Young Writers Society

Hello Vita! The title of this poem was intriguing so I thought I'd stop by for a review, courtesy of review day and Team Tortoise!

I love how you've connected science and poetry together in this poem! The information in the poem is pretty accurate, and you've worded it really beautifully. I especially love the lines,

Our atoms span gaps

Like the void between stars

An emptiness we fill

With thoughts of all the things

We do not know

Humans share sixty percent of ourselves

With a banana

All our differences come

From that simple spiral

We are the children of stars, we strive

To know beyond our sight.

With thoughts of all the things

We do not know

I'm really not too experienced with poetry, but I can definitely say I enjoyed this piece. It's quite interesting and thought-provoking to read, and personally I thought the title was unique and kind of clever. I have a few comments, but again I don't know much about poetry, so take or leave them.

Firstly this is probably a pretty insignificant but in between each stanza you have an ellipses to divide them. I'm guessing this was just a personal choice, but other than that I just can't tell what they're meant for exactly.

Secondly, some lines have abrupt brakes in between seemingly single phrases which felt like they broke the flow of the poem (at least in my opinion). Some of the verses I'm talking about are verse seven and eight in the first stanza and verse three and four of the fourth stanza. Again, this might just be a personal choice, but I'd still recommend looking it over.

Lastly I just have a suggestion, and it's about punctuation. You do include it, but you could use it to a better potential (this sort of relates to my last point). At the end of some lines you have periods and in the middle of some you have commas, but if you want to have sentence divided into lines flow better, I'd recommend putting commas at the end of some of the lines. Also, while you do have periods in some places, they are admittedly rare and imply all the verses before are just a run-on string, If you know what I mean. For example, the last stanza doesn't have a period until the very end, and not all the other stanzas have periods at the end. I'd look back and make sure if you want to use periods it's consistent throughout.

Sorry my review got a bit long, but overall it's a genuinely good piece and I enjoyed reading it, so thanks.

Nice job with this piece! I love all the specific details, and the way you painstakingly take the reader through the history of scientific discoveries. There is a certain gravity to your writing, that makes everything seem very important. I love the way you describe so many aspects of science. They all feel like small parts of a larger concept, but each of them are special in their own way.
However, I would encourage you to use more imagery. While I understood what was happening, I couldn’t really picture it in my head. There are so many opportunities, especially since you’re talking about science, to describe what these discoveries looked like, and to use imagery to emphasize your points. For example, you could describe Goodall’s “rebellious trek”. What did that look like? Can you paint a picture of Goodall in the forest? Another place you could add imagery is in the description of the Rosalind in her laboratory. Instead of saying “dimly lit”, you could say, “under the light of a flickering lightbulb”. More imagery would give the poem a storyteller aspect, which would help the reader’s understanding.
However, you did have some brilliant language in this poem. There are a lot of good connections and transitions between concepts. For example, when you link the space between atoms to the “emptiness we fill / with thoughts of all the things / we do not know”. That’s a really clever way to incorporate the two ideas.
Overall, this was a great poem. I learned a lot, and it made me think.