Young Writers Society

I liked this poem.The way you wrote it brings a sense of fear in the poem.Like we’re you,the author,experiencing your phobias.Yes,I do agree that a phobia is much more than a fear.The way you describe having a phobia was detailed,too.You’ve described what is difficult to describe.A phobia.Nice poem.I enjoyed reading it.I hope you have a wonderful and lovely day and night.

Oh wow! I found this poem very compelling, especially for such a serious subject; I think you do a great job especially here carving out a lot of the "filler" content to get to the core of what you were trying to say and portraying emotion in layered ways that makes the reader able to really feel what the speaker is communicating.

Tackling "health" topic poems can be quite a challenge in trying to speak in a way that people who haven't experienced whatever's being described can still relate/understand, while also not painting with too broad of a brush, or running into pitfalls of being "stereotyping" or ending up offensive. But you do quite a nice job here of speaking a truth that I'm assuming from the author's note is informed by personal experience, while not speaking for others, and you do so in a sensitive, vulnerable way that comes across as very sincere. Which is really something hard to do again, so I commend you. I think one of the values of poems like this that tread on this sensitive territory is that it can make people understand these types of rare health situations a bit more and create some empathy / awareness - while also allowing people who've experienced something similar to feel "seen" or "heard". While I have no experience with "emetophobia" outside of having heard of it, I used to be absolutely terrified of fainting in public (asthenophobia) to the point that it really negatively impacted my life for a few years, and am very very thankful not to have to deal with that anymore; but that being said, I can really relate to a lot of what you describe - especially the feeling of powerlessness that a phobia like that can cause. And the worst part is exactly what you describe in the third stanza that you become anxious about something that you know there is nothing to fear over - so frustrating! Thank you to giving words to something that is very difficult to describe.

If your poem is written based on personal experiences, I'm really sorry that this is something you've been having to deal with and hope you've got some supportive people to talk to about it. Also I really do commend you for being brave in being willing to share your experience on this subject - because for many that's a very hard thing to do.

Back to the poem itself, I think Rook has made some good suggestions especially on getting a little more concrete. Metaphor and figurative language are the magic that make poems sparkle; but it's the connection to the concrete that I think helps it pull at a reader's heart-strings. To take this poem to the next level - I'd really try to balance the two techniques. You've got a lot of figurative language in here - but could use a little bit more concrete description of what the speaker is feeling / doing / experiencing by getting a bit more specific in your descriptions. I have a poetry article about that here if you want to read a little more on how to do that in your poem.

On the overall form - I didn't mind the form of the repeated "It's like" but I did think it might be fun to experiment with the poem's line breaks a little! Even writing this in paragraph poetry-form might be an interesting exercise - also I wouldn't be afraid to delve into the images that you establish a little bit more. One interesting aspect of this poem too - is I couldn't quite decipher if you intended that first few lines to be read separately as an author's note or part of the poem itself. I honestly think it could be part of the poem - and along those lines, and you might experiment a little more with the form to make that beginning part blend into the poem itself even more. Another aspect on form that I enjoyed was the "and" in a line on its own - I really am a fan of extra conjunctions for more drama and I think you used that technique well; making the speaker seem like they were growing in tension or emotion as the poem continued with each line - with the extra line breaks giving even more pause and drama.

Overall, I thought you did a really good job communicating emotion in this piece - I think areas to look for editing might be in experimenting more with formatting, adding more concrete / specific details to make the poem really settle in the reader's mind, and maybe giving a bit more of a "narrative" or "plot development" to the poem (rather than a list with a final point, having the poem grow and build one stanza drawing on the previous until it comes to a final conclusion). Thank you for sharing this, and good luck in your future writing!

~alliyah

Hello!
Please forgive any typos, I'm typing this on my phone and don't have any spell check type deal.
I've known several people with emetophobia, at least one with it so bad that it made her terrified to eat food and she ended up very underweight and that started to affect her health in other ways. I say this just so you know where I'm coming from in terms of knowledge about it and how severe it can be sometimes!
I understand that this might be a poem you write for yourslef to get your emotions out and explain it to yourself, or a poem you wrote to explain your experiences to other people. If either or both of those were your goal, I think you've done a really great job! I tend to review stuff more along the idea that you might eventually want to send the poem in to be published in a journal somewhere, or poems that exist to be "Art" and not necessarily to have another purpose beyond that or to explain some real experience.
So I'm going to critique this as if you were planning to publish this in a journal or something. If that's not your goal, feel free to disregard this, and either way, know I am not saying that the words and experiences you've written here are wrong or invalid or anything. It's brave to share this kind of work with the world, and I don't want you to think I don't appreciate that bravery, because I do.

All that said, I think this poem relies a bit too much on the abstract. It seems to want to explain what an abstract experience is like (a phobia isn't something you can see or smell or touch), but in trying to explain it, it just uses more abstractions. It also relies a lot on cliches which should almost always be avoided in my opinion. "walking on eggshells" has been used so many times that it has become a cliche and hardly has meaning in poetry anymore. Cliches can be useful in regular speech for getting a point across but poetry is an art form that is focused first and foremost, before anything else, on language. If the individual words in the poem aren't strong, the poem istself is going to struggle to be anything other than weak.

Here is a list of words in your poem that are not abstractions: nagging, grasping, dark cloud, lightheaded, eggshells, heartbeats, hallways, park, shaking and trembling, screaming and crying. Most of these words however were part of a cliche or something else that feels vague or like it needs more specifics.
The more specific you can be in a poem, the better. Like where are these hallways, what do they look like or smell like or feel like. What about the park? What's its name, what time is it, what season?
If I were writing something of a similar format (I do like your repetition of the "it's like." I think a list of similies is a really cool form!), I might write,
"It's like the blast of cold water
from a sprinkler at Blink Lake Park
at one a.m. afeter you accidentally fall asleep
on a grassy hill under the sunset"

That's not a situation any of your readers have been in, but it's a situation they can easily imagine and relate to because of all the specific, sensory details. The purpose of metaphor and similie imo is to take an abstract concept and say that it's like something tangible and easily understood. "My love is like a red red rose" is a cliche now, but it gained popularity because it took something so abstract and turned it into something we can all imagine! Walking on eggshells was also like that. But now that it's a cliche, it doesn't have the same power that it used to. You want to come up with your own metaphors that are visceral, sensory, and tactile but that still make sense for the thing they are supposed to represent.
One other thing that is less important than including lots of sensory details and avoiding cliches and abstractions: Your line breaks seem to be made almost at random. I could be wrong about that, but in general (there are always exceptions to the rules), lines with only a single short word or just a couple short words should be avoided. It makes the poem seem overdramatic and puts a lot of emphasis on the short lines. Do you really want to emphasize "and" and "it's like" so many times? And the "step / I / take" lines will be read as if you underlined, bolded, italicized, and put 5 exclamation marks after each word there. It's melodramatic almost to a comical degree which is not what you want in a serious poem like this I think.

Anyway, I hope this helps! I think you have an interesting subject and format going here, but I think the poem could be enven stonger by focusing on concrete imagery!
Let me know if you have any questions, I always want to help however I can :] I put time into writing reviews because I really respect you and your potential as a writer. We all have within us the capability of becoming a capital g Great writer, and I truly believe that!
Keeo it up!
~Rook