Young Writers Society

Hey there.

I hate money too. Two important points about this poem:

1) The emotion expressed here - hatred of greed, despair with capital - is a common one, and it is shared by the majority of left-wingers, students and the like. So when I read a poem about greed, I want your angle on it; I want to learn something about the terrible ramifications of economic inequality of which before I was ignorant.

2) There's clearly something genuine behind this. That's good.

So let's bring it together; you've got a great little message but you're telling it to me in a rather dry way. I've read a lot but by no means enough about greed and capitalism - but the trouble is that it's always phrased in that same driveling way: obligatory, throwaway references to "families ruined", littered with lazy remarks about "conscience" or whatever.

I can't tell you how to write this poem, because if I did then it wouldn't be telling me anything knew. But to give you an idea of what I mean--

You could make it personal. You could lead us through a dramatic contrast between two members of society - an agent and a victim of capitalism. Perhaps show us a family breakdown developing, with hints to the fact that it's because a fat cat somewhere is looking for a more expensive bottle of wine, and is funding it by cutting his employees' wages. A bit cliched, obviously, but it would let you use more emotive imagery, or let you explore other themes like the control money holds over relationships? Just a thought!

On the other hand, you could withdraw completely and make it dry and theoretical. At the moment, you've got a messy mix of the abstract "conscience" and the concrete "dyed green". Perhaps you could focus on the former - talk about consciences lining up like soldiers around the currency of the world. I don't know, that was awful. But there's an idea.

In short, give us a fresh angle! Tell me something about greed that I didn't know before.

Hope that helped! Obviously send me a message if you need anything clarifying (I have a habit of writing very late at night/early in the morning, lol).

-Mark

This seems like quite a powerful poem, and had some though put into it.

I don't quite understand the first line, and what its intention is to portray, whilst all the other meaning are clear as to their intent.

The punctuation on this is irregular and doesn't seem to be structured in any particular way. Like some have some punctuation, and some have none.

"For the food we can only eat as much as our body allows we want the world, but even that doesn't suffice." despite it being on 2 different lines, it reads as once sentence because there no punctuation.

The other punctuation makes sense, but has no form or order. As well as a poem making sense it needs to read right as well. Because that defines how it flows and how it sounds. Which is just as important as the words themselves in my opinion.

But otherwise and deeply thought poem.

-Skyy