Stigma

Hi there! First of all welcome to Young Writers Society! I see below, that you've said this is your first poem in English, which is absolutely amazing. I'm stopping by to leave a few of my thoughts here, but please let me know if you have any questions about my review and I'd be happy to help.

Formatting and Line-Breaks
I would absolutely echo what the reviewer said below that this poem might be more easily understood by readers if it was broken up into stanzas and further line-breaks. Sometimes this is more easily said than done with YWS formatting. I would suggest looking at these articles if you need a bit of help, they should break down exactly how to get the correct spaces into the piece. Article 1, Article 2.

Plot and Specificity
I want to take a second to talk about the plot of the piece. I think you did a good job creating some drama in a sort of intellectual problem. In other words, sometimes its hard to make struggles that are mostly internal seem interesting. Readers (even in poetry) often want action. You brought the internal conflict of stigma and fitting in by utilizing some really good metaphors that brought in a physical element like the line about "mountains shrouded by cloud" <-- really nice. I thought the last third of your piece really excelled with bringing the "internal" to the "physical" world with metaphors and actual examples. I would have liked to have seen this done a little bit more in the first two thirds.

For instance, in that first paragraph you give a lot of almost hypothetical situations, but you don't quite make them specific for the reader. There's a line about "promises stolen" and "lies" passed on by "elders" and "mistakes". But it isn't explained what these promises or lies actually are until later when this becomes part of the bigger picture of stigma. If you gave some concrete examples in the first paragraph/section it would help readers connect more to what you're saying right away. I would try to think of an example of a promise or a lie that fits into what you're saying and include it as an example. Sometimes ambiguity builds intrigue and mystery, but other times it just loses the focus of the piece and gives the reader so much guessing work that they can't tell what's going on.

In poetry sometimes that's the hardest part -- balancing ambiguity and specificity. I think in that first chunk of the poem you could use just a bit more specificity because these are such vital parts of the rest of the poem, and its introducing the core concepts of the piece.

Word Choice and Flow
Lastly, I'd like to talk about the flow and word choice of the piece. Although it's a bit hard to see the even flow of the poem now as its not broken up into lines, I did like your use of repetition at the beggining and end of the piece. It really helps to build intensity. And I would say that was the tone that I got from the whole piece. I could kind of imagine a Morgan Freeman like character narrating your whole poem and delving into the world's great secrets or wisdom; the truth about stigmas. I think your word choice along with the repetition also helped with this. You kept the sentences and phrases formal, and used some nice specific words like "shrouded", "ignorance", and "apathy", and "normality", and "writhe" to really make the narrator or speaker of this piece come across as being wise. This very much helps the message of the poem get across because it makes readers trust the speaker as they sound like they know what they're talking about with the elevated language.

Overall, it was an interesting piece to read and I look forward to reading the rest of your work in the future!

best,
alliyah

This Review has been brought to you by Team Autumn. Happy Review Day!

Hey there Aaron,
Welcome to YWS! I hope you're enjoying the site so far and it's great to see that you're posting something so soon after joining.

This is an unconventional form for a poem and reads more like a piece of prose. It would really benefit from some sort of structure. Try separating out the lines so each sentence is on a separate line. These can then be split to form stanzas. I think that maybe that's maybe what you're lacking.

The other option of course is to classify this as prose. Either way, you have a big chunk of text here that needs separating out in some shape or form. The way it is currently, the whole meaning of the piece is completely lost as the reader tries to make sense out of the structure. Maybe try reading through some other poetry on this site for some inspiration.

The fragmented sentences read a lot like run off lines in poetry, but you need to decide which of them you want to emphasise for effect and which ones might be less important. It helps a poem to have impact in different areas. At the moment, the message you have hidden in here is a little confused and hopefully by playing around with form and structure you'll find something that works for you and helps bring out this piece of work.

I'd like to read it again if and when you edit it.
Hope this has been helpful to you and hope you continue to post on here.
Icy.

THIS MY FIRST POEM IN ENGLISH SO FAR