Young Writers Society

I wrote this for an English assignment. I hope it's good. Sorry for the lack of a title, I'm horrible at coming up with those. It's a sonnet written in iambic pentameter Be harsh please and thank you.
~peanut~

Tomorrow is gone, take another look
as the leaves plummet their life away.
Blindly you move through the hours a rook,
a piece in a life you must portray.

Break the chains,let your secrets be your own.
You're no longer controlled by things unseen.
Let them fall free at your feet, with force thrown
into a pool 'round your ankles, serene.


You are free now, little blue-eyed Mary.
Fly from this place quick like a dove, unwary

This is a Shakespearian Sonnet yes? Great job! It's not cheezy like mine was. You did really well on illustrating what you were trying to say.

I really liked the end line. "You are free now, little blue-eyed Mary. Fly from this place quick like a dove, unwary."

Hey, Isha here to review!

I want to start by saying that this has a good flow, and the occasional flash of fresh imagery. There was a line that really threw me off, though.

peanut19 wrote:Break the chains,let your secrets be your own.

I used to use 'chains' constantly in my poetry, until I was told that they were cliché. I don't suppose that one line with a reference to chains is a bad thing, but I'm extremely picky about that now. xD Also, you need a space between the comma and the l on 'let'.

Also, in the second stanza the repetition of 'through' is unatractive.

Other than that, I quite enjoyed the poem.
Hope this helped a little. xD

PeaPeaPea! Hai Sorry it took me so long been busy busy! So lets get started!

Tomorrow is gone, take another look
as the leaves plummet their life away.

So here when you say take another look, what are you trying to say by that, what are you trying to get us to take a look at? The bit about the leaves I really like, but it feels a little disconnected from the rest of the poem, kind of like you just stuck it there because it sounded good and rhymed with portray. Also leaves don't exactly plummet do they? Heavy things plummet, leaves kind of drift, slowly spiraling down.

Blindly you move through the hours a rook,
a piece in a life you must portray.

Should look something like this.

Blindly you move through the hours-
a rook, a piece in a life you must portray.

Your movements are staged, chosen by powers
unseen, rustling the ground beneath you.
Treading your path through gamboling flowers,
you hope it will be enough to get through.

Now make sure you punctuate how you want it to be read, especially since you kind of write it a little oddly. Like with this

Your movements are staged, chosen by powers
unseen, rustling the ground beneath you.

the beginning of the second part is a continuation on the first one, and it's a little weird to read it. So maybe try either word it differently or fool around with the punctuation. Also be careful about repeating words, you use through very close together and it kind of throws off the flow

Break the chains,(space) let your secrets be your own.
You're no longer controlled by things unseen.
Let them fall free at your feet, with force thrown
into a pool 'round your ankles, serene.

Again you used unseen in the last stanza, mix it up a little!

You are free now, little blue-eyed Mary.
Fly from this place quick like a dove, unwary

This I think could use some work, it feels a little forced, like you just added unwary just to make the rhyme work.

Overall I like it though! Needs a little bit of work, but I think you can pull it off! Good luck <3 loove ya!

Ah this is a little flat. There's some nice imagery but the flow isn't quite there somehow. Maybe it's your beat or... it just doesn't quite have that da dum da dum da dum da dum da dum. I'll see what I can advise...

Tomorrow is gone, take another look

[I'll start here since it is essentially the start. Tomorrow doesn't work. It doesn't have the right pattern of sounds. It could be made to work later once the rhythm is already set up and slid in there as a forced pronunciation but it's not good for starting with. Think of the lyrics to Amazing Grace. That's written in iambic pentameter and the stresses are really easy to hear. You see, iambic is all about the stresses. In fact... a quick lesson wouldn't hurt...]

Okay. So there's ten syllables to a line and that's divided into five feet. A feet is a set of two syllables where the first is soft and the second hard. Such as the word content. The natural way to say it is con-TENT. There are some that work the other way like PLUN-der but there's also plenty that could be either. The trick is to use ones that fit well to start with until your reader has the rhythm and then you can make them pass over a few words if need be.

I don't know how well I'm explaining this but what I'd do with your first line is this:

The day is gone, and take a second look

That would be iambic pentameter. So what you have here is ten beat lines but not actually iambic. However, I'll just ignore that for the rest of the review and let you decide if you want to re-write it in iambic later or not.

as the leaves plummet their life away.
Blindly you move through the hours a rook,
a piece in a life you must portray.

[Good choice of wording, I like the metaphor of the rook.]

Your movements are staged, chosen by powers
unseen, rustling the ground beneath you.
Treading your path through gamboling flowers,
you hope it will be enough to get through.

[The rhyming of you and through sounds awkward and the last line I really don't like. It adds nothing to the poem, it isn't original. It feels like just a string of words that needs to be there to rhyme with line two so you can move on. Lines one and three were good but two was phrased awkwardly and four was disappointing. I'd suggest making two, 'rustling the ground beneath you; unseen,' which would also give you something more interesting to rhyme with.]

Break the chains,let your secrets be your own. [Meh. Be your own? It would be more powerful to say 'Let your secrets release' and throw another syllable in such as Now at the beginning, that would be a nice reverse iambic if you want to be clever - 'Now break the chains; let your secrets release!]
You're no longer controlled by things unseen. [Try not to repeat words in such close proximity unless it's for a particular effect. Maybe hidden would work better though I realise it spoils your rhyme.]
Let them fall free at your feet, with force thrown
into a pool 'round your ankles, serene.

You are free now, little blue-eyed Mary.
Fly from this place quick like a dove, unwary

Not sure about that final rhyme to be honest or the concluding image. I really don't like the use of 'unwary' as a last word. As far as lasting impressions go, that's weak and not solid or powerful enough. Like I said before, you've got some good images but maybe it needs a little tweaking. Feel free to pm me if you like and I hope this helps,

Heather xx