This is a thank you for your critique for me, then I read your poems and am falling in love!Hate the comedian,

"as he unravels self-confidence with mere words. Love the poet, as he describes raw emotion with his rhyme."

This is great! You show and explane the difference in the self-confidence of the comedian and then the emotion of the poet. Very well done.

"Lose yourself in language, for it will allow you to release your fear. Speak only what you truly feel, for words can betray emotion in their tones."

This flows just great, but I think that if you reword the last line it will flow even better. Put with the rest of the lines it fits right in, but taken out by itself it stumbles. Try something like

For words betray emotion every time spoken

words can betray emotion in their very tones

or something like that, its your poem.

Learn to write when you are young, Worry about grammar later.

This has great meaning but no flow. Try

Write young, for grammar is for the old

Learn to write and live young, try grammar when your old

Grammar is for the old, writing is for the young.

and write with you learn

I think you mean write "what" you learn??? but try and write your love or write your story

I love the way you put these words together and make them work, not evening haveing to make them, they just work. Keep it up!

 I really like the opening of this piece. I think there is a really good repititous nature to the "Hate the Comedian...Love the Poet" set of lines.  I do think that it would serve the poem well to find a different word than "emotion" in both of it's uses. With the word emotion, you are just telling the reader, but I think if you could show "emotion" rather than use the term itself it will really increase the power of the lines.  i.e. something like "Love the poet, as he empties azure tears and fears" or something, ideally less silly than the example I gave, but you get the idea. I like the last three segments of this poem the most, you get a really good rythmic flow that has a wonderful almost sing-song feel to it. I think if you were planning on making a major rework of this poem it would be really good to try to get the first couple segments to get that same bouncy meter that the end has, but the poem holds its own as it stands. Great job! Look forward to reading more!

 Nicely done, Kathleen. You manage to say quite a bit with just a few words. I enoyed this piece.

 I love the last part where you wrote "Love what you read, Live what you love, and write what you learn" That is such a good thing to say. I also like the part where you wrote "Lose yourself in language,   for it will allow you to release your fear.  Speak only what you truly feel,  for words can betray emotion with their tones." Truely this is really good.

I absolutely am in love with this poem. I am always looking for poetry that is my taste and for some reason I can never find it. I think this is the second poem of yours that I have read and love. So, thank you first of all for writing and publishing.

Now, onto the actual poem. I think my favorite line is "Lose yourself in language, for it will allow you to release your fear." I think I like this line so much because that is one of the reasons I write poetry. To release my fears, worries, concerns, anger, and any other emotion that is too powerful to keep bottled up. I think that is why most people write to be honest.

I also the love the line at the end "Love what you read, Live what you love, and write what you learn." I just think that is a good philosophy for lfe. I keep a book of my favorite quotes, and that line is definitely going in there.

I just really like the whole poem. I think it flows perfectly, and it is really enjoyable. There are also a couple of really good philosophies that people should live by. Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your work. Keep up the good work!

the last 3 lines are flawless

loved it

 The title caught my attention, but after reading the poem, I find it to be unfitting. You only say "mere words" once which I find is NOT the theme of the poem. The theme is to love writing, to lose yourself in what is written before you. So instead of "Mere Words", why not try a title like "Imersed in Words" or "Live in Writing" or something along those lines?

Now onto the poem. Your first lines:

 Hate the comedian,

as he unravels self-confidence with mere words.

Love the poet,

as he describes raw emotion with his rhyme.

are brilliant. They flow wonderfully because you made the line lengths change every other line and have great rhythm. I also love how you compare the comedian to the poet. Very creative.

Your next two stanzas are also superb.

The only stanzas I have problems with are the last two:

Learn to write when you are young,

Grammar is for the mature.

 

Love what you read,

Live what you love,

and write what you learn.

They flow nicely and have great rhythm, but I feel that the first stanza here is unneeded. It adds no appeal to the poem except for length. Then the last stanza concludes the poem nicely but it somewhat throws the poem off by being only three lines long. My suggestion is to add another three line stanza into your poem as the third stanza, and then add another four line stanza where your unneeded couplet is. Then the seperation of the stanzas would work better.

Overall, I thought the poem was very well written and creative. I very much like this poem, great job!