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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Heyy!
This is awesome! I feel like you depicted writing in a very beautiful way. Most people do not realize how much thought and effort it takes to write something.
This was my favorite part of the entire poem...
I read over this part a few times because I liked it so much!
I did not find any edits to the poem and I thought the flow was good. Keep it up; I would love to read more!
-Jessa
This is cool, I can totally relate. Keep up the good work!!
Afternoon,
On with the review:
You have some good ideas here and the poetry is comforting to read. The only problem I think this poetry has is a bit of a hiccup in its word choice now and again, as well as lacking something that makes your ideas stand out in the way they deserve to be.
In your first stanza, your punctuation is a little odd. You don't punctuate commas when the flow would probably need it and I put that down to writing style - you haven't punctuated the end of the lines - but then why punctuate the mid-beginning part of the last line after the connective "because"? It sounds broken. I'd scrap it. As for word choice, the word because is a wee bit formal for poetry don't you think? it sounds like an essay, like you're searching whilst you write, which may work for you, but as a reader the poetry begins to feel broken and incomplete - lacking effect. There's also a repetition of the word "truth", not just here, but throughout your poem. In fact, by the end - though you have quite a few strong lines in this piece of poetry, the amount of times you say "truth" simply saturates the reader and discards all else. It's not too great, to be honest! Use a thesaurus, vary your vocab, or alter lines.
Again, we're looking at "truth" occuring on every line. I love the word choice of "settled" and "discovered" but all I can think about is what my truth is. I don't know what that is and this makes me reading this poem confusing and confusion makes me frustrated. Where as if you romanticised the act of writing, personalised the physicality of it, like you did with the word choices I like and picked out, then this has the potential to be a pretty fabulous piece of poetry.
I love these lines, more of this will make a better poem.
You've already gone through how you "settle" words on a page, now you're jumping back - this time "pouring" them. Also, you mention "feel" again, straight after the two lines which carried a lot of effect. Now the feeling seems to common, to normal and lacks the effect it carried previously, which is a shame. The second line of this quoted segment about editing is good, but too long. You could romanticise it a little more too.. it sounds so rational! Why not use words like "You take your pencil and shape or craft a change/new tale". You know? Experiment more!
All but the bold part of this quote is absolutely perfect. You've got the imagination, the effect and the genius of poetry here in describing the act of writing. We feel connected as readers. However the bold part sounds like you're explaining again. Poetry and the search for meanings in life or whatever your intent may be when writing it should always avoid any relation to a feeling of foreign form, i.e. essays. When people read poetry they don't need explicit explanation, they want to feel what you're saying, understand it through its own implicit ways. Take Samuel Coleridge, for example, a poet continually on the quest for knowledge and it drove him over the edge, because he was so intellectual, but when you read his works - his exploration of knowledge and acts of humans, nature, morals - you are given something that tells you them beautifully, through narrative ballads, implicit language and vivid imagery or symbolism. Poetry is an art, not an essay!
Love your final line. I dislike the repetition of "Writing is..." though as it just sounds tiring. I'd have scrapped that and merely had the last line following from "We whisper the words to each other". So it reads:
Writing is the secret we share,
We whisper the words to one another;
Writing is whatever you fill in the blanks for it to be...
This way it also creates a dual meaning because the whispered words imply the last line is the message being whispered, you see?
I hope this helps.
Ben.
Liked this a lot. You know why? Because it's true! I just wrote a poem and had exactly these feelings. Writing is what you feel. So true. It can flow out of you if you are in the right moment and state of mind and are feeling something.
Well done, enjoyable read. Keep writing!
Hey there, lele!
Instead of being too terribly nitpicky, as BlackSheep has covered plenty of that, I’ll do this stanza by stanza!
First Stanza
So, this is a great lead in to your poem. It’s nothing particularly fancy (but who needs fancy anyways). It’s straight forward. Until you get to this little chunk:
So, is it shielding you from writing? I’m a little confused by your idea here. I understand what you’re trying to say but it doesn’t come off in the writing.
Second Stanza
Okay, there are a few things that bother me in here. The first is your capitalization in the second line. It’s kind of clumsy and pretty unnecessary. The second is your overuse of “truth.” Try something like:
“The truth of words that have settled on a page –
your words, your truth, your page –
that you have discovered.”
One thing to keep in mind is that, although lists like the second line sound fancy, they don’t always appear as nice as you imagine them to be. And in your case, you just wind up with a lot of repetition.
Third Stanza
I was just going to sum up one big bit about punctuation but since this would have otherwise been an empty slot, I figured I would do it here.
You really lack punctuation. All in all, there are three comma and three ellipses. That’s not much. But at the same time, you have a lot of capitalization. Look wise, it’s clumsy. But looks aren’t everything. Punctuation is a major key when it comes to flow. Marks tell the reader when to pause, they highlight important points (like the hyphens I used in that example stanza just over head), and they can make what might seem jumbled at one point, more clear afterwards.
Suzanne wrote a really wonderful article on poetic punctuation here that I think you should definitely give a good look.
Fourth Stanza
I love the “fill in the blanks, what you believe writing is, is up for you to decide” ending. I’ve just one recommendation here on the end and that has to do with the ellipses. They’re one of those little things that, although they seem nice, aren’t really all that wonderful. In fact, they’re kind of, poetically trashy in most opinions. And since you end with “fill in the blanks” why not do something a little different and say something like, “Writing is ______.”
Overall, though, I enjoyed reading this a lot. It just needs some polishing and it will be ever so wonderfuller. (My spell checker is telling me that “wonderfuller” is not a word but I’m refusing to believe my unwonderfuller spell checker.)
Anyways, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a message on my wall or shoot me a PM.
~lilymoore
Yay! A new work!!
Very cool! I really liked this. It's always fun to see what writers think writing is x) Writing is an art, and everyone has their own interpretation. I'm glad you made it clear that everyone has their own way of writing, and no way is right or wrong.
Great poem! Keep writing!!