Submit your poem anonymously

See if you can make your language a bit bolder and more direct:

I search my worth in those hidden gems,
hoping to find the reason of my existence.
I stumble cluelessly through wrong lanes
and am lost on those diverging paths from Frost.

We might not even need to mention Frost explicitly if we have those diverging paths to clue the reader in to your reference.

What would happen with this poem if you varied the line lengths a bit more, and perhaps made some of the longer lines into stanzas made of shorter lines? You may want to experiment with line breaks and see what happens when the variation in line lengths and after unexpected words increase the tension of the poem.

Can you get more specific with your images and ideas? While you know the background of this poem, your readers can only "see" and "feel" what you tell them, so what colours are you seeing? What types of flowers and strays are you talking about, and can you describe these gestures? Let us further into your world!

Could your title be doing more work to draw a reader in? Just now, it feels like it is explaining the poem too closely, and a more abstract image might add a bit of mystery!

Take a slow read through the poem aloud and see if there are any places which need more clarity. For example "Breaking to the ground" could sound like you are making a metaphor between the body and the earth, like this speaker hurting their own body is like breaking new ground in construction or gardening. Another meaning is that they are breaking down and falling to the ground or falling to their knees.

While your ideas a wonderful, you might explore your rhythm and flow a bit more. Try reading your lines aloud to yourself and see where you need dashes or where the poem should have less interruption. For example, what you think of these shifts?

Trying to grasp every crevice, every corner,
I deconstruct each step to finer and smoother shapes.
I cut thorough each section
Until my morphology is reduced to finer nodes.

Can you turn up the tension between what we see on the outside vs. what she has going on inside her head? What does she think about "losing" and how does she want to be seen? Can you get more specific with a moment like "the colour green"? Should be imagine a pale green like the pale moonlight or a strong and vibrant green, or perhaps the dark green of a forest at night?

How is form contributing to the pacing and meaning of this poem? At thirteen lines, we could play with the idea of pressing this into a sonnet (even without making it a traditional rhyming sonnet) and thinking about what you might want to emphasize with different line breaks.

There is a little bit of mixing metaphors in the middle of the poem, and it might be good to smooth this out or focus on one and get specific. Are we in the pouring rain getting wet or sheltered under the roof? Can we tweak the idea of the guitar to something more surprising that continues the idea of the storm?

Getting the name "Jen" and the stanza where you go deep into those insulting comments about calves, jowls, and eyes is so compelling (and stings!) because of its specificity. It feels real! Can you bring more of that to lines like "Was ill-suited to work that would give me purpose / Wasn’t good enough for work I was overqualified for"? What dreams are being squashed here? While repetition is great, you could create a bit more surprise for the reader by varying the phrase at the end, even something like, "You were cruel to say," can spice things up and help us not to tune out the repeated line.

The ending feels a bit too jokey for the rest of the poem, and while "To sum up, I MISS YOU" could make us imagine a much younger speaker, it feels a bit jarring to close this poem. What was it about this desired person that was so compelling? Might a bit of description draw us deeper into this speaker's world?

Might you experiment with how those short, final six lines are organized on the page? Should they drop down in a straight line or could they be spread across the page and dance more wildly?

Should the third and forth line flow together without a period to divide them? The thought seems to continue:

Just as scrawling words may spring from page to embrace me in ethereal wings,
My pen flits ‘cross the page, thoughts in a fevered trance,

Read your poem aloud with an eye for strengthening the authority of this speaker's voice. Can you cut words like "sometimes"? Can you use simpler and more direct language or increase the urgency with the present tense? Take a look at these lines for an example:

can you unwind
or will you decide
to leave it unlined, unsigned, undefined?

i see myself
in your blush
the turn of your eyes

Where are we and what can we see, taste, feel, smell, or hear? Can you give us a hint at where this speaker is and bring us into the occasion of the poem by igniting the five senses? What specific actions mean loving me gently and treating me nicely to this speaker, get specific!

Take a read of your poem aloud to see where you might tighten ideas and smooth out the rhythm. Ask yourself if any lines feel unclear. Could you highlight the second line by condensing the opening idea?

