Young Writers Society

First thing is it is remarkable that anyone would do a poem about the perspective of another human or being and you have chosen one that is actually quite simple. One that can make everyone relate to and discuss over and over again. Since its much closer to home than most poems about perspective on other things and that is a good way of seeing things, making simple things into inspiration for the mind.

Hi Fiend. Yes its a review.
*Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn*

I would basically say what Aley said, the poem is clear, you keep it in a simple ab12 pattern that switches around variously throughout the story. You describe the dog very realistically, I can clearly see the situation around him and what he's thinking.

I have no problem with this story. Keep YWS'ing.

Hello Take That you Fiend!

This is our first time meeting in this format I think, so I'll do this the long way.

I really like that you kept this simple. The villanelle is very clear, which can be hard to do, especially with the refrains. You did a good job picking end rhymes that are easy to rhyme with about this subject. That can be hard to do.

Now that you've had a little sweet bread, I'll break into the meat of this sandwich.

Some of your punctuation is miss appropriated. In the second stanza, the first line, "On the warm soft rug I lie" you are missing some commas. "Warm soft rug" has two stacked adjectives, which require a comma between them. That makes it "warm, soft rug I lie." Also after lie, I would drop the comma because you've got a nice flow to "beside the fire" so it reads very well without pausing.

When you start a line with something like "And" that means it's a fragment, or it is attached to something else. That means that your second refrain needs to always be attached to the line before it, or you should drop the 'And' at the beginning so that it is just "I can smell the chicken pie."

I would suggest making "A [juicy], tender piece of meat" a question as well because otherwise it seems like your dog actually got this, and is now begging for more. It's really up to you if you want to satisfy the reader's 'give the dog a treat' so close to the end or not, but I'd suggest making it a frantic addition to the first line of the stanza, especially since the dog is crying in the next one.

And probably last of all since I already said something about it, I'd suggest ending with "I can smell the bacon fry,/and I can smell the chicken pie."

As an aside, I'm really curious why your house smells of bacon and chicken pie at the same time. It seems like a strange combination to me, because breakfast is bacon and Chicken Pie is dinner. I would have probably gone with Cherry or Apple.

This is just something you didn't know when you started making this poem because of the event. Villanelles actually have 6 stanzas with the form A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2. This isn't really your fault since the Olympics faltered in their pass and sort of invented their own style dropping the last abA2 line, but it is the case. If you check out the link to "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" you can count all six stanzas to check. There are also non-traditional villanelles like "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop which is in our Weekly Poetry thread that can verify it.

So, overall, I think this is a good attempt at a villanelle. I'd like to see you go into more use of a variety of punctuation and really explore what's going on with working the refrain into the end and beginning of other sentences, but this is a good attempt.