October

Timmy here

So I will keep this review short, since I don't have much to say on this piece, and the poem is short in itself. Hopefully you can find something helpful in my rambling. Most of the time, when I read a poetry work, I simply go: "Oh, how pretty!" - adding a like before I toddle off. So my review may be a little naïve, but I shall try because you requested a review on this.

One thing I am seeing in this work is a lot of physical pain. Now that is good. Physical pain is something that happens to us all, and et.... blah, blah - you know what I was going to say. But it's not enough. I am reading through this, and even though it is a physical poem, I am not feeling anything. No grinding of my bones, no slashing or breaking or burning. For a physical pain, I am not feeling his pain. I think you need to add more to this - like let's take one line and see what we can come up with.

break you

So this line sums up every physical pain you have in this poem. Everything boils down to this - the breaking of the character in here. But I am not feeling any breaking, no emotions are going through my mind. This is a vague and purely physical poem, with nothing to tug at my heartstrings much. Okay, let me take that back. Your first and last lines of every stanza - they do make me feel something. And that I how this poem is meant to be, I think. So I would go and look at each individual line and ask yourself: what can I do to extrapolate and bring emotion to this line? Let me give you a brief example:

I walked outside

So this is like the basic, ever so basic line. You have the action. This is technically complete, and tells accurately of what happened. But is it enough? Can you feel the gravel grating beneath his worn shoes? Can you see the sun wavering in the sky - wintertime freezing the world over. Do you know that he pulls his tattered jacket closer to him as the cold beats down? No, you don't know any of these things. There is so much you could explore, so much you could delve into to make this piece more visual - both physically and mentally. Explore both the visual side of things and the mental side of things, because in order to build a powerful image, you have to build up both sides. Have fun with it, explore - see what you can come up with.

One thing I did notice in this work was that it had its own tempo. When I read through it, I didn't realize at first, but the way you structured everything made the piece flow jerky - almost like a drumbeat in the background giving me a pattern to follow. Each line was a beat of its own - boom, boom, boom. Just setting the line for how the piece was to be read. I really liked that, and I think it added a measure of weight to the piece and how it is both read and sounds. Very nice.

In all honesty, this piece could have been reduced quite a bit. Some people may have different opinions on this, but when I read through it, I got the sense of redundancy. And not in the sense where your repetitiveness builds up the emotions of the peace. This seemed to weaken your message, because you just said the same thing over and over, just with a slightly different way of putting it across. Every single line is talking about some physical pain the character is going through, and while that may be very real and all these things happen... too many of them are vague and so too many of them seem to overlap and become redundant at the very root of their idea. Look at the first stanza and how relates to the second, third and even fourth stanza. You could take the first lines of each stanza and mix and jumble them around and nothing would change in the piece. That means that each and every stanza says almost the exact thing as the one before, which isn't how you would want it. I think look at this piece, determine what parts are repeating what has already been said, and then whittle the poem down to bare idea - then build it back up. I think that would benefit this piece and bring it up to full potential.

I think this was a very lovely poem, and since you already told us the inspiration of this story, makes more sense to me why you wrote it. I think this was a good poem to pour your feelings about the situation on, and you did an amazing job telling it. I absolutely adored how you put that tempo and beat into it, making me read the poem with that rhythm you made with the formatting. That was amazing. And many of the opening and closing lines of the stanzas make me want to frame them and put them on my wall or on my car as a bumper sticker. They're quite lovely. My favorite which tops them all without any doubt is: you brought broken teeth to show and tell. That was just so incredible. Both visual in my mind, and displayed that raw emotion we all want.

Keep writing along, and even though I know this has both become irritating and meaningless by now, I am sorry for your friend. *squishhugs* Keep being strong, and try to remember the good things he gave you. God forbid anyone I know throw away their life. I would probably break apart.
<3
~Darth Timmyjake