Young Writers Society

Hey TahaT11n,

As requested, here's a review from me to you~

First off I want to say that I'm really happy to see that this poem really sounds like it comes from the heart. That's not to say that you wrote it about an experience you had, but it sounds like something from one real individual to another, and if you're Not writing about yourself, that's hard to do. I like that about this poem because you're including things which normally wouldn't be thought about in a poem that didn't sound honest, such as bringing up that this isn't a poem About Ryu, it's a poem To Ryu. That distinction is important in the poem, and it's important for the reader too because it's not a commemorative ode, it's a poem, and it's a dialogue from one individual to another. This type of conversational poetry is the type I love the best, so good job!

That being said, there are always things to improve. You have some minor grammar errors and a couple sentences that don't make much sense if you read them all together as a sentence. Because of this, I've taken the liberty to smash your lines back together and put it into a paragraph so you can try to see what I'm seeing as a reader.

Here is the result:

So the few errors that I found, one was a word that was the wrong word, or rather a word that was misspelled. Specially is like, I made this specially for you, especially is the word you were looking for. Especially is an adverb which basically is singling something out. Specially is to do something in a special manner. You want to single out that it's done a lot more frequently at night, or it's felt a lot more frequently at night, that's especially. When we talk, it's slurred a lot of the time and the e is dropped, but in writing, it needs to be there or you need a ' to indicate that something was removed. "'specially" or "especially" are thus your options.

Next issue is a bit of a pluralization problem. Why are there multiple souls screaming out again? Aren't we just dealing with a singular soul, the speakers' soul? Having multiple souls with "souls" sort of throws that off, especially when you're just using one soul later.

Next thing next, I'd like to introduce you to the wonderful world of ellipsis. You're using them, but you're so all over the board with them that you should really read this and learn what you're using. The Great Grammar Compendium and here's a really short version that's not as through Dashes, Semicolons, and Ellipses but please, check it out. Personally that's one of the reasons I really dislike the use of ellipsis in poetry. People always disrespect it as a punctuation mark after the era of chat because they just see it as a way to pause for as many dots as you put in, but No, that's not how it works. If you're writing something that's supposed to be pretty grammar, or supposed to be published, you don't use chat language, just like you don't write a poem with u unless you're making a comment on the disintegration of our language because of chat. It's just bad form, and isolates the poem from an older audience which isn't dead yet. The older audience sees it as unprofessional and thus dismisses it out of hand.

Moving on. You have some run on sentences, or sentences which have more than one subject and should be split up or conjoined with a conjunction, or semi-colon.

But souls want to scream loud The words trapped inside- Specially when it's night- Either a listener answers or not.

The first sentence is subject: But souls, predicate: want to scream loud.
The second sentence is subject: The words predicate: trapped inside, especially* when it's night.
The third sentence is subject: Either a listener predicate: answers or not.

In short, you should have three sentences here. I think the reason you don't have three sentences here is because you are omitting conjunctions in your poem, which is fine, but a little confusing. The problem shows up when you start capitalizing the start of the sentences but not having a period. You're capitalizing the start of the sentences because you want to have a capital at the beginning of each line. Whether that's conscious or just what your word program does whenever you hit enter, is completely irrelevant. You posted the poem with the first letter of every sentence capitalized and it takes away from the poem.

You have some really good emotion in this, but with all of the capitals thrown around, it's hard to see that. You really have to focus on reading through the lines to get to that emotion, and because of your capitalization, it takes away from that ability because you wonder if maybe you forgot a period, but no, you just don't have a lot of them.

I'd suggest you take out the capitals, and then go through and check your punctuation to make sure it is where you want it, where you want your reader to breath. Your punctuation should follow your breathing pattern as you read it for this poem because it's so driven by emotion. That's going to portray the best reading and give the most drama to the poem.

Last thing last: you have some grammar and punctuation errors such as in: You said," I raise my hands to you"
which should be: You said, "I raise my hands to you"
and a space is missing after your punctuation here: "Ryu,the poem is for you"

So, read it again, and change your punctuation to fit your breathing, take out the capitals at the beginning of each line, and after all that's said and done, read it one more time and see if there's anything that gets off topic, isn't clear, or doesn't add to the poem, and take that out.

Overall, you have a really strong poem here, but you're missing some things that could really make it pop. Do that, and the poem will be even better, in my opinion.

Hope this helps ^^

Aley