Young Writers Society

Heya, RadiantShadow! Your friend Casanova here to review!

Alright, first things first, lets talk about imagery.

Misery is a shadow that rages all across a nation.

As the madmen call callously out for the stars to burn,

This doesn't really make sense to me. You start off by saying a shadow covers the nation, and then lead into the stars to burn. My first thing is- why don't you go more in depth about the shadow? Why is it there, how does it affect the nation? I'd like to know more about it, and what the nation does for it. The second thing is the mad man calling for the stars to burn. Now, as a mad man, he'd say some bizarre stuff, but since stars actually burn this really doesn't work here. I mean, he could be saying,"The stars will never be free," or,"the stars will always be gone," or something ridiculous like that,and maybe I'd get the connection between the two. But as it stands, I don't.

These foul flattering tones from the surrounding demon,

Are all abilities conjured from their forsaken thoughts,

Now you're stating it's a demon. How does it turn from a shadow, to a demon? Also- what is it? Why is what the demon saying foul and yet a flatter? What is it saying? You keep saying things like thoughts and tones and flattering, yet never go into detail about it. It's interesting to say something like this,even better to clarify it.

The next thing is I'd have to agree with @Kaos. Not that I don't understand the words used in this poem, but it does seem as if you're using words of a more advanced vocabulary in intention to insinuate a stronger, more profound, vocabulary or reading/writing skill. Not that it's a bad thing to know big words, or to know things like that, but it seems as if you are just using them to be using them.

In total, I think you could tweak the imagery to make it more consistent, as well as going more in depth about the things you're putting in your poem.

I hope this helped a bit, at least.

Keep on doing what you're doing, and keep on keeping on.

Your friend, Matthew Casanova Aaron.

This is Kaos here for a review!

The first thing that I noticed was your vocabulary, which seems awfully opened up to more advance words and I'm not saying that I disagree with using them, but it seems like you intentionally put them all in there just to make the poem look or feel smarter, and I don't think that's the way to go. If you're going to take a focus on your word choice, then do it to make the poem stronger in the sense that the word that you choose best describes what you're trying to get across. For example, if you choose the word lust over love, the word lust is a synonym to love but still has more of an attachment to physical attraction.

Misery is a shadow that rages all across a nation.

The first line feels like it needs to continue on, and doesn't feel finished. I also think that "a nation" should be "the nation"? It sounds better and it does more at targeting a single thing rather than it being /any/ nation that has misery.

As the madmen call callously out for the stars to burn,

And as the holy men fumble and stutter through old texts,

To try to dissipate the tumultuous terror of their creation.

I didn't really understand what was going on in the poem here, and I think that here's a good time to bring another thing up. Just because something sounds pretty it doesn't mean you get out of making meaning in your poetry. It's good to give the reader room to interpret, but when clarity is needed, then you need to the the theme and narrative better.

From what I understand, the madmen want the stars to burn while the holy men (Note: I don't know why you italicized "holy", it didn't make sense to me and had seemingly no reasoning to.) try to stop this from happening? It's hard to tell when you're narrating it in this way because the reader has no context of what's going on. You're seemingly writing a narrative inside the poem, a story to it, but it doesn't make sense or add up, and I think this involves other things.

Your stress on meter in this poem is high. I felt it kept the narrative or images from coming through the poem. The words that you use that I'm pretty sure most people don't know also contribute to this. Now, the other part of the poem gives us more context as to what's going on, or something that's more set in stone instead of faltering, so I'll talk about that.

These foul flattering tones from the surrounding demon,

Are all abilities conjured from their forsaken thoughts,

And derogatory manipulations. Oh! How wonderfully

lugubrious the world has become as its sits and watches

the brightened burning of the last of it's freemen.

From what I'm understanding, there's a demon that was conjured by the misery and the madmen? And then the last three lines go on to talk about the world watching the "freemen" burn which is something that I didn't exactly understand. Are the freemen different from the madmen? Clarification of what's going on is necessary if you want the reader to be able to understand the message that you're trying to go for. Sometimes you don't need to be complex in all of your lines; sometimes simple is better. The way that the poem is written makes it sound awkward with you trying to make the lines sound more than they are with some of the things added in, but maybe that's just me.

I would have liked more images themselves rather than the rambling of the speaker in this poem. If there's a demon, describe what it looks like. Give us sensory detail and figurative language. I think that creating the atmosphere in this poem is something that you should try to do because it would be beneficial with imagery and helping describe what's going on.

Give the images time to develop, and I'd much rather have a metaphor or simile or description of how the air tasted or what it smelled like much more than a long word. The poem feels dense with words and doesn't have any breathing air which apart of that is the punctuation which I felt could be used to help the poem flow better. Read it aloud and see how it flows as it is now with the large words and the lack of line variation. Despite what you may think, all these tiny things add up to affect the whole poem.

I hope I helped and have a great day!

Hello there, RadiantShadow!
This is Moonwatcher here with a review! ^-^

As the madmen call callously out for the stars to burn,

And as the holy men fumble and stutter through old texts,

To try to dissipate the tumultuous terror of their creation

This part doesn't make so much sense to me. These are rather long lines that are all connected, but the beginning says "As". "As" what? What is happening? Is this referring to what comes after, or what comes before this part? It feels as if something is missing here, or if the phrase is disconnected from the rest of the poem since it doesn't fit very well independently.

Sometimes in poetry, simpler is better, and I feel as if in this case, simpler would be better. This might just be a personal thought due to my extremely limited vocabulary or just my distaste for long/complicated words, but I feel as if I could understand the poem better if this was done. I'm not going to lie, although I did understand this, there were two words that I had to look up in a dictionary and a few other words that I wouldn't be surprised if the reader had trouble trying to comprehend them. I feel as if maybe explaining your words a little bit more could help.

I'm not quite sure if you mean "freemen" in a political sense (like, if the world is losing their civil rights or something) or if you mean it emotionally. I personally interpreted it politically, due to all the political things going on (especially in America). Not to assume, or anything.

That's all I have to say about this poem. I hope my review helps you out, and have a great day! ^-^