Young Writers Society

Hey there queenshadowgem. You requested a review from me months ago but I somehow missed it until I went to reopen my WRFF thread this week. Hopefully this review is still welcome so I'll do my best to give you some feedback that you haven't already received.

I'm not sure what the reasoning is for putting these two poems together. They may vaguely address similar themes but if they're supposed to be two parts of the same idea, I think you might want to go with a more creative, engaging format. If they are two separate poems that don't have an umbrella idea to link them together, I would have to guess this confusing compilation comes from some aesthetic or financial reason when you were originally posting.

For my ease, I'm going to copy your poems down into the review so that I can better illustrate some of the things that I'm going to go through.

The main two problems in your first poem are grammatical and issues with flow. To tackle flow, let's talk about some of the formatting and word choices that you have made throughout the piece starting from the first section that I have quote down below.

~I nest in forgotten things~

here in this nest
of broken twigs
and unused mittens
carried away by

I can see what you're trying to do with arrangement to give it a certain formatting look, but when it comes to getting better at writing poetry, you really need to start focusing on how things would sound if read aloud. Having such sudden, hanging breaks like the ones that appear throughout your first piece make it very hard for the reader to make their way through.

You can still have creative formatting and something that is aesthetically pleasing while consciously making your piece more accessible to the audience. I'll try to provide an example of how the formatting might be changed in a section I have quoted down below.

feathered feinds fiends
who forgot a moment
they didn't have
fingers to wear the things

This is one of the grammatical issues section. I think really you just need to be more careful about scanning through pieces before going "send tweet", so to speak. All of the things I have highlighted in red are not instances of capitalization - they're just for simple spelling mistakes and missing punctuation in contractions.

my eyes close and i
take a shallow breath
of frigid air that
surrounds all things in

this winter turbulence
that slowly breaks away
our peace you can only
have a mitten you won't wear

so long.

The stanza break in this section is for sure an interesting choice. I'm not sure of what all went into you breaking it off from the back like this. It does add some emphasis, but I also see it as leaving the reader wanting more of something that just isn't there. Maybe changing this into a break away couplet would help better ease readers into the next stanza.

i steal away your
socks only one from
each pair because they
need to learn to live seperately separately

I take away your pride
because if i don't you only
fall from a higher place so
just listen and avoid broken bones

One of the things you do really well through this poem though is your choices when it comes to imagery. For some of the instances, it does take me more than one read through to be able to appreciate them. I haven't seen a poem in a long time to use socks for this kind of metaphor so it did still feel fresh to mind.

quote]i take away your breath
because we all deserve a
moment that feels like an
unsaid epiphony epiphany over milder things[/quote]

Again, just a simple typo.

At this point in the poem, it's starting to go a different way and showing more of your ability. What I'm waiting for is to see how you tie all of the strands back together now that all of these plot points are hanging freely.

and then i take away a loved one
because i need people to love
this will teach you a lesson you
will never forget- thanks for sharing

one day i may snatch away your grief
and take it to bury among all my things
your lost things- we can share it too
it may just mean more to me than you

These two stanzas really just seem to be saying the same things with some different wording. I don't think that you need to include both of them in this poem unless you're going to majorly alter them in some way.

i try but i cant take away your sorrows
and i reach for it but i can't touch happiness
for more than a second, and if you ever do
lose hope i'll return it- because it can't stay lost

i keep all your lies and buttons
little scraps of cloth and pounds
i keep all your rings and jewelry
but sometimes i let go of pride

I'm back to enjoying the imagery in this section as a break from some of the other choices made in the creative process. I rarely say this but I think your poem might be a piece that would really benefit from the use of commas. There's only so many pauses that you can create with line breaks before they sort of start to fade away and actual grammatical intervention is needed to make a piece flow correctly. Some poets are afraid of using commas, but I think they're something that you should play around with.

i keep your loved ones safe
i have to keep them hidden away
even if you miss them because
these days aren't theirs anymore

i am sorry.

The stanza breaks of half lines trike again in this section and the next. I'm just not finding myself to be a fan of them.

And in reference to this section and the next section, the poem just seems to be dragging on at this point. There's no longer a clear pathway for the reader to walk upon so I was just left feeling confused about what you were trying to accomplish within this space.

i know you won't forgive me
so i give out new lives- maybe
you'll start over and call it a truce
and maybe they will matter more

to you.

Issues with flow also appear in this poem but they mainly manifest through your attempt at a rhyme scheme. Much of it would be classified as forced rhyme due to the way certain words and lines are being manipulated to 'force' the reader to hear a certain sound.

Poor Person's Love

Rain on a summers day,
Young lovers led astray,

Dancing in the rain,
Nothing meaningful in their brains,

This section shows one of the most common symptoms of forced rhyme in which the writer will extend a line past the distance they had already established in the line pattern. If you're having to add more words to find a logical end point where these two words would fit together under the theme, that might be a sign to seek out different formatting or different word choice.

Currently your rhyme scheme is:
A
A

But you could just as easily distance yourself from couplets to go with:
A
B
A

This may make it easier for you to accomplish the sounds that you're looking for within the poem without throwing the reader off too much.

In the rain happily,
Dancing, sappily

Enchanting,
Always romancing,

In this section, I'm just not sure how I feel about the word "sappily". This is another instance that falls into the section of forced rhyme because that's not really a word. It's an alteration of an existing word so I can sort of see where you were going with it. It might be similar to the the section I quoted above where rearrangement would let you change to another word that still fits within the rhyme pattern.

Young lovers,
Early mothers,

They never want to change a thing,
Other than wanting a diamond ring,

One thing you do really well in this short poem compared to the monster at the top of the page is making sure to connect all of the ideas together. That can be something really tough to tackle in shorter poems so really good job on that.

Diamonds in the rough,
Never know they are hanging tough,

Because they have just enough,
They are rich, they are richly in love.

For the last couplet in this section, I'm not sure if you were trying to rhyme those lines or not. I can see where one stressed pronunciation might allow for them to rhyme together, but it just seems like something you might be able to change. Especially because the first line of the last couplet rhymes with the last line of the couplet before it.

And I know I've gone over a lot in this review. These two poems are good starts for something better in the future. They're definitely worth editing if you want to go that direction.

If you have any questions about anything in this review, feel free to drop me a line.

Happy August!
- Armand