Young Writers Society

Ok, first off, I liked the poem. Everything doesn't have to be complex to be liked, so for me, it was good. As far as the run of the mill subject matter, everyone feels pain/rejection/whatever and many project that just like everyone else does especially when they aren't poetry heavyweights, SO being that you've gotten your feelings down on paper, the hardest part is done. To make this poem even more YOU, revise it, and use words or a point of view that brings more of that out, and you'll love it even more. We know you feel pain but something deeper will capture us more....

The only thing I'm confused about is the title.....I get it but what did they say no to

Reichieru, if you're being taught anything, part of that is learning what your limits are, and how you should best achieve higher and better skills. Before you do differentiation in mathmatics, you learn algebra; before you learn algebra, you learn basic calculations; before you learn those, you learn how to count and what the numbers mean. In the same way, the way to learn how to use rhyme most effectively is to get a proper working knowledge of other poetic techniques; because rhyme is one of the most difficult, it comes *after* you're already quite good at poetry.

You seem to be telling me this is something personal; it's not. It's about what her levels are, and how to improve, and the way to do that is by learning how poetry works, what's effective, and what ties in with what. In this case, rhyme is exceedingly dependant on not only meter and rhythm, but a good working vocabulary as well, not to mention an understanding of the difference between tail, discreet, half-rhymes etc. People love to go jumping in to poetry with nary a look; for goodness and all our sakes, it would be nice if people made some effort to understand how and why they're doing things first.

As for me telling her what to do because she "isn't up to my standards," I find that pretty offensive; I put a lot of effort into critiquing and trying to show people what works and what doesn't, and I'm pretty annoyed that you think it's from some superiority complex - if I didn't think I knew what I was talking about, I'd stick to "yeah it was great" comments like half the people I see. And for my "standards"; you'll notice I don't use rhyme in my poems, because I want to be decent at it and not flourish doggeral time and again.

I'd rather show her how to improve her poetry in general than work on specifics; I've seen the poems she posts (there have been a few) and they all exhibit that same problems. It's not about 'positive reinforcment', because I don't honestly believe in lying about such things - it's about a method of improvement, one that's better than fumbling around and 'practicing' the same mistakes over and over again; learning how to write poetry properly, from the ground up.

Either way, it's still rude to tell her what she may and may not write just because she is not up to your standards. Regardless of how you say it, you're still telling her she should write rhyming poetry because you don't think she's good. How can she become at rhyming poetry if she never writes rhyming poetry? Learn the art of positive communication and focus on how she can make THIS poem better rather than telling her that she sounds child (news flash: she is a child) and telling her what to do.

With regards to the rhyme thing, I personally never thing rhyming works unless you have a constant rhythm or meter as well. When it rhymes, you expect the same number of syllables in each line.

Other than that, awesome poem.

I didn't mean stop using rhymes until she's better at ryhming; I mean stop using them until she's better at poetry in general. Using rhyme effectively - *especially* in free verse poetry - is one of the hardest techniques to impress with. My advice for her and anyone is to lay off forcing poems to rhyme until they have at least a decent working knowledge of poetic skills and styles, and I'll keep to that.

I pretty much have to second everything bob said except when he told you not to do rhyming poems just because you're not good at them yet. Which is just plain rude. How is anyone supposed to get good if they don't practice them? Honestly, it's like telling someone not to play the piano just because they don't know how to play Mozart yet. And anyway, just because the rhyme may be obvious doesn't mean it was a bad rhyme. Choose the word that fits what you want to say.

Hokey-dokey:

First and foremost, you've spelt "you're" as "ur" in the title. It just isn't acceptable: use proper English.

Now, with regards to the poem:

Firstly, you have no punctuation. I get sick of saying it so often, but then, there are a lot of things I wish I didn't have to tell people. How can a reader tell where to pause? If I read this as you've written it, there wouldn't be a space to take a breath, because that's what punctuation indicates. You need commas, colons and semi-colons, fullstops, that sort of thing - read your poems out loud to yourself to find out where you naturally pause in the poem, and that's where punctuation goes.

Secondly: rhyme, rhythm and vocabulary. What exactly is going on here? You have incredibly short lines, and the meter is nasty-nasty: lots of three, four and five syllable lines thrown in at random. If you actually read this, it sounds bad, because your lines are so choppy that there's no hope of it flowing - you've got to make them longer, or at the very least standardise them a bit.
Then there's the rhyme - you've... well, you've rhymed words with the same words twice, and you've forced boring and simplistic rhyming couplets in other places. "Talk and walk" ? Yuck. Such blatant complete rhymes just scream 'childish writing' - if you honestly want a rhyming poem (and I'd advise you to leave well alone 'till you get better) then figure out how to use half and discreet rhymes.
Vocabulary ties into the other point: you've repeated yourself over and over again, to the point of rhyming the same words together. For goodness sake, branch out a bit so that there's something vaguely of interest - how on earth are you meant to convey any sort of feeling if you're repeating simple, short, boring words. It just clogs you down.

And finally, because I don't want to critique this anymore, your choice of topic: NO. NO, NO and NO. I want to scream it aloud to the heavens, because I have said it SO often: why must people *insist* on writing about their painful teenage relationships in *exactly* the same way as every other angst-ridden teenager before them?!
Quite frankly, any person who reads a decent amount of online poetry will have read about a hundred piece exactly like this. All your images are common, old and boring: pain, hurt, sadness, I loved you, you left me, blah blah blah - the fact is that every teenager will go through this, and an ungodly proportion of them will choose to write a poem about it. It's called angst, and it isn't good enough: find something else to write about, because adolescent break-ups simply don't interest the world at large.

There you have it - I don't like it, because I don't think it has anything going for it. I've outlined the reasons; I've outlined the solutions. Hope it helps; I'll see you around in the future.

Ooh, I like this. Your emotions are easy to relate to the way you present them. You don't need the big letters, though. Your poetry should be able to speak for itself without the use of those.

"Everyone sees---it can't hide
People'll know---there's no doubt"

I think those two lines would look better like for, as such:

"Everyone sees
It can't hide
People'll know
There's no doubt"

Also, in the third line of that little group, "People'll know", perhaps you should change it to "People will know". Did you have a distinct reason for putting the "'ll" there instead of "will"? It still only has one syllable, and "will" seems to flow better.

Keep writing!
-*-*--Diana--*-*-