Young Writers Society

So I'm not particularly familiar with poetry or song lyrics, but generally I liked this. I could hear myself rapping it throughout, because it has a good rhythm too it, an unexplainable force of nature that always surrounds songs. And I liked how it's about your grandmother--I feel like it's a univeral fact that everybody dies and everybody is born, but I rarely see the idea of missing somebody in your family you've never gotten to meet because they've passed long before you could ever meet them. It's a very poignant thought.

In any case, I only have a couple of nitpicks:

a silver lining, so lets set forth on this odyssey to break away from all these things that always bothered me.

This is all one line, but I feel like the line "To break away from all these things that always bothered me" ought to have been a separate line in itself, since it follows the rhyme scheme you had going on.

I'm waiting on the day where I get to say

Bendicion

No error, I just liked how it ended. Very touching, like you're waiting for death to finally greet your grandmother in heaven.

Now my thoughts on it, as a prosaic sort of person, is that you should probably add more imagery to it. You mentioned photographs, but I didn't really see in my head what those photographs looked like--was she a beautiful woman in them? Or was she old, tired, already on the verge of death? What made you see them in the first place? What compelled you to look at them? What was the texture of those old photographs, how did they feel in your hands and how did you feel looking at them, since you're probably used to modern photographs?

Another thing you could elaborate on is 'growing up'. Maybe you have friends who have living grandparents, and you wished that you had a grandmother who could play the part that those grandparents do in your childhood. How do you imagine growing up with your grandmother would be like? How do you feel it would change the way you're living right now? Would you be happier? Would it be more fulfilling? Or do you have absolutely no idea?

And you haven't even brought up secondhand experiences. Has your parents ever told any funny stories about your grandmother to you? Do you have aunts or uncles who describe your grandmother to be a loving woman, or some other personality type? If you can, use those words in the poem to convey a sense of familial closeness, like you've missed out on an experience you could've had if only you had been born a couple of years earlier.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Try to make it more personal. Personal songs are usually stronger, I think.

--Elliot.