Not enough

Hey ThinksTooMuch!

I'm here to review your poem.

Per standard YWS Sandwich, I'll start out with what I liked, move on to what I didn't like, what could use improvement, and why, and then finish with a summary.

What I Liked:

I really liked the subject matter. I think you've got a good idea of what to write about, something emotionally driven for you, and something that you can really make a good character for. You've got the idea of what a poem should be about down pat. If there's anything to improve about the idea, it's just that it might need a little bit of specification. I don't really know if this is a parent/child relationship or a romantic relationship, or sibling relationship, or even if it's a pet/owner relationship. That's my one critique about the subject.

To Be Improved:

I feel like you could really use some work on making this a unique poem. Right now because of the end punctuation, the bland rhymes that aren't a consistent aabb structure, or even an aabcc structure the poem feels really lack luster to me. I've read this before. It might not have been this subject, but it was this syncopation and style with the same amount of emotional content for the reader because the words you picked are so broad spectrum.

Suggestions:

I would like to see you really focus into a detail of a relationship. Don't make this a Hallmark card, make it a story. Really make a situation that you can talk about in this poem that has characters, plot, and even setting. Work through all of that in your head, come up with what emotions this speaker is feeling, and then write things that no other speaker could say. Make this poem unique by making it exact. Don't go overboard with specifics but give examples that only fit with this particular situation for this character. If you wrote this poem again with a different speaker in mind, make sure it couldn't be the same poem.

The reason I suggest this is because I feel like right now anyone could say these things about a lot of different situations and it would be the same. You've gotten caught in the trap of rhyming. You sacrificed the story and the line for the sound of the rhyme.

Rambling:

There's no reason for a poem to rhyme, honestly. There are thousands of published poems that don't rhyme. A lot of the most popular authors right now don't rhyme their poetry. One of the problems with rhyming in poetry is that it's been done so many times before with larger more vibrant vocabularies, that today, unless you can really string words together like Eminem [who uses slant rhyme, standard rhyme, internal rhyme, and meter instead of rhyme] it's going to come across forced or you're not going to have enough content for the rest of the poem to actually make it a good poem.

That being said, I understand that you're going for lyrical, but if you look at the lyrics today, they're very bland. It's about the sound, not the words in so many cases it's overwhelming. You can do lyrical poetry without making it rhyme. There are songs that don't rhyme. Lyrical poetry is more about getting the right beat and meter rather than actually having couplets. Speaking of couplets, having "absence" in there really doesn't fit unless you decide to add another line where you have an unrhymed line between your bb cc rhymes.

If I Lost You:

I'm just going to quickly go over the terms I've used in this . I'm just doing this because I tend to talk over people's heads when I talk about poetry. If you understood everything, skip the spoiler.

Spoiler! :

Definitions
end punctuation: This is when a poem ends every line with some form of punctuation causing a long pause between the reading of the lines. Usually this gives readers a chance to ignore the rest of the poem and also loses the chance to explore enjambment perks. It can be used well in situations where a point should be accented, or a certain word is very important and falls at the end of a line.

enjambment: this is when a poem has sentences that flow between lines. Usually this makes a poem quicker to read and smoother because the reader reads to the end of the sentence and has the next sentence to pick up and continue reading. Enjambment also creates unique lines in poetry which can have separate and vital meanings aside from the meaning of the sentence.

aabb structure: This is short hand for a poem made up of couplets. When recording end rhyme you use consecutive letters of the alphabet to indicate lines that rhyme together; as such line 1 is a line two is a and they rhyme together. When a line does not rhyme, it is assigned the next letter. If it is the same word, it is assigned a capital letter. aabb structure is consecutive couplets.

Couplets: Two consecutive lines which rhyme together aa, or bb, or cc, etc. They can appear as a stanza unto themselves or in a stanza with other lines.

consecutive: you probably know this but just in case this just means directly after one another.

Speaker vs Character: A character is in a story, a speaker is in a poem because poetry originally was spoken word and has maintained the main character's name as a speaker. Poetry is meant to be read aloud, not silently.

Types of Rhyme
slant rhyme: This is when two things almost rhyme such as thwack and cracked. It's a little more complicated than that, but I'm not going to get into it. Basically it's almost rhyming.

internal rhyme: This is when you have rhymes in the middle of a line rather than at the end. It usually makes the poem flow smoother because rhymes at the end of a line break it up and don't allow a smooth flow from one line to the next usually.

Summary:

Basically, I like that you didn't pick a subject about two people being in love with this style of poetry, but at the same time, I feel like this style has been way overused and with the rhymes you chose, there was nothing exciting or new. I could predict the words you were going to use as I was reading the poem because it was standard to me. I'd like to see you rewrite this poem with a fleshed out idea of who your speaker is and what their situation is so that you can put in details and explore all of the different ways that they can really express their situation. Use examples. Show us what's going on. That's going to improve the emotional drama the reader experiences and help provide a solid base for all of your poetry explorations.

Hope to see you around!

Aley

Hello, and welcome to YWS! Its your friendly neighborhood Questio here to shoot you a quick review!
So I was reading this and thinking "Nothing rhymes with the third line. Why does nothing rhyme with the third line?" I'm pretty sure that was intentional, and the hook is that the word is absence... and there's an absence of a rhyme. Clever, if intentional.
There is clear emotion in this poem that makes it beautiful. It flows very smoothly, which is an important factor in poetry, but one small suggestion would be to add "all that I've got" into the second line. It just seems to fit the beat a little better.
I would consider not starting any lines with "But" if I were you. Fortunately I'm not because only you could write this, but (haha, I just used it...) the poem could become more poignant with strong line openers.
I really like this poem and hope to see more from you soon!
Keep it up!
~Q

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