Young Writers Society

Radrook here a once again to offer some suggestions.
Apologies if I offend. It isn’t my intention.
Please feel full free to cast aside all things you deem not helpful.
But if you do be sure its true by being extra careful.

That having been said:

Thanks for sharing this very interesting prose poem or short story about how mankind ruins the Earth and must leave it in search of a very distant new home. Not a totally new idea but the way it is handled in the poem is very effective.

I like the use of dramatic monologue since it made me feel as if a passenger on this interstellar ship is talking to me personally. It gives the description an emotional depth that it would otherwise not have because the speaker is very personally. The deep melancholy and sadness comes through loud and clear. As a reader, the poem hooked me emotionally because it is about my species and my planet that the passenger is talking. I felt anger at mankind’s stupidity and its seemingly insane quest for material gain regardless of consequences.

Suggestion

I would write it without ignoring capitalization. Why? Because it distracts me so I figure it might distract other readers.

The poem starts with the pronoun “they”“ and shifts to the pronoun “we”. I would use only one of the two as a dramatic monologue point of view.

Careful with repeating the word "star" too frequently and too close together.

[O]n earth, [we] thought [ourselves] the center of the universe. over centuries, [but] learned the truth, that [our] home was but a blip in the galaxy. [We] wondered if [we] were alone, but did [we] really want to know the answer? [We squandered]all [that our] planet offered, assuring [our] self-destruction. [I]t was too late. [We] had to leave, setting course for stars that [we] could never live to see.

[N]ow we are surrounded by [the darkness and]the living memory of a planet we have never known. [W]e have never climbed mountains, never sunk our toes into ocean-soaked sand, never heard birds sing in the forest. [W]e live in suspense, knowing only the world inside this [ever-traveling] machine, dreaming of the worlds our children might conquer.

[Yes, we] still wonder if we are alone, watching the stars for any sign of life. [E]ven lost in space, we remember the stories of those who died before us, those who dared to chase the stars. [W]e are fueled by their vision, their hope that we would live to see a new star, a new place for our feet

Hi,

Nicely done. I loved the way you crafted it. Hope to see some more work like this. I sensed the starvation for future in this poetry. It is nice. You started with earth and how we learned the truth about cosmic world. It is humans flaw to destroy their own beloved planet. No aliens will come to destroy it. we are the ones. Your poem has good depth and understanding.

Keep up the good work.

This is Nikayla here for a review!

So at first I was a little confused by this, but that's because I misread the part about you experimenting with prose poetry here and I was sitting here wondering where the image was. Nonetheless, let's jump right in. I'm not the largest fan of this poem--but that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. It seems to be more of an experiment than anything else to me at the moment. It could just be of the fact that I'm not the fondest of the structural style of prose poetry as well, but let's delve deeper into it.

You label the poem as 'Science Fiction' and while I can see how it is that way, I don't know how much of a feel of that I got from the poem. It's broad in its topics compared to your other writing, especially with the first and last stanza with them not really talking in a whole lot in specific. You lose your focus throughout the poem and I think it would be strengthened if you decided to make it more cohesive, as well as sticking to one topic and going from there.

We see that a lot of the poem is based on the universe and space and I think that this would work for a main topic. I'm not saying that the narrative or poem in itself isn't cohesive, it's more the imagery that you toss around that feels that way. One of the other things that I think turned me off about the poem is that you make it feel like a narrative as well. I want to be immersed into this story, and it's hard because we don't really have any sort of speaker, or at least, we don't have one that we're aware of.

I would have liked to see more of an avenue for the reader to be able to connect to the poem because emotionally I felt this was lacking when you could have gone for an existential/more lonely/what is the universe tone but you never really tackle anything fully. Setting up the atmosphere is something that would be beneficial to creating these tones and emotions. The second stanza is my favorite of the poem and I think that the imagery and lines from that can be salvaged in your next edit if you decide to do one, but I feel like you should play around with this more and do some reworking.

I hope I helped and have a great day! <3

Hey there !! Ejay here for a review ...
It's been quite some time since I have been on this site , and I am pretty glad that I chose your piece as my comeback vehicle
I loved the theme behind your poem . It's pretty interesting . Plus, the hassle-free way in which you allowed your poem to meander is amazing .
The line "Never sunk our toes into ocean-sunked sand.." stood out to me . The imagery it generated while reading was extremely powerful . However, I did f8nd a major mistake in this post . You need to capitalise . Every full stop should be followed by a Capital lettered word . Maybe you were in a hurry and So, you ignored it, but then, that mistake takes away a lot of sheen from your poem. And I want people to read this piece of work .
My profound apologies if the last few lines sounded a bit too harsh.
Anyways, it's great to have begun the day with an inspiring and thought provoking piece
Cheers!
Regards,
Ejay