Young Writers Society

Hello there!

Ooh I'm a big fan of experimental poetry with actual meaning. I think it's easy to write a poem with a crazy formatting that is just words because that happens without thinking. It's harder to write a poem and format it in ways that affect the general meaning because you have to consider how it changes words and phrases for better or for worse.

An example of what I mean would be:

and fall back from convenient rebellion and happiness.

I've gathered that the idea of something being convenient isn't really important to the narrator or at least isn't their main concern. My thoughts are furthered by the choice to strike out that word because it adds emphasis. I could say the same about "happiness" being more important because italics are less harsh on the eyes than a strike-through.

Now, formatting matters. Anything that ranges between font choice to how many lines are in a stanza are all things that are considered when a person reads a poem; do they like the enjambment? the length of the stanzas? the way the lines are uneven? <- Those are all some general thoughts that encapsulate all kinds of poetry from anyone.

Here are some areas where the formatting need some polishing:

a state of AWaRenESs havocked by

I actually like the idea of a word having many letters being in no-caps and then changing it with some BIG letters; it creates different feelings depending on the previous atmosphere of the poem, and it usually works for poetry I've seen before.

Although, when people do that to their words, it's to bring attention to that area by highlighting specific letters or only making a specific part of the word all-caps. Like in some cases I've seen words capitalized at their endings because the theme was death, or something similar but in the beginnings because the theme fit perfectly.

beat- *inhale* ing heart.

Ooh this is cool! I do think that there might be a better way to portray someone inhaling instead of just putting asterisks around it. I see you've used a lot of bold and italics before, and those could potentially work here as well.

Etched on those ga
tes which I can never follow,

Breaking off the word "gates" at that place doesn't really make sense to me? I think cutting up words like that is a nice way to play around with creativity and use typically unseen elements, but that doesn't really evoke anything out of me. I feel like "follow" would've been a better place to break at because it makes more sense with the rest.

And that's all I have to comment on!

Cheers!