Young Writers Society

It was beautiful and it hurt.
Love and hate.
The borders of the plainest page
Cut me off.
I promised I wouldn’t write about you
And never mention your name.
I need a poem about me,
Something for me.

I’m going to grow old and it’s the one thing
I know I can’t get out of
Not like presentations in English
Or netball in P.E
Angels won’t take broken bones
Or “sorry sir, I left it at home”
“We gave it to her and she’s not here today”,
I’ll have to find some other way
But it’s a pointless search with no escape
I know this. I have always known this.

At the back of my mind it floats, like you.
Always.

This is a poem that requires a lot of thought and analysis in order to understand, and that's a good thing. What I gathered is that the first line is referring to love, and the poem itself is about dealing with a lost love.

Some of the parts sounded awkward, such as the second line, but this was a great poem. You show instead of tell, and you used refrences that are easy to understand, but difficult to comprehend (if that makes sense).

Overall, a great poem.

Ta

I dont think I can say anything at all about this poem. It left me speechless. I love it, particularly the first stanza, although I kinda agree with Nate about the awkwardness of "Love and hate.". My favourite line would have to be the first one: "It was beautiful and it hurt." Says it all.
Kudos on another great poem.

I hope you don't mind my playing Devil's Advocate on this one. No doubt you have an excellent poem here. I really like this one, actually.

But at the same time, writers don't tend to improve without a little criticism.

You do a very good job of showing and not telling, but at the price of the reader being able to decipher what's going on. A poet's work is very hard if she wants to get across a certain idea to a reader, and right now I'm not exactly sure what that is. So far what this reader garnishes is: Growing old is like breaking up or a lost love because you can't change either of them - they just happen to you, and that's it.

But the only reason I even got that is because the two things are placed together in the same poem. It feels as if you were going to start a poem about love itself - with those fantastic first four lines (which I loved, by the way). But you immediately change tone and say that you weren't going to write about whoever. And that you need a poem for yourself. Which this doesn't seem to end up being, in my mind - unless I'm missing it as a nod toward confusion. That makes sense, but at the same time it would be too understated to matter to the typical, non-writer poetry reader: the one who reads over it once, maybe twice, and doesn't think too hard about what it means.

So that's all I have. Please don't think me too harsh; I'm always afraid of coming off too critical when I give criticism because I never see any other.... and so it feels like I'm being a spoilsport, or soemthing, you know? I truly mean to help.

As a couple final thoughts, your diction, image selection, and ability to evoke emotion leave nothing to be desired; it's obvious that you have had experience with these. You stayed away from cliche - another excellent move - and the thoughts I saw were fresh, not just rehashes of other sentiments. You worked hard at producing certain ideas. I just think there should be more connection between those ideas, for a more effective poem than you have here. And what you have here is a very effective poem. The more I read it, actually, the more I appreciate it. Excellent work!

Not harsh at all, I'd much rather have a construtive comment than you just saying my work was good. And I see what you mean. Thanks loads for all your comments. Merry Christmas, people!