Young Writers Society

They used to be so in love,
like two birds of a feather,
tethered together forever.
She hovered protectively,
meeting his every need,
loving him faithfully.
He held her tight and
called her his.
Every day was but
a moment to them.
Then the pain rushed in
on a northwestern wind
swallowing them.
Lies surrounded
their perfect world
and all was lost.
She cheated
broke his trust,
for the lust.
The voices of doubt
screamed louder,
to the beat of
china plate shatters.
The D word flew quicker
than 747 in winter.
All hope was lost,
with such high cost,
the family dynamic dead.
The Christmas tree
lies silently
waiting for attention
it will never get again.
No more will they laugh
and be merry,
for life is over
for this family.

Hai! Looks like you need a review (and I'm avoiding work so hey, why not?)

First thing's first, your title could use some improvement. It's not very original and I almost skipped over it while looking for something to review because it make me expect something emo or poorly written or just really angsty and bad. Which this isn't. So do yourself a favour and find a title that tells the reader what to expect from your poem or intrigues them or at least something that's not going to scare us away?

Specific Comments

1.

like two birds of a feather,
tethered together forever.

This is awkward to read. I'm not sure if it's the association of feather and together, which of course just makes me think of the 'birds of a feather flock together' rhyme, or if it's that you've then tagged forever on there. For one, the sounds don't mesh together very well because the rhymes jar against each other, but more importantly, the content isn't working. Forever is a big word and unless you set it up right, it ends up of having the opposite effect. Instead of imprinting on readers this sense of endless, infiniteness, its become so age old that forever feels like next week.

2.

She hovered protectively,
meeting his every need,
loving him faithfully.
He held her tight and
called her his.

Where's the poetry? What's to stop this from being prose other than the line breaks? At the moment, if you took those away, this would just be a couple of lines from your average romance scene. Who are these characters? What makes them special and why should we care about them? And where's the poetry? If I wanted prose, I'd go look in the fiction section. What I'm looking for is interesting metaphors or a clever use of fragmentation. Poetry isn't just about the words, but also the way they sound and the way you place set sounds beside each other. If you want to create the sound of rain you use syllables in sets of two. If you want to create a sinister tone you use sibilance which is where you string together words that have a ssss sound.

What I Like

Okay so what I like in this poem is that part at the end with the personification of the Christmas tree and the idea that it won't have attention any more. I'd have liked to see you go further with that and instead of switching to talking about how the family is dead which is mundane and obvious, instead show their loss and their sorrow through the media of the tree. Describe how the floor is littered with its pine needles, how it start to wilt, how one decoration has slipped to the floor and smashed. There's a lot you could work with there and I think that should be your angle for the poem. The rest was pretty dull - it was too simply stated and while I feel you have the working of something here somewhere, it's really struggling to come out.

If you started again though and put all attention on the christmas tree and used that as a metaphor of this family's 'love' then it would work really well.

Hopefully I've given you an idea or two, drop me a pm if you've got any questions,

Heather xxx

I agree with Kitty15 about the title of the poem. I wonder how many other poems are titled 'Broken Love'. It is quite unoriginal and bland.

Anyway, I like the first two sentences or first six lines of the poem and how the rhyme scheme went. I thought you would continue to follow the format of ABB, ABB but when I came to the third sentence or seventh line, you didn't continue the rhyme sequence.

I'm going to be biased here and say I would rather you continue that sequence because I love how it makes poems flow more freely. Of course, this is just my opinion. I also dislike how only sometimes you rhyme and other times you don't.

But apart from that, I love your similes and metaphors. The first comparing them to two birds may have been cliche but I found that imagery started off the poem nicely. I like how it opened the poem to the sub-theme of the 'sky'. And how you continued it with 'northwestern winds' and 'flew'.

But then you lose that sub-theme by the literal 'beat of china plate shatters'. I personally love how you worded that sentence/those lines but I think I might prefer it more if you stayed with the sub-theme of the figurative 'sky'. But then again, I realize it's a nice contrast, the figurative 'sky' and the literal.

Nevertheless, despite how you didn't stay with a rhyme sequence or line structure, it flowed really well. And like I said earlier, I like the imagery you create. Good work.