Don’t underestimate love's power to bloom
And glooms over all of the above/and all of the above

Experiment with different ways into this poem with the idea of showing and not telling in mind! Can you ask the reader more directly and bring them into this speaker's brain? Can you get more descriptive and allow us to "see" these people? How would something like this make us feel their urgency and grief?

How could it have ended like this? How
could it have ended like it did? Infinite
loops of this question as my nights
go from falling asleep safely tucked in his arms
to sleepless night wondering how, how?
When can I press the pause button , how can I?

Is there more poem waiting to be written here? You set up some really important questions, but do they need to be answered, or do you want to leave that to your readers? We have images and pixels, but should this person hazard a guess as to what they are seeing, even if there are several contrasting guesses to show their confusion?

Thank you for submitting this version with an explanation, as your poem is both complex and subtle! Could this "much needed explanation" actually mean that there is more poem needing to be written here? We get the wedding photo and feelings of guilt, but we think you could be more explicit through more stanzas to help the reader understand what is going on without an explanatory note.

Try reading this poem out loud and pay close attention to your line breaks. Some of your lines are very short and some are very long; do you have a clear intention for these choices, or did they just happen? Try to listen to where you might naturally break your lines as you read your poem out loud. How might you revise your line breaks with your own authentic voice in mind?

It seems there are three or four people in this poem (I, you, he, and she), but sometimes we’re a little confused about who is who. Is “you” a different person than “he” or “she?” How might you add a little more information to make this clearer?

We’d love to read more! What allowed this narrator to learn the self-awareness and wisdom so beautifully expressed? Are there images, descriptions, narratives, or metaphors that might help explain how the narrator learned what they learned?

Some of the moments that speak to us the most vividly are the parts of the poem where you use description or metaphor to illustrate your ideas. What would happen if you included more imagery, description, or figurative language? How might imagery and metaphor help support the poem’s overall meaning?

Consider ways you might show your reader how the people in this poem are feeling through imagery, metaphor, or descriptive language. What does torment look like? What does misery feel like?

The emotion described in the poem is so vivid—how might you make your metaphors and figurative language similarly vivid and surprising? What descriptions might truly capture the emotion in the poem, without using cliches or predictable language?

What would happen if you included more figurative language in this poem? Could metaphor, simile, imagery, and descriptive language help support the emotional resonance of this poem? What sensory description could help make the emotions more vivid?

Our favorite parts of this poem are when you use repetition to create energy and tension in the poem. What would happen if you included more repetition, patterning, and musical language to increase that energy?

We love the way this poem begins almost like a list, with the repetition of “I lost” and “I gained.” What would happen if you leaned into that repetitive pattern even more, and let it shape the entire poem? What would happen if you used other repetitions or patterns to create rhythm and movement in this poem?

One of the most powerful parts of this poem is when you describe noticing the intricacies of a stone. What would happen if you included a few more detailed, descriptive moments like this one?

We have a clear sense of the object of the speaker’s love, but we don’t feel like we know the speaker very well. How could you make the speaker — his own unique personality — come through this poem more?

Can you let us into this speaker's life a bit more? Are they speaking to a friend or a lover? "I don't even wanna know the route back home" is such a powerful idea! Who is trying to get them to come down?

We would love to read more! This poem sets up a vivid and interesting problem, but it leaves us hanging. Does Analog Girl grapple with her choices? Does she fall victim to technology? What happens if she does?

You do a great job describing memories of this relationship, but there isn’t as much about the speaker herself and her internal experience. What do you want your reader to understand about the narrator of this poem? What transformation does she experience, or what insights does she gain?

Could we explore what's going on on a more literal level and give the reader a few more hints as to what kind of loss is being explored here? You set up a really wonderfully mysterious sadness, but by the end of the poem we are still left wondering what has happened. Instead of "To get the images out of our minds," can you give us some of the images?

"How can you bring me such sunshine and peace" has such a wonderful ring to it that it might be more dynamic to open the poem on these lines! Could you experiment with the order of the lines in this poem and feel out which will draw the reader in with unique phrases? What else makes this person special? Get specific!

