Our Pulse

Hi there!

It took me a little while to get this done, because well, poetry is still a bit confusing to me so I wanted to make sure I did this review right., but here I am! Ready to review a wonderful poem

First off, I notice that you have dashes between each stanza. And in your other poetry you use dots to separate stanzas. I'm guessing that means that you're not too sure how to format poetry on YWS. It took me a while to figure it out myself. Here's a great article of how to format your poetry so it'll look like you really want it to when you post it on here. If you have any questions about how to format poems on here feel free to ask me. I'll be happy to help

So whenever I review poetry, I read it three times: once to just read it, twice to catch any grammar/spelling/format issues, and a third time to focus on the overall poem and how it works. My review will basically follow that same format. ((I'm really trying to work on reviewing poetry so sorry that you're kind of a guinea pig here :3))

A quick flyby of your poem (basically where I say the first impression I got of your poem and what it's about to me): the speaker has found someone to love and feels like it's all a dream, then considers how exactly they could be loved by someone/find someone to love equally.

Was this jokingly or was it affection?

The 'jokingly' here seems out of place, mainly because you say 'affection' at the end of the line and not 'affectionately'. Jokingly is an adverb while affection is a noun (I think I got that right xD #knowslessgrammarthansheshould ). The two descriptions don't work well together. I'd suggest sticking with just adverbs or just nouns.

I now come to know something of you,

Comfort in your arms, they're always there for me.

You switch tenses here. The entire poem is in past tense except for these two lines. I could understand if the speaker was looking back at this from the present and saying something like "I now know of this and we continue to be in love", but I don't think that's what you're saying here.

What did I not know, there must be a reason?

Why we connected, why we got close?

Alright, this might be more stylistic than grammar related, but I figured I'd point it out now. There are three questions and one statement (?) in these two lines. However, here are only two sentences. It all seems rather choppy like this. When I was reading, I knew that I had to pause after each question, but there was no punctuation to tell me to do so. So I found myself second guessing that decision. I'd suggest adding some more punctuation here to make it more clear. I know that punctuation isn't something that you ever want to tell someone to change about their poem, because it's there to help the reader read it like it's intended to be read, but I figured I'd point this part out. I just feel like so much punctuation is missing in this part.

We love because we cannot love.

I'm assuming that this is the word you meant to put here.

Overall, your poem is good. There's a definite narrative here. I'm a firm believer that every poem has a narrative to it, no matter how deeply buried. This is definitely no exception. The story the speaker is telling about his/her love is a very interesting one. It's cool to see them almost change throughout the poem. You do that through the descriptions of what's happening in the speaker's life. We're not focusing totally on that, more the emotions than anything, but you add enough in there to remind us that there is someone there going through all of this literally and not just figuratively.

As I sat down next to you, my heart exploded.

This is most definitely a powerful first line. Anything exploding is just awesome xD But seriously, I like it. What I think could be improved upon though, is finding something to compare the explosion to or find a way to describe the explosion more. When I think of an explosion I think, you know, BOOM. But of course, that's not what you mean here. And no matter how many times I remind myself that, I can't help but imagine the speaker's heart actually exploding >< Maybe something like "exploded with happiness" or "exploded with anticipation".

One thing I really notice about your poem is that the punctuation is a bit strange. Now when I say that, I mean that there are commas where it seems there should be a period or a dash. I know that punctuation is entirely up to the poet seeing as it sets the flow of the poem, but at the same time I feel like the punctuation should make sense. For example:

You sat down next to me playfully,

first it was funny..

then it was serious.

"You sat down next to me playfully" is a full thought. With the rest connected to that thought messes with the flow a bit. I don't know, it just sounds out of place. There's another place where that happens:

I now come to know something of you,

Comfort in your arms, they're always there for me.

Maybe think again about what kind of punctuation you're using? I know you used it all for a reason so I don't want to sit here and tell you it's wrong. I'll just say that it just doesn't work for me.

I can see it now, my mind comprehends this:

Two hearts chained to one bad pulse.

Just a little nitpick here (if you can even call it a nitpick...). The second line here is capitalized even though it's connected to the previous line. That's the only time you do that in this poem. All of the other lines that are like this are lowercase at the beginning. Is this something that's more important or is it just not part of the pattern?

One thing that really stood out to me in your poem (have I said that enough in this review?? xD) is your line endings. I'd say nearly 95% of them are parsing lines. That means you end the line at a place where someone would normally pause when reading/speaking that line. Then the last line of each stanza is end stopped -- where there's a period at the end of the line. End stopped lines are considered the most stable line endings while parsing lines are a just bit less stable. And seeing as the speaker in your poem comes across as a bit unstable, in how they love at least, it works well. I think the way you did this is very awesome. It's like there is a complete thought in each stanza. Like the speaker is really into figuring out what it is about their love that makes them love them. Make sense? I think I might've just confused myself with that last sentence

Overall this is a great poem. As always, there are things that can be improved upon. Like Margo said, you're never really done editing and perfecting any kind of writing. It's like a never ending cycle of trying to reach perfection. I really, truly enjoyed reading this.

I hope this review helped

Keep writing!
**Noelle**

Hi there, Musicinme. Margo Seuss here for a review. I love the way you started this poem.

As I sat down next to you, my heart exploded.

My body burst and my feelings drifted slowly onto you.

'My heart exploded' is a killer line!

My suggestion for you would be to edit this for conciseness and clarity. That includes correcting any spelling/ awkward lines.

One example was already mentioned:

We love because cannot love.

I'm pretty sure you mean to say "We love because we cannot love."

Avoid repeating words unless you mean to draw emphasis towards them.
For example:

I was timid at first, and you were too

You used the phrase 'at first' in the stanza above this one. I would take out 'at first' in this line so that you are left with 'I was timid and so were you." Removing repeated phrases and words that don't need to be present, gives your writing a simpler more powerful feel.

Bit of a typo here:

When I left the crowed, small basement.

"Crowded small basement.[/quote] I don't think you need the word 'small' in there. The word crowded sort of gives me the impression that the basement is small anyway.

Again, your first few stanzas were really strong and hooked me right away. A bit of editing and shortening and this baby will be a star!

Remeber, a good work is never done!

--MS