Young Writers Society

hi strange
I actually really liked this poem. It seems quite different from the things that you usually do.
the images you have here are quite poignant. I don't know how, but I missed the whole mountain image the first time I read it. I must have been reading it too quickly. when I went back to reread it I realized that the mountain image was really good, if a tad cliche.
I really like the little details that you haven't here such as the planned community, specifically a planned community.
I honestly can't find anything wrong with this. I keep looking for things to review, but I can't find any.I think if you put a little more tangible emotion into this it might be better but then again its pretty good as it is and I think the subtlety is what makes this really good. I wish I knew a little bit more about what was happening and why it was happening, but as it is I really like it, if you couldn't tell already.
I'm sorry this couldn't be more helpful. I hope it helps in some way. let me know if you have any questions: because I'd really like to help.
great job! Keep writing!
~fort
edit: I just looked at Aley's review and wow. I obviously was not reading deep enough into the poem. I took everything at face value, which maybe is what you were going for, and maybe not. I still like the poem even if I didn't get any deeper meaning out of it.

Hey Strange!

So nice to see you here. First off I would like to say that I think your poem is really compact and concise, I really like that about this poem. You have a nice sentence structure and the words you use are well equipped to handle the baggage they carry. I especially like "the nose volcano/ to promptly erupt." because it makes something out of the ordinary like death seem like something completely controlled and planned. It also gives an amazing visual for people to cling to in the poem. I feel like this is probably one of the strongest points in your poem. Another thing I really like which you did very well is incorporating something we're familiar with. Beginning it with a song title is risky, especially since you need to get rid of the italics and just leave the quotes. If it is the name of a song, it's "Quoted" because it's a part of a whole. The whole is the Album which is italics. If you're referring to a whole album, leave the italics and get rid of the quotes, if you're just talking about a song, then get rid of the italics and keep the quotes.

Onto the meat of the review.

The poem itself doesn't have anything that I see which needs changing in terms of grammar, punctuation, capitalization or stuff like that. You're good there. That means that this is going to be more of a content review rather than an editing review.

In general I can understand the content clearly and consisely. The first stanza is talking about a poison in the system which seems to result in their death. I'm getting that by the title combined with the first paragraph. If I had just read the first paragraph, I don't think I would have gotten the hint that the person died, or is dying, until the last stanza which doesn't quite fit. I'll explain later. Overall in this first stanza, I really like what you're doing. You're giving us a song to listen to and saying that this is basically the person's death song. That's a nice touch.

The next stanza is a little less clear than the first. The problem I am having is with "cancelled planned community" Basically you've got a lot of "ed" really close together which stacks oddly. It takes a minute to digest exactly what it is trying to say. I would suggest you pick a different word than cancelled to fix the problem. You might want to consider abandoned because while it still has the "ed" it actually goes better with the idea of a Planned Community as one word. When something is abandoned, you wonder what the direct object is of the abandonment. That leads the mind to identifying the next words as the direct object. In this case it is an abandoned planned community. You could also go with talking about as a ghost town. Ghost planned community doesn't really work though because we expect "Ghost town" so you would have to be creative and put ghost together with it indirectly. Other than that, I really like the stanza. My favorite bit of it is the "glass shards in the street" because it's something we can visualize and hold onto. Not only does it explain the whole "cancelled planned community" thing but it provides a provocative image that holds with me as I continue reading and adding to that image with the following stanza.

I don't really like the last two stanzas and here's why. The third stanza begins to do something a bit cliche in poetry and writing in general. Just like the storm is always a metaphor for the impending climax of the story in a Hemingway novel, dusk and sunset is always a metaphor for the impending death of a character. Honestly, I like to avoid those sorts of blatant metaphors because they tend to become cliche very quickly. I do, however, think you did a nice job of it distracting us from the metaphor and moving onto the mountains. I really love the scale that the mountains present to the piece, however I really think you need to spruce up how you talk about the sun. We always hear "the sun hiding behind the mountains" so think of something new, something uniquely you. Try to come up with some way to say it that will express more a viciousness that fits with this abandoned construction plan and dying person. Hiding is just too sweet. Personify the mountains, make them come alive. That's my suggestion to make this stanza really pop and match with the top two stanzas which have so many good parts to them.

The last stanza is useless to me. Not only does it undercut the feelings of anxiety and stress which we would expect from a poem of death, but it is cliche to say that the dead "drift to sleep" and that is the perspective of those watching, not, necessarily, the perspective of those dying. I am not a medical student, so I'm not sure of the exact science on how it would affect you to have thinned blood, but if a nose bleed doesn't clot then I can see how that would kill someone. I expect that they would be able to stop it before it got too bad though by going to get help. That being said, drifting to sleep would probably more be like internally screaming and sobbing hysterically as they realize the blood isn't going to stop, and if it doesn't all go out, then their neck is going to hurt too from the blood dripping by it. Not a peaceful "drifts me into sleep" in my opinion.

That being said, you're totally wrong. Everyone loves to stop and watch a disaster. That's why there is a traffic jam south bound on the freeway even if it was north bound that had the accident. People are slowing down to see what happened. That's why we throw news anchors out into hurricanes. That's why we come exploring after a tornado has gone by. That's why there are tornado chasers, and thrill seekers, and people looking up plain crashes. Oh, and the biggest "that's not true at all" America's Funniest Home Videos is the best example. It's even got a word in German. If you look at why people watch Hockey or Nascar it is "for the fights" or "for the crashes" and those can both be disasters. Physical contact sports are the same way.

That being said, I think your last two lines are very passive and need to be taken out anyway. You want to end a poem on something that's a provocative image, not something that's a quip or a quote. You stick those in the middle that way people are going to re-read and remember that thing they heard which connected to their visual cortex.

Overall, I really liked the poem, but I think you need to work on the context of the last two stanzas. The second to last is a bit tame and cliche, while the last one is rather passive and not that visual. Working on these aspects of this poem is really going to make it shine. I would suggest you just rewrite the first two lines of the second, and the last three lines of the last stanza.

I'm happy to see you're writing poetry and I look forward to seeing more. Update me if you update this please. I'd like to see what you do if you do anything.

Aley