Young Writers Society

Well the description was correct! This poem was fairly vague!

So on to the Review!!

I liked the consistency with the format and the short quick lines and you convey a lot through just a few words and keep the piece clean (with even some rhyming here and there).

I know you might want to keep it vague but I would encourage you to expand a little bit as far as specificity goes. I mean right now the reader has very little to work with in order to interpret this poem. The very last stanza begins to give us a little information about the speaker and subject and conflict, but besides this, we don't have much to work with.

When I read the last stanza I wondered if maybe this was intended to be a religious poem written from the point of view of Christ, although seeing as there's not really any other pieces of religious imagery in here, I'm just going to assume the people are random. Which isn't a bad thing, I'd just love a bit more characterization of them so that as a reader I can feel more sympathy and connection for them.

For me the italics and bold formatting didn't quite work for me as it really didn't add much. When the lines are so short you don't need to draw attention to every other word the reader looks at, they'll get tired of it and begin to not notice the italics.

A small grammatical note, on the line "Do I hark" you should end in a question mark.

I didn't mind the minimal usage of punctuation, as the lines were so short and natural it just didn't hinder my understanding the poem enough to bother me.

Overall it was a short and bitter piece, but I'd love a bit more in the form of characterization and maybe a bit more figurative language thrown in there as well! Best of luck in future writing, and please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about my review!

~alliyah

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Hi, J here for a review.
You have a nice rhyme going and it was fairly unforced. You only broke it once and it was a small error. Great poem about one of my least favorite subjects: Death. I do not like all the italics,however, they don't really do much for the poem, therefore, they are unessary. I like how you did the speaker sain it was her time to go, it was so emotional. And the end that suggested the boy hung himself it was tear-jerking as well. Over all I would give this poem an A-.

Good Job and Keep Writing!!

Hello, speaker.

Your rhyme is simple, but generally unforced, without compensating the rhythm. If I want to point out a few places that it feels awkward:

1) "chrome...alone" don't perfectly rhyme while the rest do, so some line tweaking of the first stanza would help.

2) "me...tree" feels as if "tree" was selected just for rhyme. I haven't seen any mention, direct or subtle in the previous stanza.

What annoys me a lot here is the sheer amount of italics. Italics tend to work in small amounts because they emphasize. Using too much will definitely sound overly-dramatic from my viewpoint as a reader and I honestly dislike it. Using a few will punch the emphasis if executed properly. For example, (I don't know if that works) removing all the italics at the ends of lines (and bolds too) and then italicizing the "cold" may work better.

So this poem talks about death. The narrator is saying that it's time for "me" to go and please don't be sad. I really would have liked it if there was some imagery and metaphor there. Both rhyming and free verse poetry do have them. Your theme in this poem is direct; while I like the clarity of it, it may be a fun experiment for you to test out different imagery and metaphors (such as the tree mentioned at the end).

I'll be going off now. PM me if you have any questions or comments, and I hope you have a great day!