Young Writers Society

Well, you sure like to ask a lot of questions! Haha

So, for some odd reason, I decided to read this piece a loud. Why is because if a poem is longer, I've acknowledged that I normally can't retain the entire thing by just reading it in my head. Thus, I read out loud.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this. I prefer when poems are more serious and get the reader thinking about something that's actually meaningful, as you've done pretty nicely. I like the way you set up the poem, overall it was easy to follow, and had a steady flow. I will admit every now and again I'd find myself stumbling, but I credit that more to how fast I read it. I tend to read more serious poems at a fast meter, and since there isn't a rhyming meter here, it tends to move even faster.

Now, I commend you on the fact that you did such a poem in free-verse. I normally review free-verse poetry, because as the name suggests, you have a lot more freedom with a work by not keeping to the rhyming stigma, so how a piece is presented can have numerous results. The fact that you were able to establish such a steady meter is impressive, so I hope you keep going about the structure in the same way, because you seem to understand what you are doing.

In terms of the actual story in this poem, I will answer it. I myself have had many similar thoughts as of lately due to certain events in my life. Good for you, your poem is relatable.
Anyway, in terms of happiness, madness, and the question of individual importance, it isn't good to only search the dark thoughts that cross the mind. While yes, they are easier to find, they aren't the force you should be focused on. Happiness is something you find within yourself, and those you involve yourself with. The fact that such dark thoughts are in the mind are proof that you'd know happiness, because you wouldn't know what was happy or depressing if you hadn't experienced it before. Each person knows madness, and in some aspects, everyone is mad. We as humans just know how to control it before it has the chance to be released. And individual importance, it's better to stay and try to live a better day than the previous, and to try to melt away the frozen depths by planting a new dream in your mind.

Stay positive. I love this piece and hope to see more.
Keep writing!
~Maddie

Hullo Ooh,

Welcome to the site and to posting poetry, I always love to see a lot of poetry posted and commented on so that my lust for lovely words is fulfilled! I'll be doing a overall critique of your poem today as I don't think going line by line is going to be very effective.

Right now your most interesting lines are "I am the doctor in Rome/who dissected the living". I want to know more about this doctor in Rome, how your narrator might connect to them, and why should we care about this one particular doctor? Dissecting the living is a pretty gross thing and I'd love to see more imagery surrounding the concept, it's a rich well to draw from, with bones and skin and sinew and veins. This kind of imagery (any kind of imagery) would pick up this poem and really lift it to a solid state.

Your lack of imagery, description and other language techniques has made this a rather dull, listless poem. Maybe that is what you are going for with the harsh emptiness line, but it isn't working for me at all. I think it's clear that you know what you want to say, which is often the hardest part of writing a poem - I'm always a bit confused about what on earth I'm writing about and why. Now you have to couch that knowledge in language which suits the purpose and tone of your poem and makes it palatable to your reader. We want to sink into your poem, or skate over it, we want to feel what the narrator is feeling. We don't have that at the moment because while your intent is refreshingly clear it doesn't have enough depth for us to sink into or walk on.

At the moment your lines are all statements, consider making some of them into images to improve the way your lines flow and the ease of reading. Consider your first stanza:

If I stay or if I go,

Wandering into the distance,

of my far off mind where I may never return

From its depths

of harsh frozen thoughts.

You could say instead "If I stay or if I go, wandering into the dark distance of my far off mind. Where I may never return from it's cold depths of harsh, frozen thoughts" just the addition of "dark" and "cold" help give us a better picture of what you're trying to say. You need to clean up some of your punctuation as well - consider if this was in paragraph form, your punctuation can (should) go in the same places as it would in the case of the paragraph.

You're on a good thing here, poetry is always a good thing, and you know your mind which is difficult and helpful! I think if you edit this and work on incorporating imagery and other language techniques into your poem you could really write something stunning.

Thanks for posting!
- Penguin.