Young Writers Society

Hello! Waffle here to review your work.

I had a very, very hard time understanding this. I did like the idea. Maybe this would have been a better short story, not a poem.

It has a painful choppiness to it and it kills me.
1.) Needs to flow. BECUZ I FLOW! - https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=c ... mp=yhs-004

AAnyway, It needs some depth to it. As much as you are explaining to me that your book is special to you, or something, it needs something to PROVE that to me. It needs more explaining, again, going back to what I said about the short story. Please do take that into consideration.

Good job!

~Waffle

Hello! I had a hard time getting the rhythmn of the poem. I like the main theme and how it suggests notions and questions for people to reflect on.

Hello!

Happy September Review Month!

First off I'd like to say that I really think you've got a good knack of line and stanzas down. I like to see that going into a poem. You've got breaks in good places when you're writing the lines and you're using the spacing of stanzas in a positive way to help enforce the overall idea of the poem. For instance, your use of the single line stanza with "Now, they get to overflow the lines." elegantly juxtaposes an overflowing of an idea from one stanza to the next while maintaining its integrity by showing the motion of the poem from stanza to stanza. Good job.

With that said, I do see some areas you could use a little sprucing up still and perhaps you're already working in this direction on your next piece, maybe no one has brought it up to you before and I'll get to teach you something new. What I think could use some work is actually how you're going about writing this poem. I understand that this was an essay you changed into a poem? Personally I'd suggest some revisions on that front; this poem comes off rather dry because it was originally an essay. Essay writing is very different from writing a poem in many ways because when you're writing a poem you can take the reader on an adventure of words, while when you're writing an essay you're using support to back up claims that are very cut and paste into the format the teacher wishes to read. Now, the essay can be a very artful thing to write and read, but it doesn't leave room for the colorful language that poetry thrives off of. It focuses on facts and details which is just too much information for a poem.

This leads me to the second thing I'd probably edit in, but we'll finish with the first. My suggestion for how to fix this is to go back in and add in a little more detail about things you're speaking about, such as a vibrant descriptor of the "simple" book, and the "simple of collection of used paper" (I think it was supposed to be sample? not sure, this line doesn't make much sense.) because you're using the same sounds repeatedly which is dull in poetry, but necessary in essay writing.

The second thing I'd suggest you edit is the details used to create this story we're reading. Instead of leaving it with this sort of dramatic last line which is just a wish, make it a reality. Push this poem into existence by taking out the language that places it on a page for a teacher to grade. "This is my symbol" but we've yet to see it. We can't touch the binder, smell it, see the grass stains on this poem you wrote, or the wrinkles on the pages you cried on. We haven't seen your binder, and we need to in order to get into this poem. Add little details like that to the poem to make it emotionally conductive and we're going to connect with it better because we've all seen things like it in the past, or had one ourselves.

Overall, I think you're trying the wrong sort of technique to create a poem out of this subject. Just taking lines from an essay is going to leave some major holes in the art as a poem sort of like trying to use a watercolor technique with acrylics. Essays are essays because they're taking a reader on an adventure through a progression of points that leads to the conclusion they were introduced to at the beginning. Poetry is poetry because it's taking a reader on an adventure through sounds, phrases, and sensory stimuli that otherwise could have been overlooked in the ordinary lives of day to day.

That being said, I think you seem to understand poetry really well for stanzas, flow, and other techniques of poetry. You picked out some wonderful lines to use, it's just not completely bridging the gaps between the two styles enough for me to like it or feel emotionally connected to it. I hope this helps and I'd really like to see what you could do with this taking the major points of your essay and writing each point as an image in a poetic form to see what you come up with. If you do and accept my challenge, give me a shout and I'll come review it.

-Aley

Wow! I really, really like this poem. I think you've done a fantastic job with word choice, and I think your message really does ring true in many people. The descriptions, they are all just great! I greatly enjoyed reading this, keep up the wonderful work!!!

Huh... this was rather interesting and sweet, in my opinion. I agree with you on that note, someone's writing really can and does represent the person. It' neat how by reading someone's works, poetry, i.e., can really let the reader get to know just how the writer feels. I rather love that feeling! It's exciting to be able to see clearly inside someone's head, am I right? I like the way you wrote this, with the varying lengths of the stanzas, as it reads smoothly, rather like a story I think. I like the language you used too, not over the top, but not too easy either. Great job! I really like this! I can't really say anything bad about this, and you did such an amazing job. Good for you! Thanks so much for writing this. I can' wait to see more! Have a great day!

-Perks~