Young Writers Society

This is a very descriptive and imagery-heavy poem, which I absolutely love! I think poetry is the most powerful when it can paint images within the reader's mind and this is one good example of that.

I particularly like the middle stanza, in which you describe the sensation of snow falling and "creeping along the ground". This, to me, makes this a very festive and winter-y poem, which goes hand in hand with the feelings of nostalgia and warmth, ironically enough.

You evoke a sense of calmness and comfort that I'm assuming are felt when you return home from a long stay away. I would suggest maybe adding an additional stanza to go deeper into maybe a happy memory or two from a past time that you were home? That way we could get to see how the narrator reflects upon his/her time in this particular house that they're returning to. Just a suggestion to lengthen and add a bit more detail to the poem!

I also found a small mistake in the last stanza; I believe you meant to write "comforted" or "comfortable" in the third to last line. The way it's written now creates a verb incongruency that kind of interrupts the reader's rhythm, but aside from this mistake, I see no issue with the lovely poem you've written for us here.

Write on!!

**My Thoughts**

Hello! I thought this was a lovely poem! I liked the first stanza the best, but they were all well written.

**Formatting and Grammar**

I loved the formatting. The poem looks very neat. I do have one issue, though. I noticed you double spaced the poem. It looks very nice, but at first glance you can not tell where the stanzas end and begin. Maybe make the spaces in between the stanzas bigger?

As for grammar, I didn't catch any mistakes. One thing did sound a bit off to me. You wrote:

"dreams, enlarged,
hang shining"

The word "enlarged" sounded weird to me. I think it was not the right word to use. Oddly enough, I think "intensified" would have been a better word to use. I did like the little thing you put in parenthesis:

"The birds fly south (and north and east and west)"

It gives you a sense of being lost or wandering. I liked it and it fit in with the poem well!

**Punctuation and Capitalization**

Nothing I noticed!

**Review**

No formatting mistakes. Just a few things I noticed. No capitalization or punctuation mistakes. Keep on writing (you can write well!) and have a good day!

So pretty! The rhythm and alliteration make it almost audible. I love it.

Lovely reflective poem Que! Definitely some nostalgia vibes, and the migratory bird image pairs perfectly with the image of someone coming home for holiday-break, or just finding their place back after a long absence. I thought the opening and ending stanzas were stronger than the middle one. The middle one I think could have used a bit more specificity as far as what the dreams were, or what they're searching for - even a connection back to birds somehow - like questioning what they're going after. The middle stanza felt like it was trying to connect with the reader more directly by adding in the "your" but didn't have the specificity to really make it punch.

I really enjoyed the formatting you used throughout - even from the beginning the unexpected breaks and parenthetical note of "and north and east and / west" added an interesting unexpected element that felt a bit like they were floating around and unstable despite going home/being in a place of "calm". It also slowed my reading of the lines down a bit to focus on the images you were creating. The "sound" and "rhythm" of the poem all were nice and the and the poem's format looked polished and consistent.

Overall, I don't have a super direct sense of what the narrator feels, because it's a bit back and forth as to whether returning is good or bad, exciting or calm, unsettling or quiet etc. so I think readers will import their own ideas of homeboundness into poem because the narrator's own view isn't steady.

Keep on writing (you're a good poet!)

alliyah