have any suggestions off the top of my head about what to do about this, but I'm open to bounce around ideas with you, if you want.
I think the imagery is kind of generic and abstract right now. It doesn't really put a picture into my head or make me feel anything. Imagery is important in helping your poem come to life and making it more vivid. Here's a link that will hopefully give you some insight about how to write good imagery:
Imagery
I think this poem does a pretty good job telling about an existential crisis, but it doesn't really show you what it feels like, and I think that adding good imagery could help with that.
It's also another reason why the last two lines felt out of place- you spent the rest of the poem developing the existential crisis, then just stopped it and totally changed to subject of the poem without explaining it, so it just felt really incomplete.
You might want to consider adding more punctuation to this poem. Right now, all you really have are question marks. I do think that the no punctuation style (except question marks) is good for the first part of the poem, because it helps portray how lost the narrator is feeling, but I think that once they're "pulled back to reality", the punctuation should come back on. Here's an article about punctuation to help you out some:
Poetry and Punctuation
Overall, I do think that this poem could use some improvement. I hope this review helped in some way!
Thank you for your review. It made me think a lot more about my poem. I wrote the poem first and then put the title. My idea for this poem was have the poem, as a whole, be a question. Your idea of adding punctuation to the last part of the poem since I am coming back to the real world. But like you said at the beginning, I shouldn't leave the reader with so many questions, but I wanted the poem and everything about it to be a question. And the "SMACK" line, I debated on whether you put a description for the smack, but I wanted the reader to immerse themselves into the poem. To think about how this could pertain to them, so I felt not putting a description to the SMACK let them do that. This isn't something that actually happened to me, just a thought I had and a thought I wanted to allow others to think also.
I know you were trying to be cheerful and make me feel good, but your grammar is truly atrocious. You forgot to put "it" or something, to tell me you are talking about my poem, between "work and" and "makes me". And in "Sometimes we think and ask yourselves do we exist or we are just a small piece of one big puzzle.", "yourselves" should have been "ourselves". "It is a poetry" the two times you wrote, should have been "it is a poem". And "so I will not say that the lack of punctuation" also does not make any sense. "So I will not talk about the lack of puncuation" would be a correct way to phrase what you meant. You also forgot to put an "a" between "who is" and "new member). And "in" should have been "on" in the sentence "I would love to see a talented person who is new member in this site improve." Although, this is just a review, there were so many grammatical errors, I could not just let it go.
Hello! Cello is here to butt in!
NoStoryTime, I'm sorry to say that not everyone's perfect. You've made quite a few mistakes in your response. Tense changes, quoting mistakes, starting a sentence with 'and'. I just don't know where to start. I'll state it right here and right now, I'm sure my comment isn't quirk free either and I embrace that because mistakes are part of the human nature. I noticed all the things you did in King's review but I'm not a fan of the way you responded. You were quick to lash back at him with a rather rude response. If you wanted to help King improve, there were many far politer ways to do this. YWS is not a place to prove who's grammar is better. YWS is a positive environment for writers to help other writers improve their writing ability. Please think before you type and try to be more well mannered in the future. People lose respect for your otherwise helpful input when you come across so hostile.
Thanks!
-Cello
I was sleepy...