Young Writers Society

Hey there Doss - [this is actually my 900th review! and I'm so glad that it's a review for one of your pieces!]

I missed the tag for this! So happy to see a new poem from you.

Things I loved
Your imagery is good in here - you've got a few unique pieces where you're really digging in deeply on just what a burning candle might look like to the speaker. I particularly liked the second line with the detail that the whole candle had burnt down so there was no wax left even - really cool image.

Metaphor - I'm glad you put a metaphor in here, figurative language always brings a poem up to a new level I think because it allows you to really read a poem at more than one level of meaning, your metaphor "that burns your soul down to ash" is really interesting too - I was left wondering what that might mean, and why the candle had this effect on that person - was it an image of hell? was it love? was it anger? what was the candle a symbol for?

I also think you did a great job with editing this piece and formatting - the spelling is clean, and you made consistent choices in your capitalization and punctuation.

A few Grammar/Typos
A few typos/grammar things I'd change:

In the first line, you've put two spaces between "flickering" & "in"

I don't think you need a comma after "fire" in line 4 after "burning like the fire"

In this line "that fly across your head" I think you meant the speaker's head, in which case it should be "my" instead of "your" since you're writing in first person earlier.

Something that can be improved

I think the main area of improvement would be in narrative-continuity, by this I mean, how does each image build one complete picture or story. If you take the images you have right now, they are beautiful and interesting, but they feel a bit disconnected. They are all tied by the fire imagery, but I don't understand what's going on.

Here's how I interpret your poem's narrative-continuity so far:

A person sees a candle, the candle melts, they realize the candle is a metaphor for their life, they feel their soul burn or think they're going to die, and then they start "imagining images" that are flying across their mind like smoke.

The main question I'm left with is what is the connection of the candle to their soul, and what were the images that were flying across their mind, why were they significant?

Although poems don't ever tell a complete story like a novel, they still have elements of a story - conflict, character, setting - and all of those fit together to build interest. Right now your poem has good setting and character, but I'm not sure about what the conflict is, or what the poem's overall significance is. I think that is a really developed level of poetry-writing, but you are ready for it!

Keep on writing and especially using those good imagery and figurative language techniques that make poetry shine!

Let me know if you had any questions about my review.

Your friend,

- alliyah

Hi! Che here for a quick review.
I'll just start by pointing out some errors I spotted whilst reading your poem.

While the wax, just melts down to nothing,

There burning, like the fire,

That burns your soul, down to ash

My thoughts start to imagine, images,

Hi Dossereana. I am here for short review.
First of all, I love how you express burning candles as "blazing smoke from a volcano". The poem has one spelling mistake. You know if you say "There burning" it doesn't really makes sense. So I'll think it's a spelling mistake, which means "There" needs to be "Their. Also I suggest you go to next stanza after you put a comma. I think your ways of discribing the candles made me feell I want to rea more of your work. Great Job!

Keep on writing!

>ChrisDixon