Young Writers Society

I think reviewing poetry is really difficult. I remember being presented with some poem about a frog in AP English back in my senior year of high-school and thinking, "How in the world am I suppose to analyze this?". Somehow, I slugged through and managed to jot down something -- I think I mostly stuck to analyzing the mechanics of the poem. Rhyme, meter, alliteration, metaphors, imagery, etc. Looking back, I'm pretty sure my English teacher wouldn't have cared what I wrote as long as I wrote it well.

But anyways, what do you look for when reviewing poetry? What elements of a poem do you bring up in your critiques?

I like this discussion prompt because I've been thinking on it a lot recently when reading over poetry in the Lit section, even if I'm not going to review them - because apparently I review mostly novels now. Go figure.

In my last poetry review, I actually laid out my checklist, which is:

[√] Flow
[√] Connectivity
[√] Fluidity of Transitions
[√] Potency of Sentiment

Anyone who's gotten a review from me in the past will know that I could talk about flow for days on end without stopping because it is literally my primary connection with the way poetry is presented. If it's a structured poem, this means that I analyze how the meter is laid out, if they're loyal to the meter, and what any deviations mean lore-wise. In free-verse poetry, it's more easily defined as the accessibility of the words and how they interconnect - whether this is smooth or not is the evaluation. Beyond that, flow is pretty simply about how smooth your word choice and timing are. Line breaks and full stops, any sort of punctuation or mechanic that implores the reader to wait. That sort of thing.

Connectivity is something that I think is naturally automatically assumed in poetry. Think of it how all the contents of a cake are considered ingredients - and the whole would be completely different without any of them. It's the reason that, if you put an image of a cathedral in with the image of agony/say someone's laid out on the floor doubled over in pain, the astute reader would connect those two and say Oh, there is pain resulting from religious (abuse/experiences). It's important that this is acknowledged when writing and editing because it really determines the major inferences your readers will take away.

Fluidity of Transitions could fall under flow - and they're definitely related. Some poems don't even have transitions / move so quickly that transitions are unnecessary. But it's important that, if you're switching main sentiments, you transition well, or they end up mashed together awkwardly.

And Potency of Sentiment basically boils down to power and whether or not the poem has it. This is harder to review because each poet's style arrives at the place of power in a different way. For my own poetry, it's generally through narration and the voice of the characters IN the narration. For some, it's compacted imagery or description. And in one poem I reviewed a pretty long time ago, it was about how well you knew Greek and Egyptian mythology.

I think people get hung up on finding the place of power immediately in their reviews when a breakdown of the three leading up to it can really easily get you to that place.

This reply won't be so glorious as Lumi's, but I'll try to articulate something.

One of the things I look at majorly with poetry is what the poet is trying to say versus what they actually said.

This deals mostly with the subjectivity of reading something right after it's been written. Because of this, the poet may be unable to distance themselves from the words, because the images and thoughts they meant to convey are still in their head. Whether or not those images and thoughts actually got across in the poem is debatable, and that's where a reviewer can step in with a fresh pair of eyes and challenge the piece.

So, for example, they're trying to convey a message—perhaps something so simple as "spring is full of life". (You can argue that that's not really a message, more of an idea, but for this purpose, it's a message.) They're trying to show the reader how vivid and vibrant spring is, so they throw in everything but the kitchen sink. The birds in the trees, the fresh buds of flowers, the bright green leaves the grass the hay fever the pollen the bees and all of a sudden you have a glorious mess of a poem. (This is an extreme, assuming they didn't portray it smoothly, but.)

In this case, this is where a reviewer can step in and say "hey, your images are jumbled and I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here". Or even "your images are kind of cliché at the moment, and they're not really evoking a response to the liveliness of spring". (Obviously, moving on to give tips and such.)

There are any number of elements that can obscure what a poet is trying to say, most of them purely technical. Clichés, inconsistencies, things that can be caught and tweaked with a good round of editing so that the message is a little clearer.

