Young Writers Society

Hey, demoncat! I'm here to review your poem.

I already had a strong idea of what the theme of the poem was going to be, but I was still pleasantly surprised when reading your piece! You had a nice transition between the benefits of being single and the downsides to it - all things that I noticed, too, now that I have people in my life who are dating. I really loved that juxtaposition; it's honestly one of my favorite parts of your poem.

I think my biggest piece of advice is to work on your grammar and spelling. You have an awesome start to a poem, but it just needs a little bit of polishing up. One of the biggest errors I noticed was that you spelled "no one" without a space in the middle of it. You also write "your" instead of "you're", so that's another thing you'll want to fix in any revisions you do. There's a couple of other ones scattered throughout the poem, but those are the two recurring ones.

If you ever are having trouble catching typos, I would suggest reading your works out loud before posting them. It forces you to slow down when you're reading, and helps you avoid accidentally skimming over something that has an easy fix.

But, overall, I really love your poem! It was cool seeing how you tackled the independence and longing that someone who's single feels.

Hi demoncat,

just stopping by for a quick review.

1) Spelling / Grammar

There were quite a few spelling mistakes throughout this piece. Almost every line has some spelling issue. A recurring mistake is when you are using "you - are" as a contraction, it should be written "you're" rather than "your". Like in the line, "when you're lonely you're just alone". "don't" should also always be written with an apostrophe.

I almost wondered if the spelling mistakes were intentional going for a "smol doggo" sort of meme feel - there was another YWS poet that did a bunch of those poems a few years back, and my advice to them was always, if you're going to do the spelling mistake thing to be cute, then you need to /commit/ make the spelling mistakes more heightened and obvious and make sure they go with the tone of the overall piece.

If the mistakes are not intentional, I'd suggest running this through word, or simply googling the words that you don't know how to spell in such a short piece - it'll go a long way to making your piece look more polished, which allows readers to get through to the content without being distracted by all the external issues.

2) Content
I think the first half of the poem made the speaker come off as extremely shallow - they think the benefit of being single is to lust over other men and to "hang out" with their friend's significant others'?

It feels like they live in a very problematic sort of community/environment if they aren't usually allowed to wear whatever clothes they want, or hang out with whomever they please, which makes me wonder if their previous relationships have been very unhealthy. Actually reading on the line about how they can eat how they please now, really makes it seem like their old relationships must have been pretty unhealthy if they didn't feel the freedom to eat naturally - or they have a warped view of how one must behave in a relationship.

I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to be taking away from the first chunk of the poem, but I have to say, rather than making singleness sound fulfilling or empowering (as it can totally be!) this poem really makes singleness sound kinda lame, and being in a relationship sounds kind of oppressive.

Given those different views that I'm taking away from the first half of the poem, I had a hard time connecting tothe second half of the poem, because although the speaker says they are sad and alone, honestly given the content of what we've learned about their previous information, it seems good that they're alone for a season, and out of their past negative relationship.

The last three lines, really don't make too much sense - I don't understand how they contribute to the poem, or add anything to the narrative - for such a short poem, they felt completely unnecessary.

3) Humor

As I mentioned in the first part of my review, I normally say that in humorous pieces the most important thing to do is to commit to the humor, because if the reader isn't sure if something is /supposed/ to be funny, chances are they're going to feel very uncomfortable trying to discern whether or not it's alright to laugh. This poem tetered on the edge - you had the title "single pringle" and then the "depresso espresso" but there was really nothing else blatantly /funny/ about the poem, so it just felt like a break-up poem, with a couple sad jokes added in, rather than a humorous poem that someone could "feel good reading".

I'd suggest taking out the jokes to make it less uncomfortable and diving into the emotion more deeply. Or really heightening up the humor, beyond just puns and word-plays and make this a poem more commitedly humorous.

Hopefully this review gave you some ideas to work with!

Good luck in editting and writing!

- alliyah

Happy #RevMo !!

Hello,
This was an excellent poem, good job! I like your homonym, "depresso espresso" it was perfect.
Here's just a few grammar/spelling mistakes you did:

"and your free to like them all you want"

In this case your should be you're, which stands for "you are".

"You can hang out with your feinds"
"feinds" should be "friends."

"And noone will be jelous"
"noone" should be "no one", and "jelous" should be "jealous."

In line six and seventeen, you forgot to put the apostrophes in your don'ts.

In line eight, lonly should be lonely, and you used your instead of you're again.

Other than your grammar and spelling mistakes, this was very well done. At the beginning it's all happy and joyful, but then it takes a dark turn. Both of your aspects captures the life of a single person. I'm very impressed.

Heya demoncat!

First of all I just wanted to say that I laughed at the “Single Pringle” title and it made me want to read this.

There are a few grammar mistakes throughout, like “feinds” should be “friends”, “noone” should be “no one”, “lonly” needs an e to be “lonely”.

I really enjoyed the first half of this poem, basically reveling in the life of being single. Then suddenly it shifts to being alone and depressed with no one to turn to. There’s a difference, but it almost doesn’t seem pronounced enough? Like maybe you should make it a little bit of a sharper descent into dark humor with “depresso espresso” by using a little stronger language at the start of the second half. The first half seems really easy to picture, but the second half is taking place more emotionally. Maybe you could say, “But when the friends all go home, and you’ve passed the hot guy on the street, then you’re just alone”—not exactly that, but something that shows the transition between the two.

Also, I think you could use some punctuation to your advantage! Of course, you don’t have to use any if you don’t choose to, but I think it can help to express the feelings in the poem better. “You stay alone” vs. “You stay alone.” the second is very definitive! I’m not an expert in poetry or punctuation, but if you’re curious, I found this helpful guide in the knowledge base: Punctuation in Poetry

Other than that, I don’t think I have much to say! I like how much is packed into this short poem. There’s the feeling of freedom and the feeling of hopelessness, of finding someone and losing someone. I’m sorry if you’re feeling more of the latter half of the poem, but I really appreciate the optimism and ownership of being single that is present in the first half. I think it’s more of a fresh take than I usually see! Good luck with your writing, and have a great day!

-Q