Young Writers Society

esteria wrote:
(Hey Esteria! I'm June, and I'm going to be critiquing this for you today. As Princess and Conrad pointed out, this poem does seem a tad flat. It needs to be dramatized to give it body. Use imagery, and let your imagination run free. For now, we'll work with what you have here . )

Fear of the unknown,
lack of courage to face life's challenges;
fear of people's views and opinions,
we look at life through a peep hole,
and give up before we try.

Okay, so here, you start with "Fear of the unknown". In more ways than one, this opening line isn't entirely incredible. Look at the stanza below this; you begin with "We". Why not begin with "we" here? Let's try this;

"We fear the unknown,
lack courage to face life's challenges;
We fear opinions;
look at life through a peep-hole
and give up before we try"

You can dramatize this; use imagery. Make the peephole a keyhole and the key to it is courage; make this interesting! fluff it up, because I know you can, dear.

We fear failure
we lack courage to face life's challenges;
cowering on the other end of the peephole,
only creates giants in the place of ants,
terror in the place of fear.

Here, you had a chance to make this into something more than the first stanza. You could have elaborated here on why we fear life so much, but you didn't, and as I read this, I was slightly disappointed. As I said above, you should, can and need to dramatize this.

"We fear failing;
And lack the courage to challenge;
We cower behind peepholes;
Hiding from what life demands,
Replacing courage with terror; fear."

Even this is flat, and bland. It's almost an exact repetition of what you said above-- you need to kill that, and make it fluffier, better, and exciting. You can do it.

Open the door and face 'em,
have the courage to overcome life's challenges;
win or loose,
either way, meet them
fall, rise and learn never to fall again.

(Okay, so here, we kind of got lost. I think you should just quit telling us to overcome the challenges of life, because we are afraid. So, you can dig up a synonym to use here, and dramatize this a lot.

"We fear to open the door,
face them
We haven't the strength to face the trial
Win or lose
Either way we shall meet them--

Fall, rise, and learn
to never fall again."

Also! I should point out that when I type a stanza or something, in no way, I'm saying that you should use mine; I'm just throwing suggestions out there, so that your freedom is not restricted to form, or anything. )

I tried to put a few changes in the second and third verses so please read and tell me what you think
thank you for the reviews and feel free to critic everything

Hi Esteria, I'm going to be your reviewer for today! I'm not the best at poetry reviews, but bear with me and I will try my best.

So, this poem does have a rather interesting concept, as Stephixy said. However, Princess did hit upon a very important point. The poem does appear to be rather flat, as though it was written to be an inspirational tidbit for a card or something.

This is not entirely a bad thing. But, you do need to work with this a little if you want it to rise above the horde of other little inspirational poems. You hit upon the idea of, "looking at life through a peephole," at the beginning and in the middle. Why not expand on that further? Describe life as you see it on the dull side of the peep hole, and then describe it as you imagine it to be on the other side. Relate it to yourself, use personal experiences to enrich this poem and make it really flower.

In other news, this poem does have good structure and flow as it is, there's no problem on that front. But you do need to do a little work before this can change from good to great. Good luck with this, and PM me if you have any questions.

Hey Esteria. This poem, to be quite frank, is rather flat. It to me is more like a letter saying "get up and lets go!" and that's all that it is. This poem needs more metaphors, similes, personifications, something! The wording is pretty good, but I feel no emotion from this poem. Give me that. I want you to make me feel when I read this poem. You have a good theme, but put it into the readers perspective. Put it into a story. Isn't this narrative poetry? Give me a story with that theme, then fit it into a poem. If you do that, then it shall be one of the best poems out there!

Sorry if I was a little harsh, and dont give up on this poem! It is worth much more that you think it is.

Pm me if you redo it! I would love to come and review it again.

All the best,
Princess

I think this poem has a good concept, and good wording. I think however that it could use a bit more structure. I'm not sure where these changes could be made, there are quite a few possibilities, but I do think this poem is worth a re-working.