I'm not really good with a lot of the theoretical/not-mechanical aspects of poetry—I'll admit that flow is actually one of my weakest points when writing, and even on the more mechanical side, my diction leaves much to be desired. But if there's one thing I can do, I can pay attention to attempted messages and how well they were conveyed throughout the piece.

Not too sure how I can follow up after both those perfect responses but I'll give it my best shot!

Because poetry is so organic and subjective, I try and keep it to two very particular sections, one of them being substance whilst the other being diction. Both aspects, in my opinion, are the only ones that have any particular weight that isn't subjective.

With substance, it's all about the inspiration. The reason behind what you're writing, or if you're writing with a reason. Are you trying to express a small inkling or feeling? Are you attempting to breach a heavy, broad subject matter? And if so, are you using imagery and metaphor to better suit this substance? It's not always easy sticking to a subject matter, and sometimes writing something aesthetically pleasing might not go with the overall topic the poet chooses to expound upon. It's easy to get sidetracked with flowery language and lose the passion that brought you to write in the first place. Poetry isn't about showing off your ability to use large words within a short amount of space, after all.

That having been said, diction is where the concept of word choice comes in. Sometimes the poet has a very clear, strong idea of what they want to depict, but do so without any particular bells and whistles, if you will. Single facet poetry often reads more like prose and, in turn, makes the weight and substance of the poem less impactful. Are they using language, style, poetic license, etc. to the better suit their purpose? Is the poem an onion, layered with different facets that make that substance shine? Or is it the core of an apple lacking flesh?

I'll give pointers on general flow and structure if the structure cuts down on the impact of said substance. For the most part, though, the aforementioned clauses are my main interest.

*truthful statement about how my response to this question will not be as awe-inspiring as the previous three*

Honestly, I think I know very little about poetry, both the technical aspect of it and the... not-technical aspect. Argue with me all you want about how I've helped you with poetry, but I still don't know what the heck I'm doing most of the time. And that's okay. I still review.

First thing I do when I review poetry is read the poem. Obvious, right? But if I really enjoyed it, then I won't stop partway through my reading of the poem to jot down something that could be improved. Usually, it's pretty obvious: forced rhyme, cliches, absolute confusingness. Those things are all things I as a reader am allowed to interpret without expert training. If you've heard the phrase or theme or image or word a thousand times before, it's cliche. If the words rhyme and seem only there for the express purpose of rhyming, they're forced. If it's confusing, say so! The whole point of poetry that you share with other people is for you to share it with other people and for them to get something out of it. It's all rather intuitive.

But when you're trying to tackle a gem, a wonderful poem that still is in the green room, or you got asked to review it, or you're sick of reading sub-par poetry, then it gets a little harder. Unfortunately, all I have is my intuition: I have to narrow that intuition on everything. Usually in poetry, if there's a little awkward phrasing, I'll let it slide: there are surely more important things to touch on. But when nothing's popping out, I find a point in the poem, any point, when something feels wrong. If you stumble over it when you read it out loud, it might be wrong. If the structure leads you to think there's something there isn't... Now I'm just blabbering.
Maybe that made sense to someone.

Mostly, I look for the good and the bad in every poem and write it down in the box.
Then I remember to check the "this is a review" box.
And that's how I review.

This is probably a bad strategy that makes it a good thing that I switched to the Gen Lit crew, but I never go into a poem with the intention to look for anything in particular. That being said, there are some things I tend to pick up on more than others.

Imagery or lack thereof. Vivid imagery really sticks with me, so a poem without it will definitely hear about that. Related: strong figurative language.

Weak lines. If there's a poem with a lot of strong, fantastic lines, great imagery, and really good metaphors, weak lines stand out. And they bother me, mostly because I enjoyed the rest of the poem so much. So that gets pointed out.

Forced rhyme. Because it's usually just so obvious when someone sacrifices meaning for rhyme.

