My Chemical Romance Reunion

Dearest Strange,

I find your poem quite bewildering a beautiful in its simplicity. The few details here and there, mixed with interesting questions such as:

"What will become of us, what will become of this."

However, I must say that I find the flow of the poem rather bumpy, with too many sudden stops. My recommendation is to find some connectors to strategically place in between sentences so that the poems feels more natural.

Even so, I really enjoyed this poem. It was easy for me to imagine your two main characters sitting on that bench, commenting on poetry, and I love the little details that you left along the way. I would very much like to read more of your poems.

You're an author, Strange. And as an author, you have absolute power. Never forget that

XOXO,

Erika Hale

Willard! I'm actually here to review another one of your poems today. Excited?

Well, I like it. Nicely done! It's yet another solid one of your poems, and your formatting was a nice touch. You do a good job of developing the main characters and your themes of angst, romance, and moments of contemplation (which seem to be your forte, I notice) through well-constructed scenes and descriptions. In particular, the dissonance between the narrator's thoughts and his response was especially well-written, and did a nice job of providing sarcastic remarks against overtly-dramatic poetry. I also admired the ending and the way you communicated the narrator's fears of an ever-changing reality and his own self-doubt and habits. So, in all, given the themes and general ideas of your poem, as well as its arrangement, I'm impressed. Nicely done!

On the other hand, I have a few criticisms with the poem. Primarily, my main problem is that I could easily divide this into two smaller poems, with the line of separation between "I feel weird" and "There's something I..." These two sections could quite easily stand on their own and preserve your key themes. Or perhaps that's just me overthinking it. Regardless, there isn't a solid connection between these parts of your poem; it feels like you're jumping from one topic to another with no room in-between, even if both parts are wonderfully conveyed.

Beyond that, your arrangement of lines can sometimes be awkward. In general, I like to pause after the end of one line and before the next, as one must make a natural pause in those circumstances. While you sometimes manipulate these said pauses to good effect, as in "There's something I/have to say tomorrow," which was brilliant, they can sometimes come across as odd. In this case, my major complaint is "on the steel bars that/support the bleachers." You may want to change this to "on the steel bars/that support the bleachers," for greater clarity, although that is up to your own discretion, given that your present arrangement keeps line length fairly consistent.

All in all, though, I like this. It's a solid, and good, poem. I guess my complaints are likely minor nitpicks, although I personally must admit that this didn't particularly call to me. You didn't mess around with a lot of figurative language, and, compared to your previous poems, this almost felt a little formulaic. While good, it wasn't exactly evocative, although I admire the themes and messages that you provide, among them the awkwardness of the narrator, poetry, romance, angst, and time. And that's about all I have to say. Well done!