How are quotation marks working in this poem? Sometimes they are used to denote a "found" poem or a poem which takes lines from outside sources in a kind of collage, but we're not sure that's what you are trying to convey here. Can you think more specifically about how revolutionary thinking is at work here and might it be compelling to mention a specific revolution? Can you ground the reader in a time and place and bring them into this speaker's world?

The idea that no one cares is really compelling, but we wonder if it might need to be asked as a question in the opening so as not to make readers want to argue straight away (many readers will want to think of themselves as people who do appreciate the subtle changes of the seasons!) What if we posed a question in those opening lines?

Withering is their beauty, breaths of red and orange,
Who looks at autumn leaves as objects of worth?

Should we be thinking about a metaphorical kind of modern day Pompeii here? The idea of lovers frozen together and love decaying becoming a kind of physical decay is really interesting, but you might need to lead the reader more firmly to these conclusions.

Think about the five senses and how you can make these people come alive for the reader. What do they look like? What does it mean to make "love for normalcy, and laugh of reminiscent memories"? Could you describe one specific memory? This poem wades in really patiently, but what if it were to open "In the darkness, two bodies stayed from habit so close they molded into one." like we are starting a strange fairy tale?

Rhyme can also be tricky! Sticking too strictly to rhyming couplets can sometimes control your lines too much and distract a reader's mind from your poem's content because their ear begins to hunt for next rhyme instead of hearing your ideas. You might try a draft where the rhyme gets lost and comes back in! You can also play with how you compose your stanzas so that the rhyming pairs are broken up a bit more:

If the days of the week were mothers of one,
I know for definite he’d be Sunday’s son.
For she is soft, still and slight,

And he is warm, kind and bright.
As he awakes the sky is blue,
The day is wise and always true.

He smiles sweetly and bares a chuckle,
His scent a gentle honeysuckle.
As the ferns dance when he is near,

A few phrases might be smoothed out for a more natural rhythm and clarity like with "Filled with gist and many more" we might need to check if "gist" is the word we want and say "and much more." At the end, something like "Love wins the battle ten to nil" would still make sense but be more in line with how someone might express this idea in conversation. We'd also love to see you dig into more detail here! A party scene is the perfect place for poetry to unfold, but what music is being listened to? What does this woman look like? Her beauty makes the speaker feel "holy inside" (excellent idea!), but we don't get a clear picture of her. Could you add some snapshots of descriptions with all those selfies? Allow your readers to see and hear and feel what the speaker experiences and dig into those five senses!

The contraction in the second line feels a bit confusing, how does it sound to break apart those words so we have "Till all I am is the air I breathe."?

Can you go bolder with those final two lines and have something like:

I’m floating [describe where we are floating/visualize nothing]
Floating, across nothing.

How can you make a reader "see" and "feel" that nothing?

Take a read through your poem with an idea to really mixing up the order of information. Can you print out the poem, cut up the lines, and move them around? What if the poem opened:

The man next to me lets out real laughter while my happiness is welded shut.

This feels like a much more dynamic beginning, and with the title being "Disconnected," we don't even need to start "I'm disconnected," because your images and description of how this person is moving through their day do a fantastic job of conveying this without saying it explicitly. Trust your images!

Take a read of this poem aloud and see if you can smooth out places where the rhyme might be controlling your lines too much. Don't be afraid to let some of the rhyme go!

Take a look at these original lines and one possibly smoother option:

So I explained to you my solution
You understood soon enough
After I cleared your head, once fogged with pollution

I cleared your head, once fogged with pollution,
blowing through your mind with my clear solution.

Can you explore the five senses here and really bring us into these moments of loss? Could you think about the way you were able to fully perceive and experience travel and visitors before the pandemic and show how these senses like touch are now cut off? You are tackling some huge and important ideas, but grounding your reader in a sense of place will help them experience the work on a deeper level!

Exploring feeling and touch is a really important part of this intimate poem, and it might be great to explore the other five senses as well! Where are we, and what is the occasion for this poem? Has the love just returned or are they about to go away? Why are we thinking about an empty bed versus a bed with them there? Take a read of the poem aloud to see where some lines might need smoothing or sharpening, and think about how a reader can "see" the scene more clearly.

