Young Writers Society

This is one of my very first serious poems, I would like as much feedback on this as possible... I hope you enjoy.

Realize

Realize,
shut your eyes,
this battle must be won.
Realize,
force a smile,
in the midst of a trial.
And if you have to leave,
this violent choral clash,
then you really shouldn't be here,
your hatered is very clear.

First of all, "hatred" is spelled wrong. Just one e.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

I would first like to say that I love the line "this violent choral clash." I'm not entirely sure what I like about it so much - partly the bit of consonance going on, and then the contradiction between the words "violent"/"clash" and "choral." It's a lovely line.

I also like the simplicity and shortness of this poem - it took me so long to figure out how to write short poems myself, so I can always admire a short poem that still manages to get across what the poet meant to get across.

Now, areas of improvement:

First of all, you do not need a comma after every line. It makes things feel awkward and fragmented, and sometimes it takes away from meaning. Like the lines: "And if you have to leave, this violent choral clash." I assume that what is meant that the thing the person is leaving IS the violent choral clash (a bad relationship or whatever the clash may be), but with the comma thrown in I can't be sure. A good way to check for comma usage in poetry is to rewrite the poem in prose form and see if the commas still make sense. If you wouldn't put a comma there if this was a paragraph, then you shouldn't have it there in the stanza.

Also, while I like the title and the repetition of it in the poem, I'm not clear on what its relevance is to the story. So you may want to think about what the person the narrator is talking to should be "realizing" and then see if you can give us more of an idea of it through the poem.

And a little specific imagery and figurative language wouldn't hurt - free verse is fine, great in fact, but without figurative language and/or imagery poetry is just bland. Although like I said, loved "this violent choral clash" and the repetition of "realize."

PM me with any questions!

~Blue

Hi Aliyah!

I like what you have here! You’ve got a nice short poem which is to the point and has some utterly gorgeous imagery – “this violent choral clash” is a wonderful line!

Now, I think you’re trying to rhyme realise with eyes? It’s not working. In fact, I would forgo the idea of rhyming at all in the poem if you want, it is only making you add words that could be better. Throw out both of the “realise” lines and consider losing some of the other lines. The forced smile and clear hatred are forced lines which don’t feel like they belong at all. They feel like you needed to rhyme so you threw them in. This may not be the case, but it certainly feels otherwise. This means you need to alter the lines to make them more natural. Not least because your end line doesn’t feel final at all, it doesn’t have the right kind of oomph for a final line. I think you could probably swap it with the second last line and you’d have the right finality.

I’d keep your first two lines as they are (unless you can find something more interesting than shutting eyes to use, it can stay as it is fairly suitably). I’d also consider making the poem longer, this will be easier without the rhyming. You have an idea here, a narrative of sorts, that I feel like could be a lot longer and if it were longer, you could delve more into the who/what/why that I think we’d like to see.

If you change this, please tell me! I’d love to know.

- Penguin.