Young Writers Society

Hi PixieStix!


I liked this and I didn't. What you have here is a common theme executed well. There's plenty of emotion here, but it would benefit from a bit more imagery. Instead of baldly stating the emotion, it could be made more vivid with description. Sometimes bald is good, and the baldness does give this a raw quality, but here I think the rawness is more like meat than diamonds. It could do with a little dressing.

But. What are you saying here? Someone's gone and you miss them. Okay. But what have you done to make this poem different from the million and one other poems about love and loss out there? Here is where the baldness of the language tells against you. If your idea were a completely new one, you could get by with being bald, but because you're going over a theme that's been done to death already, you need something to stand out and make me remember your poem rather than everyone else's.

I want to take something away from this. The theme is well-worn, so I probably won't remember that. There is no real imagery for me to latch onto. The best bit is the line about time machines because that is new, and time machines are cool, so I think you should run with that and expand it more. Let the whole poem be about the concept of time machines. Types of time machines, maybe, and what each one would signify if you had them. In HG Well's The Time Machine, it takes the MC to the degeneration of the human race--so this loss could be seen as the complete unravelling of the narrator's character and life. The Doctor has the TARDIS which takes him on wild and wacky adventures--but this person is gone, so the narrator will never have any adventures again. Bill and Ted had a phone box that took them everywhere--but the narrator can't go anywhere with their lost one and their number has been disconnected.

You don't have to go exactly with that image if you find a better one, but this poem needs something extra. Right now it's bland because you're not doing anything new either with language, imagery or theme. Find something to give this an original twist and it'll be awesome. ^_^

PM or Wall me if you have any questions!

-twit

This is good, i like it.
it has a story to it.. kind of like a heartbreak sort of thing?

It seems like you have gone through it, it's like everything has come straight from the heart and into this.

and your 14?! so am i, and this is a quality piece of writing!

seriously, well done!
i love it when your saying you'd so anything to turm back time... it's saying that you are dreaming big, hoping as much as you can to be able to turn back, and fix whatever happened.

it's just an amazing piece of work...

i dont really have any critisism, but i'd just like more!

im going to read more of your work now! good luck, and well done!:D

Hi! Here to review as requested

Title: It's simple, tells you what the theme is and it works. But it could be better. Perhaps 'No Replacements' would be more interesting or 'Time Machine'. Something that's a little less obvious and comes into play later in the poem.

Stanza One: The first line isn't very interesting or fresh. This is a line more fitting to prose than poetry. What I'd suggest is take the tears but strip the rest away and then think again. What can you say about tears that will give us an insight into this persona or print an image in the reader's head? I'd also suggest changing that 'because' to 'and' which would be more action paced. A few quick examples to get you started:

My tears are railway tracks
and I don't know what to do

Tears have to go in the ocean;
I don't know what to do

I'm also not sure about using both 'darkness' and 'sadness'. Instead of telling us that there's sadness, you should give us an image that evokes it like graveyards or shaking hands. Then we have the image and the emotion, instead of just one.

Stanza Two: This feels like a very disconnected stanza. I don't understand how the slowing of a heartbeat and the rush of blood to your head make you wonder about the length of another's life? That feels very forced.

Stanza Three: God should have a capital unless you're making a statement by not having one? But it seems to me like a capital would be more appropriate here. That last line could be more interesting. At the moment it's a bit prosey and it isn't doing much for you. Maybe something like: 'so we could just have/ one more conversation'.

Stanza Four: I'm not sure I like the repetition of 'no such thing' here. It might just be that it makes the line too long so perhaps it's the second part you need to change. Maybe you could try...

And no such thing as replacements

Overall

This was a good attempt but I'd have liked to see more imagery and more creativity. Part of poetry is playing with words and how they sound and putting together two words you wouldn't normally find, like 'wedding dirge' which is an example from a poem I read forever ago that's always stayed with me. This feels a little too much like prose at the moment and if you took away the line breaks, it would mostly read like prose.

That's not such a bad thing, it just means you're still learning. I thought you had a good theme and the emotion's getting there, but you need more tone and more imagery to back it up.

Let me know if you've got any questions,

Heather xxx

"Fumes of sadness?" FUMES? Rethink the word choice.

Very sad
This reads as very heartfelt and I don't like critiquing poetry that comes from such a vulnerable place, but I'm going to do it anyways.
The majority of the poem flows nicely and is written very well; however there are a couple lines that feel clunky, even for meter-less free verse.

First off, I'm not sure what you mean by "Fumes of sadness". It isn't clear and doesn't flow from the previous line; it just sounds odd and is a weak way to close an otherwise well-done first stanza.

Making me wonder,
Why you couldn't last another day.