Young Writers Society

Hey! So, you asked if I could come and review a poem of yours, and here I am! I'll be honest... I love writing poetry, but when it comes to me trying to edit/review someone else's poem, I feel a bit bad about it because I feel like poetry is one of the purest expressions of another person's feelings, and trying to change it is a sort of small crime. But!, nothing is perfect and - in a sense - anything can be improved on, no matter how small, and I'm just here to give you my opinion on that matter regarding your poem

Alrighty. First off - I like where you're going with the beginning of the poem with the narrator speaking about her safe haven. The first three stanzas flow well and they build a story for the readers to follow: the narrator is in a sort of dream world, and despite the fact that other's say she's "foolish to live that way", she still wishes to live there and "sleep all day". The fourth stanza is where things start to get a little shaky. You speak about a fight, but I - as the reader - have no idea what fight the narrator is troubled with. Is the fight her rebellion against people taunting her for living in her dream world? Or is it something else? I feel the poem would be a bit easier to understand and more impacting if you gave us a clear idea of what the narrator means by "fight" - perhaps adding in another stanza before the fourth stanza or by changing the word fight to a different, more descriptive noun would be beneficial to the flow of your poem.

Next is the fifth stanza - to me it feels like this stanza paints a complete opposite picture of the narrator's dream world when compared to the first two stanzas. I feel like your ideas for this poem are defffiiinnneeetttllly there (and definitely good!), but that they need a bit more room to be fleshed out in the poem itself. Don't be afraid to make a poem longer if it more easily gets your point and feelings across! The problem with the fifth line is because I have no idea what the narrator means when she's speaking about the grey world she used to live in, because I have nothing to base her description off of - it just falls flat to me because I don't have any troubles from her to base the other world off of. Here is where describing her fight would also be beneficial, because the readers would have something to pull off of that would make the narrator's opinion of a worse world feel more real and genuine to them, and give them a good way to see the narrator's haven in an even more positive light.

The last four stanzas of the poem also feel out of place, but only because there is a sort of missing link between the perfect world written out in the beginning of the poem. I think that you simply need to clarify the fight the narrator was talking about, and that would help to wrap up the last few stanzas because the readers would know more about why the narrator is trying to forget the sadness and her "wounds of her sorrow", and in turn give the poem a more rounded feel.

I'm sorry if I rambled, but I'm really not good at editing poetry, though I tried! All in all, I'll leave you with this - don't be afraid to make your poems longer with as many changes as you see fit. I like the idea you have for this poem, and I just feel like it needs a bit more fleshing out before it's finished. Good luck!

-Mazey

I honestly love this poem.
Everything you put into it all flows and fits together perfectly.
Kudos.

"So I shall lie here and dream as life passes me by,

For in my thoughts there is always a blue sky.

When people ask if i'm happy i don't have to lie."

This is one of my favorite parts of the poem. It creates great visual in my opinion, and kind of depicts your own version of Heaven. Everyone else would put it as "Where God takes me in" or "The golden gates open, revealing a place of perfection." But you took it and molded it into your own creation, instead of following what everyone else does. I love how unique you are in this entire poem!

Overall, I don't see anything that needs fixing. You did extremely well on this poem. I hope to see more from you very soon!

This poem was odd to me in the sense that you tried to rhyme, and the rhythm was way off. I like your concept of the safe haven, but I just don't like the way this poem flows. You start off with three line stanzas and a consistent rhyme scheme and you do this for 4 stanzas. You have 7 stanzas total. I like to nitpick about stupid things like this (tat's just me) but to keep the poem consistent, you should've kept the stanzas three lines long.
The rhythm. Okay, so let me tell you the most basic rule about rhythm, just a neat little trick. If you have a certain amount of lines in a stanza (let's go with three) And the length of the lines isn't somewhat similar, the rhythm is probably not going to flow well. For example

They tell me i'm foolish to live life this way

Sleeping all day, but in my dreams is where I wish to stay;

For this is my safe haven

I sleep on the clouds and drift away in the wind.

My happy memories swirl just like when I was a little girl;

For this is my safe haven.

Wow. I think that this is a really realistic poem, especially to me because it artfully depicts the need to get away, and I thin a lot of people can relate to that. I liked most of the rhymes, but I also think that this poem had the sense of free verse in the syllable count, so to me it seemed a little hard to make the words sound like they're flowing. But other than that, I absolutely adore the style and format, because it's very clean and neat, and looking at it doesn't give me that sense of "this is going to take forever to read" which makes the look a lot more appealing. I also really liked you're choice of words in most areas.

Overall, I really liked this poem:).