While the speaker is letting us into their thought process here, we can't really "see" or "feel" or "hear" what their life was like on a more intimate and evocative level. How does this new partner help and protect? What were those manipulations and lies about? We've got a partial picture here, but think about how you can bring the reader in with the five senses and more surprising language!

Could you experiment with changing up the order of the lines and making the language more active? How would this work?

Heartbeats buzz from inside
Sights fade from the brain

My acid stomach declines to riot, and I hear her call for more . . .

Could you experiment with how we are getting into the poem? Could we try something like:

My grades are shitty,
My room is a mess,
And my mind is a battlefield.

I understand that I look lazy.
I understand that to you
I don’t meet your expectations.

If we can "see" the messy battlefield of the speaker, we will be more invested in their struggle! Think about how do add in layers of description so we can see that room and feel what they are feeling.

Could this poem be longer? It's possible that the ideas you've opened up here need more room to stretch! Referencing Alice in Wonderland is great, but setting a specific scene and placing the speaker at the heart so that we can see what they taste, smell, feel, hear, see etc. would be great for grounding us in an occasion for this meditation!

We might begin on those more original images and phrases, before going into the "Red Sky at Night" saying, especially because it's used in the title. A great strength of the poem is the fact that it weaves in and out of these wonderful sea metaphors, and you might add in even more of these and allow the speaker to really have a foot in both worlds.

The title gives away that shift tense, rather than allowing it to be revealed in the last line, so a new title might be experimented with a bit more. The bicycle moment is also really powerful, and you could try making each line so evocative, almost like this speaker is transforming into other things trying to escape this horrible experience.

More familiar phrases like "pure bliss" and "drop the ball" could be pressed on to give the reader a more surprising turn. The rhythm of the opening with "the quiet sting and dull ache of it" is so great, and this unique energy could be spread throughout the poem! Don't be afraid to go big and bold here; experiment with how literal you can make these metaphors and try dropping "like" from your comparisons!

Revision might come in the form of really attending to the music and images of the lines so that the reader can more fully inhabit this scene. We get great bursts of rhyme, but reading the poem aloud with an ear for music and what we can experience with all the senses will deepen our understanding.

This poem just needs a little nudge. You might consider making familiar phrases like "sweet kisses" and "I wonder if you're a dream" new with fresh language, perhaps alluding to the fugitive nature of the relationship.

I'd love to have something concrete to hold onto--an image, a description, a metaphor. What, for example, does the speaker wish they had looked closer at, noticed, or wished for?

That said, the "wind" and abstract airiness in this poem make it difficult to hold in the imagination. You might try adding some concrete details and images--where are these people sitting? where is the other person going? what does grace look like?--to bring the poem down to earth and to the reader's eye level.

The poem might benefit from the inclusion of more visual elements and concrete details. Where is orange felt in the body? What is its temperature? How does the fruit feel on the tongue? Including more details like these will help the poem pop.

While the second half of the poem includes very specific, visual details, the first half doesn't exhibit the same concreteness. What, for example, is this pain the other figure discovered in the speaker? What is it made of? Does it have a color or scent? How can you make the first half of the poem as clear and vivid and the second?

How might you push this poem a little further to dig a little deeper into the idea you present here? Give the reader some more details about this situation and the dynamic. When you push past your area of comfort in a poem, you open yourself up to ideas that truly resonate.

You might experiment with adding some color, texture, sound, and image to help anchor the reader in this scene. Where are the figures in this poem? What do the speaker's tears feel like in their eyes? The inclusion of specific, sensory details will help the poem jump off the page.

These brilliant images might shine brighter with a bit of editing and rephrasing toward a more active voice.

I wonder about the form here. Is the prose form the best possible option for a poem like this? What would happen if you attempted to work with couplets? I also wonder about where the poem stops. Is it possible there's more to this poem than we can see?

What were those lonely nights? Could the title do a bit more of the heavy lifting by providing more context to what this blue man's life was like?