Hello, jimmyfin ! I'm Charlie. How are you doing today? I'm working on reviewing different WDC genres for the "Invalid Item"  and stumbled upon your poem, "Invalid Item" . I hope this review finds you well! Thanks for sharing your writing with us.

First Impression/Hook: The opening lines of this poem are super positive, which wasn't expected when I saw that the poem description was about being stuck in depression. Then I realized that the poem is listing the things that could be if the narrator were to find their way out of depression. With a fresh perspective, the title and description worked well with the poem.

Subject/Impact: This is a good description of depression. Even in brief moments of clarity, anything positive is always 'tomorrow' and meanwhile, the sufferer is still stuck in the negative rut. I think people who have had depression could easily relate to many parts of your poem.

Tone/Mood/Language: You worked well with poetic devices, especially alliteration; wispy whiffs and such. There was a lot of good imagery that built the poem's tone. It feels like all of these things are so close and yet so far out of reach. I'm still unsure if the poem is one with an optimistic message (Tomorrow will be better!), or a depressive one (Every positive thing will happen on an arbitrary tomorrow). I think it works well either way.

My Favorite Part: I like the way you show things in the poem rather than directly telling them. My favorite lines, and a good example of this, are:
          Earl Grey will call a name,
         With whistling invite
I like that you described the call of a hot, calming tea without actually saying anything about drinking tea. Using a tea name was a clever way of working that idea in there.

Mechanics/Suggestions: There were a couple spots that started feeling a little trite, like they're tired ideas in poems on this subject matter. The sun/shadow and mirror/reflection things are commonly used in poems about depression so that line of imagery can get a little blah at times, but I don't think you relied too much on them in this piece. I didn't notice any grammatical errors. For me, I don't dig the capitalization of every first line, but that's a stylization thing that's up to the writer, so no harm there.

Overall: I enjoyed reading your take on this subject and sort of working through the exact message presented here. I liked the imagery and the poetic devices you used. Thanks again for sharing your poem with us!


Best wishes,

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