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140,143 Literary Works • 673,032 Reviews
Hello.
Once again I find myself agreeing with Kyll.
I also find you've really settled into a highly simplistic poetry style, which can be worked well, but you need to be completely obsessive about your word choice and punctuation. If you're going to go for simplicity, analyze absolutely every choice you make in terms of words. You also need to examine every piece of punctuation and every line break, because those speak just as much as the words themselves.
Firstly, your habit of punctuating every single line can really kill a simplistic poem. I've found that poets considered "the best" tend to vary how their ideas flow from one line to the next, and make sure that there's interest in their sentence structure and punctuation use. A dash shows different things from a period or semicolon.
Another thing to keep in mind is poetry must still be grammatically correct. As this article outlines, poetry punctuation isn't that much different from regular punctuation.
As for the content of this poem, I found it very standard. No real unique spin on the topic of being different, which is required if you're going to cover such a topic as "being different". It'd been done a million times, and I'm sure you can put your own spin on it.
One idea is to take the idea of schoolyard dares and work on all the meaning you want to. Tell a story of truth or dare going around the playground and weave in the conformity that way. Have the narrator, in the end, dare somebody to be different, or pick truth and say they want to be different. Something new to make this poem stick in readers' minds.
Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions/comments.
~Rosey
Oh. Hello again. I just finished reviewing another one of your poems. What a coincidence.
I think this line would be more powerful (and far more effective) if you killed the repeated "sick". Repetition can work, but right now, it's just bogging down the meaty points that really matter.
...everyone is a cow? That's a rather interesting word choice right there. It's so interesting, in fact, that it feels completely out of place. The exclamation mark also doesn't make sense grammatically due to the same reasons the comma and dash don't (which I mentioned in my previous review). I'll just reiterate that poems do not need to end every line with punctuation (some don't have any punctuation at all) since it seems to be a trend in your poetry (from the few that I've seen).
The ellipses abuse... it slays me... too... much...!
In all seriousness, you really don't need that many periods in a row. It just makes your writing look like it's trying too hard to be emotional and inspiring, which is what causes it to fail to be such. There are better, more effective ways of making a point in a meaningful fashion than multiplying your punctuation. One of these ways is to use more precise vocabulary and more active verbs.
For example, "He walked" is so much less exciting than "He sprinted" or "He dashed". Taking advantage of the different shades of meaning of synonymous words is a really simple way to add spice and life to your writing, especially poetry.