Hello jclare . How are you doing? I'm Charlie and I'm here to celebrate your 2nd WDC anniversary month with a review of your poem, "Invalid Item" . Thanks for sharing your writing with us. I hope this review finds you well.


Title/General Thoughts/Subject Matter: I chose to read this poem of yours because I am very familiar with Borderline Personality Disorder and thought it would be a relatable subject. I was slightly confused about the cover image being a candy cane and what that might have to do with it, but no worries, I'm all in.


What Worked: I think you captured one of the main aspects of the disorder very well -- boredom. There is a great discontent that comes along with the disorder and feeling empty or bored is almost a given. I think that someone unfamiliar with BPD could read this and understand how it might feel for a sufferer.


Technical Issues/Suggestions: As a general suggestion, I was surprised at some of the things MISSING from this poem. The affliction you're talking about here could easily be mild depression or just a rough patch. Where is the mercurial pendulum that people with BPD are constantly swinging from? I'd like to see this maybe a bit more specific to the subject matter because it doesn't really display a lot of the ailments as well as it could.

As far as technical suggestions, I have a few notes that you can take or leave as you wish:

The random capitalization throughout was distracting. For example:
And having it All/Leads back into I'm not sure why 'all' would be capitalized there.

It just the feeling they bring
There's a typo in this line.

I would suggest bumping up the rating from E because there is a small curse word there at the end.


Final Thoughts: Overall, I thought this was an interesting choice of topic to take on. I think you talked about some of the aspects of BPD well, like the boredom and emptiness, but I didn't feel as though it captured many of the other much more major aspects of the disorder. Thanks again for sharing with us!


Best wishes,





My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .