Young Writers Society

I really like this poem. There's some very good imagery in there, and it was a good idea to slow down the act of falling into the literary equivalent of slow motion since that is often what happens when we fall unexpectedly.

I do see the poetic elements to it, but my main qualm with the work is that the way it's written just doesn't make it read much like a poem. I know there are individual lines and everything, but they're extremely long by a poem's standards. The way you have it, I think this would be better sorted as a piece of flash fiction.

If you want to keep this as a poem, I would consider breaking up many of the lines into at least 3 individual ones. Luckily, you wrote a lot of short sentences in this piece, so it wouldn't be terribly hard to do this. What you have now as your line breaks could be breaks between stanzas, and I think this way it would read much more like a poem.

As I said, I did like this overall. It's an interesting way to think about falling, and I understand why you categorized this as a poem (since poetry tends to slow down a single moment or event). Keep it up!

*waves*

This is an unorthodox poem, and I'm happy for that - I always like seeing people push the boundaries of the "rules" and stylistic elements of poetry. The format fits well, accommodating each stage within the lengths of sentences. The first one, as the fastest and most dramatic, has the longest sentence, whereas the emptiness and apathy that punctuates the next two incorporate shorter ones to convey a similar feeling effectively. I like the part in the first step where the narrator says "you swear you can see the events of tomorrow already". It makes me imagine the following day/week/month appearing on the horizon, carrying with it poor tidings and bad omens. The vividness captivates me, and, as such, it's something that I would love to see expanded upon, since it has a potential to add heavily to the extended metaphor of falling. Other than that, I admit it doesn't make sense to me that the heart can be the only sound in the room. Wouldn't there be a whirlwind of sounds and noises as "you" begins to plummet, due to all of the circumstances of their life falling right out from underneath them, gradually diminishing to leave behind the heartbeat? Heck, it might be better to describe the loss of sound in the first step and then discuss the heartbeat in the second step, as it could tie them together more effectively, and the heartbeat could quietly punctuate and deviate the numbness of the second step.

In the second step, there does appear to be a contradiction between the pain and the lack of feeling. It could be resolved if you specify that the pain is intense enough to drown out all other sensations, leaving them quiet and unfocused. Nevertheless, the accuracy of such a collapse, or the metaphorical fall into depression/losing control of one's life, is intense, as anyone with depression can relate to the loneliness, loss, and pain. Begrudging and bitter acceptance is accurate (and hard to read, since it reminds me of a few painful times when I had to recognize how terrible everything was), but there is something even more saddening about being so lost within the fall that "you" can't even remember if they had a heartbeat. The poignancy and tragedy of that statement is expanded upon in the final lines, which use unique styling to express how universal depression is, and how unavoidable the eventual demise of every human being is. As such, the audience can leave deeply affected by what is a passionate, if depressing, poem. All in all, though I can't say I agree with the message, I enjoyed reading this from start to finish. Well done!

Heya! I just finished my free verse, so I decided to check this one out because 1 It's review month or whatever it's called idk I'm new and 2 why not.

So this free verse is pretty well organized, with the concrete part at the end being a very nice visual aid to show the downward motion of falling. Each stage has its own stanza/paragraph and the others are one lines that introduce and end the poem. The concrete part at the end is very good as it shows the falling motion.

The imagery and descriptions are on point, and it's very concise (unlike mine ;-;). I... don't really have many critics really. Uh.... keep doing stuff like this? Proofread maybe? I don't really know. Um... Great job!