h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: It's so easy when you are young - A36626727
Author: Opticalillusion - media mynx life would be boring without hiccups - U231227

This is my first poem to this forum so please be gentle.

This is poignant - meditating on the end of childhood.

Have another look at line 6 - 'that thing called share' doesn't fit the rhythm you've established.

I don't claim to be a poetry expert but my advice is to read lots of poetry!

I like the near but not quite rhyme of young/come and true/too and I take my hat off to you attempting a rhyming poem. It's so difficult not to sacrifice strength and tone for rhyme and rhythm. That has happened here, I think – for instance in the true/too lines. The near rhyme is good but both the 'and' and the 'too' weakens the 'become what you dreamed of being' which ought to be as strong as it possibly can be. Especially with it being the last line.

Good start though.

Waz (considerably further from expert than mVp)

I'd either lose the bullet points or make them mean something, such as 'things to think about when growing up'.

The idea is nice, but the ending is a bit weak. What is it that the person has been dreaming of becoming? The problem is that the ending is not about what the rest of the poem is about.

The poem is about how 'easy' it is to be young. At the ending come the challenges.

I'd say, either be more negative about that challenge - imply that the preparation wasn't there - or build something into the body of the poem that indicates how the 'easy' part helped prepare the child for the future. Make the tone of the ideas work *for* you...

On a personal note, I didn't find it easy to be young. Bar the aches and pains, old is better for me. I got so tired of people saying, 'When you're as old as I am, you'll think...'

I am now as old as they were. And I don't think that. So there.

Thanks for giving us a poem to think about.

DG (Who won a poetry prize in 8th grade for something he cringes to remember, it was so bad)

I've taken away the bullet points because they weren't right for it.
I've read your points but the problem is I like what I've written.
Should I take this poem out of here?

No, don't take it out. I think the message of your poem is interesting. The scansion could do with a bit of polishing, that's all. Always read your poetry out aloud.

The important thing is to be prepared to learn and try new approaches. I'm still learning, which is why I don't claim to be a poetry expert, though I've been writing the stuff for a while.

Why not try a poem without the rhyme? English is a difficult language to rhyme and a lot of good English poetry doesn't rhyme. I think it's more important to convey your meaning in exciting and vivid words.

It definitely reads better without the bullet points.

Having read this over I feel that the first stanza is great, but the rest is quite poor.

Are you familiar with a concept called 'register'?

This means that the level of language you use should match the level of the ideas you want to convey, and the audience you are addressing.

The tone of this poem is naive, as if it were written by someone very young. The rhythm and rhyme have that kind of quality, too, and references to things like Father Christmas...

Perhaps keep the tone, reimagine the idea, and speculate from the point of view of a child what it would be like to grow old...?

Say, maybe, be all of 20? (What would a kid think old people like college students might do?)

Well you've braved the review process here and some good advice has been given.
Your first stanza is the 'best' as far as flow goes in the rhyme style your attempting.
If you like this style of structured poetry you'd do your self a favour if you read Stephen Fry's 'The Ode Less Travelled.' and did some of his practical lessons on poetry writing in all it's many structured guises.

Dmitri's observations are true too about the viewpoint of this work it does start off sounding childish(in a nice way) and then changes. Perhaps you could try to reproduce that 'childishness' in the other two stanza?

I have my first attempt at verse right here on my hard drive and there it will stay as I was able to get it off a review board on another site so it wasn't on permanent display.
I wrote it as I thought poetry should look and I paid the price when reviewers said as such and worse.
It was a good lesson in humbleness and I've taken much from it.

mVp's advice on reading more poetry is good too even up to copying a particular poets style and trying your words in their style, it can help in a big way.

Cheers