Young Writers Society

This poem is very well-written! It made me feel caged and trapped, not just physically, but within my own mind. A few parts felt a bit repetetive—like the word "time", for instance. Sometimes, the repetition of a word adds emphasis, but here, I feel that "time" dosen't need this. Keep it up! The poem was amazing.

I felt claustrophobic as I read this. Almost like a caged bird that longed to be free. A caged bird that waited day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Every day a little hope leaves the bird. They soon begin to question whether they will ever be free. If their wings will ever flap or feel the breeze of the air as it flies by. All the bird longs for is freedom. Something it will never see.

hi gem jay here to give you a review on what i read on you and ari's poem cause y'all did a good job with it

lets get started with this poem

First off gem this was a good poem that you and ari did a and collab yeah i the way you had edited it you and ari and it was such a vibe to read your poem gem i give you that gem that you put the effort in to you and ari i im glad that you and ari collab again

Second my compliment gem is you and ari is such a good poetry two people that can write some good poems i give all two that and all give it all best shot gem and ari

and all i want you and ari to do is keep up the good work and yeah we proud of all for giving it the best shot all could ever did and i know all write whats in thought you and ari


keep writing gem & Ari by jay!!!

Just boop me once you left a review.

Hey gem,

thought I'd leave a review here for RevMo <3

So I think the formatting really did add to the piece here! I think sometimes when folks do this back and forth formatting/alignment it runs the risk of becoming gimicky but I think the poem had the right amount of gravity that it worked here. As I read the poem, I felt like the first part was tight, and almost claustrophobic with some of the stanzas breaking with the extra spaces, and then at the end the form loosens up, but also becomes jagged - showing some sort of change in the narrator, maybe they've become free, just given up from being overwhelmed, or taken a new perspective, but it definitely makes that last line really hit hard at the end.

meaning
I took the meaning of the poem to be that the speaker is expressing distress in a way that sounds really panicked based on the repetitions about being trapped - either physically, or mentally, or emotionally, they have lost their sense of safety and all these emotions are running together. I think the emotion of panic and futility really came through for me. And it was pretty heartbreaking to consider what may have been the cause of the speaker losing their sense of safety. (If this poem is written from personal feelings / emotions, I'm sending good vibes and thoughts your way, and please feel free to reach out if you feel like it'd help to have someone to talk to! These sound like really intense feelings to deal with if they're something you're experiencing.) <3

suggestions
small grammar correction in the first stanza "its" should be "it's" I believe and then in 2nd to last stanza you missed apostrophe with "ive". I don't know if maybe you were doing that to be super minimalistic with your punctuation, but I would say aposrophes are one piece of punctuation that are needed for sense-making, so you might consider adding them back in. They're one punctuation piece that people don't really notice when they're used correctly, but can be distracting from they're missing.

One aspect I think you might consider working with if you go for any edits, is that you had some very vivid imagery but I didn't necessarally feel like it connected into one picture, and kind of longed to see a zoom-out of what was going on, to further connect with the speaker. It felt like all these moments described were really zoomed-in and just like in any good movie where you get landscape shots and close-ups you sort of want a blend in poetry too, so the reader can get the full picture. I don't know if maybe that was a technique you were doing to make the reader feel sort of disassociated with what was happening or to keep it ambiguous but I think it would have been more impactful personally to have the images you were using connect together into one picture. I sort of wanted to know a little more clearly too, what the speaker was up against beyond just the metaphorical points of distress.

You also might have tried to add more stormy imagery! From the title I thought there was going to be more water and fish and stormy thunder, but the imagery itself felt more office-related than water related with the clamps and paper. So the imagery families were a bit inconsistent for me, but adding in some more watery imagery might help that out a bit!

highlights
My favorite aspect of the poem for me was the formatting, and also the interesting ambiguity of the ending - I felt like the poem's end could be taken both as a breath of relief like the line is finally out on it's own and maybe they are finally free from whatever was trapping them, or it could be read as just complete overwhelmed, giving up. I thought that was interesting and in this case I actually enjoyed not knowing which way it ended in I guess.

I think the repetition was just enough for affect too!

I liked the minimalistic punctuation & capitalization (outside of that apostrophe note from earlier) - as I think it fit the mood for this poem really well, and wasn't inconsistent or distracting.

Overall, a really nicely done poem with some interesting formatting that's been executed well. Thank you for writing and posting! <3

Have a great day!

~alliyah

@brokenheartsari <333