Young Writers Society

I love this poem. I am a sucker for symbolism and short poetry, and you have packed a Hulk-sized punch in literally only five lines. Five. That is amazing. I'm gonna kind of analyze it rather than nitpicking it, because I honestly think this is a perfect piece of art.

I feel like this poem is about losing control of something in a person's life, for instance, addiction. Feeding it was a mistake-- starting to give in to something that will ultimately hurt you is always a mistake. When you say that it's grown familiar, I took that as it's a common occurrence: the addiction/obsession/mistake/whatever is starting to take over your life. You don't realize you want to stop-- or shoot it, in this poem-- until it has already become out of your control and is maybe even killing you in the process.

Very deep poem with beautiful symbolism. I hope you write more like this because I'm in love with poems like this. Thank you so much for sharing this with me.

All my love

Lilith

Hello! I am RainaDee and I'm going to give a quick review!

1) I actually love the length (a little longer would be nice, but short and sweet is cool)
a) I love that this length gives the reader LOTS of room to interpret the poem; it leaves open too many possibilities to the meaning.
b) However, the length of the poem does raise the problem of if you have a specific meaning you're trying to get across. If you want a specific meaning or tone, then you need to add a few more lines.
c) If you want an open-ended poem, then leave it as is!

2) So, some of the symbolism is a little weird, but rad at the same time. Meaning, it's a little confusing your first glance, but if you do some digging one can come to understanding.
a) "Feeding it was a mistake, It's grown familiar." could possibly show the speaker taking care or raising the wolf, being kind and over time the speaker has grown to love the creature they are supposed to fear. However, there is an underlying regret for that action.
b) "When it bites and laps up your blood," These two lines could possibly show the wolf betraying the speaker.
c)"It's all the harder to shoot." this final line seems the most significant to me because it just puts the final BULLET into my understanding. To me its almost as if the speaker, despite being hurt by the wolf, they can't bring themselves to hurt it and if they do wind up shooting it, they will feel guilty and regret it.

3) The wolf overall could also be a symbolism.
a) In many stories the wolf is a deceptive evil creature, meaning your wolf could also be a person. Which, to me, just makes me wonder about this poem even more.

4) Overall I enjoyed your work it was very fun to read and analyze.
a) If you really have a certain meaning you want in here I would do some clarifying or add another stanza. Otherwise, this was very intriguing and very enjoyable.

Okay! That's all I have! For the suggestion parts of this, feel free to take it or leave it! This is YOUR work and should reflect your view. Also, I'm pretty sure I looked into this way deeper than I should have, so I'm super sorry if I got this all wrong and misinterpreted. I just wanted to share what I thought this was about with you. I loved this piece and I hope to see more of your work.

Hello, corvidconvalescence. I am here to provide you a review. Let’s get started, shall we?

I. CLARITY & MESSAGE
I understood the message the speaker is trying to portray. Basically, when it comes to toxic relationships. There are people out there who feed in the toxicity, rather than just get away from it. The more you feed into it, the more depressing and toxic the relationship becomes. Also, the toxicity of the relationship can also lead to an abusive relationship, rather it be physically, mentally, or emotionally ( or all of the above ).

II. TONE & STRUCTURE
Even though the message is clear, I can not sense the tone of the poem. I don’t even know if it’s supposed to have an emotional aspect in this piece. As for the structure, this part of the poem:

When it bites
and laps up your blood,
it’s all the harder to shoot.

This review courtesy of

Radrook here again to provide feedback. Please feel free to reject any suggestion that is deemed unhelpful, That having been said,

Thanks for sharing this poem concerning the danger of expressing benevolence to someone or something that really doesn't deserve it and might actually turn out to be a mortal enemy. I really enjoyed the poem for two reasons. One is that I have experienced what it describes repeatedly until I have become super cautious about whom I extend any help. For example, all the people that I taught how to play the guitar became my enemies, didn't appreciate it and actually posed a physical threat. One even wound up breaking my guitar on purpose.

The second is its brevity from which so much meaning can be derived.


Benevolence via generosity is sometimes viewed as a weakness, or else the person suspects that you are trying to buy friendship or something worse. After all, if the person himself doesn't give things away unless he gains something in return, then he might be incapable of imagining why someone else would do it for the sake of just being helpful. It's like the saying goes, a thief trusts no one because he believes everyone is also a thief.

But getting to the essence of the poem itself, although short it conveys the situation very effectively and manages to elicit the emotions that it seeks and evoking the questions that inevitably emerge.

Actually, although it can be applied to human relations in the way I just did, the poem itself can be understood to hint at something more sinister, such as some type of creature or beast that must be approached with caution. Perhaps referring to some type of chimera produced in some mad scientist's laboratory? Once fed it gained strength and became more difficult to destroy. Yet despite this warning the poem conveys the impression that the speaker intends to continue his experiments. Perhaps it is the methodical nonchalant way that he tells us about it that conveys that impression.

All in all a very good read. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to reading more of your work.

The symbolism game is killing me here. The truth is killing me here. Whatever you do, there is an equal and opposite reaction for it. I like this piece a lot, except for the fact that we would love you to extend it ^^

I don't even know what it is, but I really liked this. I'm not marking this as a full review because I'm not qualified yet, but I do think "shoot" was... weird? And kinda messed up the mood for reasons I can't articulate. Other than that this was great?? And I loved it?? Poetry is weird. I dunno man, this really satisfied me.