Melody

This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review! First of all, welcome to the site, hipstersquid! If you ever have any questions, don't be afraid to ask me or any other names in green or red. With that being said, let's delve right into the review.

I first wanted to mention the bold text. I'm unsure of why you've chosen to do this since this doesn't enhance the poem in any particular way. Same with capitalizing the first letter of each line. While these are both stylistic choices that are yours to make, I'm not sure what either do to make this poem stronger. Reasoning for this explained, whether it be just for the aesthetic or some other rationale.

Speaking of technical aspects of this poem, I wanted to mention the punctuation. The periods are quite constant here, almost as if you're avoiding commas as if they're the plague. Play around with some enjambment here and other forms of punctuation instead of just using an end-stop with each line. This inhibits the poem's ability to flow and makes this harder to read.

Heart to heart we make a melody.
That's how it's supposed to be.
Together creating a symphony.
From the beats of our hearts coinciding.
This is love.
Uninterrupted love.

Hello, welcome to YWS. I realized that I have read your other poem and I'm going to try and review this one!

Let's just get right into it. I would like to touch on your format. For my taste, the centered, bolded, and italicized text just doesn't fit into my visually appealing aesthetic. The bold just kind of jumps out as odd to me, not quite sure why but it just isn't my favorite to look at. Regarding the centered-ness, not the biggest fan of it but I do seem some poems that really take advantage of it and making it look better than having it be on one side or the other. I also really believe that stanzas would help your poem look like like a symmetrical blob.

For example, it could be sorted like this:

Heart to heart we make a melody.
That's how it's supposed to be.
Together creating a symphony.
From the beats of our hearts coinciding.

This is love.
Uninterrupted love.
We play with percussion until a woodwind comes in.
It doesn't belong in our melody.
It's fighting for attention
It takes my place.

So now you play with them and your hearts coincide.
While I'll sit back here playing to the side.
Listening to you two make music.
As I do with tears. And a half beat because my heart is no longer whole...
And the curtains have closed now

The lights left the stage
I'm still here playing my broken hymn
Thinking of them..

We play with percussion until a woodwind comes in.
It doesn't belong in our melody.
It's fighting for attention
It takes my place.

The lights left the stage

Hi! This was a wonderful idea, comparing making music with someone to loving them. I especially liked how you made the new person something that didn't fit with your own song. That being said, let's get into the review!

First off (this is just me being annoying) try leaving your font as normal as you can, instead of using bold and italics. Sometimes a font can take away from the writing. Although, that's probably just my personal preference.

So next thing is you could do to make separate stanzas to break up ideas. Like one would end after line four. Next after line six. Then after line 10. You don't have to follow these exactly, but making stanzas makes the poem more readable as the ideas are more organized.

So next is that in "until a woodwind comes" you should try using a different verb that makes the woodwind sound more uninvited. "Comes" is pretty nondescript.

Then in "And I do with tears. And a half beat". So I think you should put "and I do with tears in its own line. I also think you should try changing it to "I do so with tears". Or, you make the entire line into one sentence rather than putting the period in between.

Last thing is you don't need the "and" at the beginning of "and the curtains have closed now". The and takes away from the rhythm and doesn't add any meaning.

I hope this was helpful!

Welcome to YWS! I'm a bit of poet myself (though not a particularly good one), so I thought I'd look over this piece and provide a review.

I like the atmosphere of the piece. It's a nice picture of being usurped by another lover and being cast aside, visualized through descriptions of intertwined hearts and melodies. I enjoyed the way you demonstrated that said conflict by using rival groups of musical instruments to display the differing personality of the new lover, providing unique songs of his own, with that of the old one. Too, the description of a half beat is also rather intriguing, as is that of the lights abandoning the stage that had once held the original couple. All of this helps me contemplate and understand the tragedy of the narrator as he's pushed aside and abandoned, but I must confess that I couldn't bury myself too deeply into the poem.

My major problem in that regard is most of the remaining imagery isn't that captivating. It plays out like a typical love triangle story, and your core metaphors don't come across as that well-explained or original, as well-written as they were. Why is it supposed to be? What kinds of melodies are we talking about here? How much did they love each other? As such, it's not easy for me to relate with the main character or empathize with them, as I haven't a clue what exactly they're going through. If I'm going with what I do see, the descriptions of hearts felt almost cliche to me, and the contradiction of the use of "hymn" to define the key word "melody" was off-putting.

Furthermore, the periods at the end of most lines give me grating and totally unnecessary pauses, particularly when they're used where periods normally shouldn't be. I get that it was supposed to come across as dramatic, but I ended up finding it interrupting my flow. As a general rule, I try to keep my punctuation marks in poetry about where they would appear in prose, though this can always be removed with enough experience and skill. Finally, I suppose I don't like the use of tense in this piece. I assumed the first component is set in the present, but the arrival of the new lover in the second and third parts is clearly set afterwards, though also referred to in present tense. It might just be best to refer to the first part is the past and keep the other two in the present, as I found this constant tense to be a little strange and hard to read through effectively.

Regardless, on the whole, this was a decent poem. The imagery had its bright spots, the format is nice and easy to read, and it's an interesting, if basic, concept that you investigated eloquently. In conclusion, this is a wonderful piece for a young and budding poet, so thanks for posting it!

*Slides in* Hello again, hipstersquid! It seems you made a new poem that was calling out to me for a review!


I love the theme you chose for the poem, the main character getting replaced by someone else, who is called Woodwind. That's a coincidence, because I play Woodwind in my school's band, ha! But I enjoy that you referenced band instruments with being replaced by another, that's something I haven't seen before. Nice job.

I feel like this related to Her, it has the same sad vibe to it. Maybe a sequel? That'd be cool if it was! Also, thanks for making the text bold and in italics, it makes it way easier to read. I'm prone to migraines and I don't have to strain my eyes when I read this, thanks.

Anyways, I have to go, more works are calling for me, bye bye! *Slides away*