Young Writers Society

Dang. I almost thought that I already reviewed this, but apparently not! This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review.

The first thing that I noticed about the poem is that it's divided up into three different stanzas. I can see how you got inspiration from Silverhanded's poem as it is similar in structure. I'm not the biggest fan of the "Rachel" definition part as you don't really define anything until the first stanza. If you were going to go for one of those poems that describes something with the usage of a definition, I would have liked to see it formatted more similarly to that? Just a little bit of a thought.

With the first stanza, something that confused me a little bit is the number of days. It's not something that someone else would look up, but it came up for me to 16 years and some days instead of 15, which is what the author claims their age is. This is only something nitpicky, but I'm wondering why it doesn't match up? Did you research the number, or did you just pick one at random? Moving on from this, the "and" in the second line feels unnecessary and disrupts the flow of the poem, so I suggest you take it out.

I'm not that fond of the last two lines of the first stanza as it doesn't really do anything new and sort of singles out this "you" figure in the poem. It particularly frustrates me because you don't mention "you" anywhere else in the poem, and you abandon them there in the first stanza. Is "you" a romantic interest? A father? Someone else? I want more context as to who they are, and if you're going to use "you", I suggest that you be more consistent with it because if you're only going to use it once, I suggest taking it out as a whole because it's not worth confusing the reader.

In the second stanza, I was a little confused throughout. Particularly, I'm pointing to "an anesthetic to the absence". The absence of who, and why does the speaker miss them? Delving further than that, I didn't find the semicolon to really connect the second and third lines. You go from being in your mind to being in 'the garden'. Something that I'm not really a fan of are words used just to use them. I'm not saying that you can't have a strong vocabulary, because you can, but don't use words just because you think it makes your writing sound prettier. I'm rather fond of the last line because it holds a lot of emotional weight behind it, but I'd like to see you rework the three lines before that to have them make more sense and have more context behind them.

For the third stanza, I hold most of the same problems that I had in the second stanza. The wording in the first line feels a little awkward, particularly with "suppose i am delusional". You can already see that I'm not the biggest fan of this poem compared to your others, and that's because it feels a little pretentious, though I'm sure you didn't mean to come off that way. I'm a strong believer in that works don't have to have fancy words to sound or be pretty, and I think that's why I prefer your other poems over this. Another thing that I felt that lacked in this poem is imagery. I find that there's a fine line in-between using unique words and having strong imagery, and I think this shows that.

You don't really describe much here, and instead the piece goes off on a bit of a ramble. I do have to say that I liked the part about the smoothies and I'd like to see more of that. It makes it feel more sincere. I'm not a large fan of the ending itself, because it leaves me wondering the meaning of the piece. What did you intend to get across? It's something that I found to be a little blurry, and with that, I would have liked to see more of a focus on that. Give it more of a focus, and give it some polishing like Silverhanded said, and I think this would be stronger. It's different from your usual style, and with that comes experimenting.

I hope I helped and have a great day! If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

i love this <3

Hey I hope it’s okay if I pop in here and review.

First of all, I’m really flattered to be listed as inspiration for this! It’s super resonant and I think you’ve taken a simple form and manipulated it really skillfully.

I’m going to keep discussion on conventions to an absolute minimum here. There are a couple of moments where beautiful sentiments get a little bit muddled/wrapped up in odd punctuation.

In the first stanza it’s the line “they’ve called me this every day since, / for fifteen years.” That reads a little off to me, for some reason. I think it’s the way “fifteen years” is set out from the text. It feels unnecessary, the way it’s placed, and I think the whole sentence could be reworked to give it a more concrete place. (Personally, I’m a fan of shifting words out of a typical syntactic order to accomplish this. You could also say 5479 days, which is fifteen years worth of days taking into account four leap years. There are lots and lots of other options, these are just maybe a few thoughts as to how I might reorder that phrase.)

In the second stanza, “a familiarity” reads off as well. I don’t know all the terms for word form, but I would say personally that just “familiar” would read better. The second line comes across poignant, but not as good as it could be. (This is another prime opportunity to really push for an elevation of the language you’re using: anesthetic as opposed to pain reliever. Not saying you definitely should change it, but very precise language gets that scalpel edge so it reads a little less “kick to the chest” and a little more “heart surgeon.” Both approaches are good though, and I like both. Anyways, getting rambly here.) To finish off this stanza, I like the phrase “wallflower waiting for a frenzy” but I’m a little pressed to figure out the sentiment. Are we talking sharks & blood in the water? Needing change? Needing something to watch? I’m not sure exactly what to make of it.

This one’s a little nitpicky, but I wouldn’t put a comma after suppose (line one of stanza three.) It reads like a name at the moment, like you’re addressing supposition itself. Overall the wording of the final stanza shifts dramatically: the first two lines aren’t bad, but they’re a little weak and should maybe be reworded. There’s a little bit of a falter there, like you aren’t sure how to bridge to your final idea. Reveries like smoothies though? I’m in love with that line, and your ending in general. It really hit me right in the chest (in a good way) and I’m super into that idea. There’s almost a little bit of humor there, but not in a way that disrupts the piece at all. Good juxtaposition of ideas and concepts.

Overall, I think this is a beautiful piece filled with a lot of beautiful sentiments and that it really just needs a good polish. Thank you so much for posting and tagging me as inspiration! This was a delight to read. (And in the future, feel free to tag me for reviews whenever!)

--Ry

P.S. When did fifteen year olds start having really good ideas? Three years ago I couldn’t write anything this good to save my life.

Hello their! MagicAce here ready to review your work!
first things first, lets start with the negative things,
um, their is nothing in that department I don't think I think you did a great job!
I liked the second one ware you talk about the familiarity of everything I really liked that and I just like what you did here and I cant wait to read more of your work
so keep writing and keep being great!


MagicAce out!