Young Writers Society

I really like the starkness of these last two poems you've posted - they go together really well. The emotion I'm getting is sort of an overwhelmed and stark feeling.

I also wanted to note you did a really solid job with the line breaks/ punctuation in this one - because it draws out the thoughts (making them look more overwhelming on the page) but also keep them kind of choppy so the reader feels almost disoriented. The lower-case "i's" and dashes (which I'm normally not a fan of) also worked well in this piece because it added to that same tone of just trying to figure out life, but everything's getting disrupted.

This stanza is my personal favorite:

i want to be something,
anything, to latch on to,
something to claim as my
own, but i can't, i can't,
i can't hold a hand out
and let the wind decide
where i land.

^those first two lines with the "I want to be something/" and then the unexpected "to latch on to" -> is such unique phrasing, that I can feel that emotion though there's not a good name for it. It's like that loose sense of not being able to ground yourself in reality or identity. The imagery pair with the emotion is really nice - and it actually takes a lot of skill to phrase new imagery as an emotion because people aren't used to describing emotions visually or in a non-cliche way - but here you do it very effectively. I also love that line break with the repetition of " i can't, i can't / i can't hold a hand out" -> the break between for emphasis works.

I didn't think the "i want / i want" repetition was quite as effective - > I get the point, of them getting more desperate as the words flow together, but it felt almost gimmicky because it's only done once in the poem. I tend to think if you're going to do something really bold with the formatting (unless it is something at the very end or very beginning), like a hot pink word in the middle of a review, it ought to be done twice, so that the suspicious reader (those who don't give the poet enough credit) are sure that it was intentional. And also so it looks less random, and more planned, and the reader has two contexts for how to interpret the change. That being said, I like the creativity of trying something new - that's what pushes poetry to be interesting is being brave enough to mess with grammatical /formatting rules and just go for it. So definitely keep doing that!

My other critique would be that a lot of the images seem to be placed in one spot and then fade away, I'd like to see a few more cohesive images or themes woven throughout the piece - like you return to analyzing the face at the end as you do in the beginning smile/eyes - > but the sky and the "holding on" don't necessarily feel like they weave all the way through the whole poem.

Let me know if you had any questions about the review! Nice work here fraey, I look forward to reading another of your poems soon.

~alliyah

Hello, FlamingPhoenix here with a review for you on this lovely day.

Let's get to it.

Now I'm gong to start off by saying this was a really great poem and I loved reading it. Everything was fine. Except you didn't put any capital letters in, but that doesn't really matter. But I thought I should just mention it.

i-want-iwant-

Now this this one sentence, the I that is in bold needs to have a space between it and the want. I think you just forgot to just press the space bare.

Other then that I loved reading your poem and reviewing it for you. I really could feel all the emotion that you put into this poem, by the way your wrote it, it just came through the words. So well done.
I really liked the way you ended the poem, it was very smooth and it let you know the poem was at an end.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you wrote this very well and you should keep writing. I hope you have a great day/night.

Your friend
FlamingPhoenix.