Young Writers Society

Hey there Cat! Here to review your poem as requested! Hopefully this review will come out as helpful despite how long it took for me to finally write it. It looks like @alliyah has given quite a quality review (I haven't read it or any others, so apologies if I repeat something), so I'll try to write one of quality as well, but no guarantees this will do it justice. Anyway, let's get on to the review!

The first stanza's lines were what hit me first. The three matching lines of 'Not _____ enough' were powerful in terms of the message but weak in terms of the actual written form. I know the whole message of this poem is centered around the theme of not being good enough, so how might you be able to write this in a way that is not blatantly saying 'not enough'? Perhaps go into depth with how the speaker is not good enough in each individual aspect, and reword the lines so they flow more evenly on the tongue. If that didn't make sense, here is what I mean with an example:

For 'not skilled enough' — what skills is the speaker not good enough with? A hobby? How are they not 'good enough'? Specifics to these lines would enhance the imagery, in my opinion. Also, try to use new words that aren't mentioned as much throughout the poem. It isn't as repetitive this way, and a wider range of words used would strengthen every line.

This leads me to my next point, which relates to the vocabulary idea, though I'd like to delve into this concept separately. I'm basing this on on this site which was featured in the Staff Picks on the front page. The Diction section really struck out to me with this poem. There were several parts of this poem where I felt like lines or words could be cut off and other moments where I felt like there was too little information? For example, what other, more representational, poetic, flowing word would be better than feeling like 'trash'? There are deeper words out there that you perhaps didn't notice, and would portray the poem differently. Some lines just felt a bit more sloppy than others because of the rushed paced it seemed to be going at. I think simply reading through the poem might help you find spots to improve wording and vocabulary.

As we get farther and farther into the poem, we get into a more delicate, personal, deep topic than where the poem started. It's good for the reader to experience the speaker's life, but when we get to personal experiences like these, we need emotion to carry us readers through in order to be able to comprehend such a topic. I'm sure everyone gets a sense of not being enough in their lives, but what exactly does it feel like for the speaker? Why is it feeling like this at such an extreme, and what emotions does it make the speaker feel? I'm getting actions of the speaker, such as 'hiding away', but is that because of fear, anger, sadness, etc?

I was a little disappointed that the beginning stanza wasn't more touched upon later in the poem or at the ending. I'm saying this because the speaker went into depth with the whole 'not pretty enough' concept but not the two other lines of the like. Perhaps you just strayed farther away from the other two? I don't know; I feel like since you covered that one, you could cover the other two? It would also explain and go into more depth about why the speaker wasn't good enough in those areas like I mentioned before.

But still slightly tangled up

Hello to my favorite uniquely colored cat on YWS! I'm here to review your poem, so here we go!

Here are some of my thoughts:

Narrative
So generally this poem is about a speaker who is bombarded either in their mind or in reality by the opinions that others impose upon them. The poem follows through the thoughts the speaker goes through and the impact of that self-doubt that they feel like they cannot escape no matter how they try to change themselves to meet the expectations of others. At it's very worse the thoughts or voices even suggest that the speaker kill themselves (3 stanzas from the end). At this point the speaker has a revelations of sorts and rather than continuing to be be-littled by the opinions around them, they realize their value and stand from the oppressive thoughts promising in the resolution to fight for others who may be going through the same thing.

A lot of good stuff expressed there, and I really appreciate that you gave the piece enough depth to make it not all one-tone. Of course not every poem needs a "happy ending" but allowing a narrative to have different layers of emotions, makes it far more engaging than one that's all the same flavor of happy or sad or scared etc. By allowing the poem's narrator to develop in the piece and have a revelation by the end, you create a more engaging story and maybe even end on a call to action.

Now a few comments on aspects of the narrative (or the story aspect of the poem) that I thought could have been a bit clearer:

1. I found it difficult to pin-point the source of the conflict - sometimes it seemed it was people generating these negative thoughts, sometimes it seemed like friends or relationships, then other times I wondered if it was all in the narrator's head. Some of this was because in some places the negative thoughts changed pronouns (from I to you) and weren't consistently off-set with italics or indents, so it became a little unclear what was what. I'd recommend tightening up that aspect so that readers can have a clearer idea of the overall conflict arch of the piece.

2. Also on the topic of conflict. I know that negative thoughts can spin out of control and effect all aspects of life, but that's a lot to cover in one piece. Rather than making the negative thoughts deal with everything under the sun - from skills, to intelligence, to image, weight, popularity etc. I would pick one and really highlight that. Most of the negative thoughts seemed to revolve around cultural perceptions of beauty - so that might be a good one to focus on, so that the conflict is more stream-lined and you can really explore that issue without it being distracted or watered down by other ones.