Meaning, sort of. Let's be honest. I do not go all-out English teacher on this stuff when I'm reviewing, so I rarely try to break down a poem and figure out what it's trying to say vs what it actually says. But if I'm getting some meaning out of it through reading a couple times (without a bunch of in-depth analysis), I'll comment on that, especially if something seems off and the meanings get confused. Because maybe it was intentional on the part of the poet, but maybe what they meant to say got lost or confused with other messages partway through.

But I love reading poetry that just sounds beautiful, with great imagery and metaphor, just so much that honestly I don't get bothered about meaning if I enjoyed the taste of it.

Which is probably also actually not good, but ah, well.

So I will try to reply as much as possible about this. I have been reading other people's answers so here's a shot.

I am in no way an expert in poetry, I just started out and I usually don't really review it. When I review it I like to look for imagery, and tell the writer what kind of image they painted in my mind through the poem,and how they can improve. I usually try to stress to use more specific nouns or verbs and less adjectives in any writing,especially in poetry since it is a work of art that it short and doesn't have a lot of words.

Another thing is, I try to understand the specific meaning behind the words. If I am clueless or I am confused, I tell the writer what I don't understand. I also like to mention how to interprate lines that I do understand.

I usually of course tell them at least one specific and general thing that I liked about their poem overall, and I compliment them.Although, on poems, mostly I tend not to sugar-coat it,so if I don't like it, I will say so, explain why, and give some suggestions on improving. You just get the harsh truth from me.

That's practically it.

I try to approach poetry by looking at it in terms of form and function. Form is going to cover all those technical aspects: diction, structure, meter.

If I were to look at the form of a fork, I'd notice how it's got this handle for the hand. How every individual fork has individual, unique handles - and how we as humans each have individual, unique hands-- you know? Our hands can be palm-read for stories, they can be used to identify us, but our fork handles--they can have flat handles, round handles, cartoon-character handles, ornate handles, those plastic-shiny handles. The pointy end of the fork is the same for every fork, there's not much variation. 90% of the time, it's the same number of prongs, but the handle, the part closest to our "right" hand- that is what makes each fork different and special, and what we look at when we see how well it fits. What is the fork made of? This is form, and this is what I try to dig into whenever I find a poem that surprises me to a stupor, or a poem that I cannot yet understand. All of the poems I've read, they're all written in english, but the way the words are used, what words are used, and how they're used, how the techniques are used, these are the interesting bits.

Function is ultimately what I think the poet is most interested in, what does this poem do, what does it make me feel, how does my interpretation of it go? No matter if it's rice, salad or ramen - unless it is soup or ice cream, I will go for a fork every time. And the thing is, there's an importance in that. There's a way a person uses their fork-- how they reveal their table manners-- that says something. There's something in the language of fork, "fork in the road" where we can use it to apply to our choices and decision-making. There's something in the history of fork, that takes me back to three-prong medieval conflicts of nobility and the paupers. Something reflective in the silver that shows my face distorted. I'm trying to find these things in the poem, too.

So when I can break a poem into these two components and see how they work together, it doesn't only help as a guide for my reviewing, but it helps me enjoy a poem when I can enhance my way of noticing it. Those are some thoughts, anyway.

What's interesting about this discussion is how everybody reviews a poem differently. There's no one right answer- and I think that's an important realization, because I remember when I first started reviewing poems, I didn't know what I was doing either. I remember feeling clueless and really intimidated, particularly, like Widdershins said, if it's a poem you ended up loving. If there's anything we can get from this discussion, hopefully, it's to get rid of the fear of reviewing poems, and to dig right into them, because reading a poem is lovely enough. But finding to see how it works, how the words turn, how it can flow better, the experience of that is so much more gratifying. And I think the proof of that comes from what we've all said. How we have all personalized these answers for ourselves. Really cool, eh? ^^

Honestly my review of poetry is very organic. Of course grammar and structure is important but poetry is all about breaking the rules. For me, it's about the feeling and emotion. If something doesn't work or doesn't actually make sense I will point it out but I love the imperfect nature of poems and so it's all all about what it makes me feel and if it affects me.
For me, if your poem makes me happy, or makes me want to cry, or affects the way I think, then you've done your job.

I look to see if it's not prose