3. I'll talk a bit more about this in the theme section, but I think your metaphorical language could have more cohesion as well for more impact. For instance, a running-metaphor through the piece was the relation between these comments and the author feeling like they were put down or pinned to the ground. Good metaphor, this adds some uniqueness to a conflict that's been gone over many times before. But I think you could make the metaphor stronger by building it up a bit more. Rather than just repeating, I'm on the ground, I'm pushed to the ground, I wanna get up -- try making the metaphor develop (and tell it's own story, you can even add more concrete and imagery details to it too) like "I'm pushed to the hard floor", "I strain to get up, but fall further", "Suddenly I can stand again, and I push back on the floor, finding my footing" -- etc. Do you see how that makes the metaphorical aspect of the poem more developed? It's an easy way to make a poem seem more poetic too, by giving it more layers, and more ways to unpack it.

So to summarize, you have a great narrative arc in this piece (you've got a strong narrator, clear conflict, and resolution) I just want to see you hone in a bit more on just what the conflict is, and then develop what you've got a bit more.

Wording
This piece felt like as far as wording it somewhat wafted back and forth from very simplistic (in the first few stanzas especially with the one worded cascade). And then later in the sections with more heavy prose the language became much more developed (with words like succumb, venting, comfort etc). I would say both of these methods (short & simple or long & prosey) have their own pros and cons. One thing that might be good to work on though is balance between the two. If you're going to use both methods, don't have three really long prosey stanzas and then two really simple ones because the lack of balance becomes obvious and the transition is awkward. A more interesting method to keep the reader on their toes is to intersperse simpler stanzas with some long prose lines and vice-versa. Keep it mixed up and don't put all of your most complicated words in one bunched up stanza.

As far as flow of the poem and wording, I didn't see many issues and it read quite nicely. I only caught one small grammar mistake: "temptingness" isn't a word. It should be "temptation" or "tempting words".

Impact of Message
You've given us a poem about social pressures, great topic, and you express a lot of the emotions that I think many people go through and relate to very well.

One way you heightened emotional impact was to personify and physicalize what was happening in the narrator's mind - through the description of monsters and falling on the ground. These, I thought were some of the best parts of the poem and something that should definitely be highlighted.

Overall, I thought the poem's emotional impact may have been a little watered down by the length of the piece. Some of the middle stanzas didn't feel like new material was happening to the narrator, so it became a bit stagnant. If you can heighten the metaphors and emotional language in those middle sections I think it will help with that limitation. Also I would advise to be very wary of the emotional language that is used, especially in the cascading words. When poetry addresses our bare emotions without all the metaphor and flowery language, it either comes across as being really vulnerable or being really cliche. It's a fine line. One way to try to avoid the cliche risk, is to make sure the bare emotional words are developed and specific ones. Rather than using words like "cry", "sad" or "alone" you can use more developed synonyms or longer phrases. Not saying all the one or two -word lines are cliche, just that they might be on the edge, and something you might take a second look at.


Overall, I think my favorite piece of this is the emotional layering that I mentioned earlier, and that the narrator's progression to the end is very powerful in those last two stanzas where they finally take a stand for themselves. I think you tackled an excellent topic, and I hope you continue to use poetry to address important topics that need to be talked more about.

Please let me know if you have any questions about my review!

And never stop writing.

~alliyah

I really liked this poem a lot! I think it delivers a powerful message regarding society and its standards, and I related a lot to this poem while reading it.

I think the only issue I have personally while reading this is how the poem is structured. It's a little issue for me really; I'm a little confused on how the poem is supposed to be structured. It seems that you purposefully start a new stanza when it seems to voice your inner, negative thoughts. But there’s other instances where I can’t exactly find the purpose of why you indented that certain line. For example, in the short, second-to-last stanza, I can’t figure out why you indented that, though I’m sure you had some intention behind doing so. But maybe I’m just picky.

But hey, you did a really good job! Keep it up!

Thanks for sharing this poem which personifies trends and social expectations which the speaker feels have victimized her. We are all the products of socialization and socialization involves the acceptance of social norms which those within the culture are expected to respect or else be considered weird or anti-social. This socialization helps us to survive as members of our given societies.

However, certain social expectations can indeed lead certain persons into extremes. For example, the idea that the epitome of beauty means that a woman must not be full-bodied has caused some women to become anorexic. Refusing to eat until they are on the verge of starvation.

The poem expressses the frustration because the speaker feels that she can never live up to such trends and ideals which such social expectations demand. Finally she decides to just be herself and feels liberated.

BTW
In certain societies the idea of beauty is that a woman wear lip-plates. So having your normal lips in that culture would not be enough.
https://culturalbeauty.wordpress.com/20 ... lip-plate/

In another culture your neck would be too short
http://www.medicalbag.com/body-modifica ... le/472349/

Yet in another culture your normal foot would need to be deformed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

https://nwfootankle.com/files/Rossi-Fas ... mation.pdf