Young Writers Society

Hey there, Black! The third of your promised reviews from the KotGR contest has, at long last, arrived!

I want to start out by saying there are some places where the rhythm of this piece absolutely ROCKS. I love especially this passage:

Whisper whisper in the night,

you are losing a long lost fight,

Hola BlackNether!

I love that you're writing poetry. It'a always so exciting to know that people are working with and creating poetry around the site because it is a beautiful and expressive medium. I can see that you're utilising the form to create a work which is likely very important to you, there is a definitive sense of seriousness and meaning in the work and I think you should be really pleased that it gets through.

Okay, to the hard bits;

Your rhyme is all over the place and it is way awkward because it completely ruins your rhythm and flow. This coupled with the repetition of several words throws out the meaning you have because we have to reread and reevaluate what you've said before. The repetitions and mixed rhyme are holding back your poem so strongly. I'd completely forget about both and instead focus on maintaining your imagery consistently across the poem as a whole. If you regulate your imagery then you have the opportunity to really grab your reader's attention and keep it, from word one to the end. Consider which images are your most effective by reading this aloud - notice which images you repeatedly go back to in your stanzas and isolate them, compound them into one or two meaningful experiences. This is a reverse way to go about proving imagery for your poem. Usually we run with Experience - Emotion - Image, but I want you to do the reverse. You have images, work out what you mean and then decide what the experience is all about. We need stronger images to maintain the idea you're threading through this poem.

In summary I think you should cut this down by condensing your imagery and ensuring that each piece of information is specific and necessary. Let me know if you make any changes to this, if you have any questions or queries or wanna chat, please hit me up.

- Penguin

Hey! ajruby12 here for a review!
Ok, I loved the imagery on this and all the description you used, but just one thing.
What's the point???
I personally like to read a poem with a point and I just didn't understand this one. So yeah.. But that's my opinion and I'm sure there's thousands of people that would chew me out for saying that..
But this was a really great poem! Keep up the writing!!

-Lady Ariana, The Silver Knight

The Messenger Knight here with the first of three promised KotGR reviews.
So, this was beautiful. I couldn't stop reading it. You had such imagery, such descriptiveness, and such detail. I thought it sounded like a . . . like something that could very easily be in a poem book, that is how good I thought it was. And your rhyming was really good as well.
I thought there were some spots where you could use commas instead of periods, but I don't think that there were any where you had to. Overall I was very impressed and loved it.
Keep it up!

Hello Black, wildwildcat here for a review!
First, off I was strongly reminded of Robert Frost's quote of "some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice..." This isn't bad, just an observation of mine.

You have some interesting recurring themes with the repetition of "ice" and "fire" early on, but the poem slowly turns into what I have to assume is a warning to someone. (?)

I'm sorry that I lack the ability to interpret your poem, but I'm honestly unsure of my ability. That being said, you have some fun rhymes that rhythmically work and creates an ominous mood.

The title, is intriguing as it leads the reader into a deeper analysis of the meaning behind it. I am curious to know what ideas were in your head when you wrote this.

All in all, this is a well-written rhyming piece with a good flow to the words. It was fun, it made you think, I liked it.

Well, here I am to do a review!

Firstly, I really enjoyed it. It had a nice rhythm set to it and flowed quite nicely.

I wasn’t too sure about your rhyming scheme, it threw me off a little because there was a whole lot of it, but nevertheless, it was a mighty fine poem.

I’m only going to quote the parts where I have something to say, I’ll sum everything else up at the end.

So, let’s get to the actual reviewing part of a review.

Ice and fire, cold desire,
never before has the time been so dire
whispering to me in the night,
wandering away from the light.

Ice cold fire,
burning hate and endless ire,
deathly cold and silvered with mold,
rotting and dying; the victorious bold.

I will offer once again,
I will plead you not to win,
I will show you what you'll find,
if you go and kill so blind.

Whisper whisper in the night,
you are losing a long lost fight,
killing burning, destroying and more,
never again will you find an open door.

I betray you,
I deny you,
I will hate you,
I despise you.

But don't tell that I didn't warn you,
don't try to make me feel like I was wrong,
don't, no don't, because you're wrong.

Whisper whisper, firelight,
we all know you're long gone now,
but I refuse to shed a tear,
I refuse to show my fear . . .
but soon they will know,
and soon they'll see,
all the weakness inside of me.

Weakness, weakness, weakness more,
hurt me, kill me, but don't hate me,
show me fear and terror or,
I'll have to die the slowest death.
And that is something I cannot bear.

That's a...bit... morbid. I don't see what the narrator is trying to say. Truth be told I would think it's talking about a condemned death sentence. Almost like the narrator is trying to say that he/she has to do this, like they're an assassin, and that after all the people they had to kill, it wears them down... *Facepalms* I'm an idiot. That is what I think the poem is about.

On to the review.

Well worded and written, it has deep meanings that makes you think. I liked it.

You my friend, are a great poetry writer... *Lightbulb*Can you do prophecy's? PM is want to try something out.

I really do hope for more in the future, and I'm not a great poem reader. Always had appreciated it.

With All Do Respect
Whole Some Reader.

So, I'm not 100% sure why you wanted a review on this, whether it was because you wanted someone to give it to you straight, or because you wanted to see what I thought, but I'll assume it was someone to give it to you straight.

This poem has a lot of overused things in it, like fire as cold as ice, and some of the phrasing, such as "I told you so" which is basically what this poem is saying. In some ways, you've managed to create new ways of saying these things, like cold desire. I like cold desire. I don't like Ice and fire. Personally it does nothing to the mood of the poem, and it doesn't help set up anything. All it does is lead into your comment that there is an ice cold fire, which cold desire actually says much cleaner. Just to show you something, this is your rhyme pattern for this poem: aabbaaccddeefghhbbiieeeeebjklmmimind Obviously, there are some inconsistancies. First thing first, we go aa bb aa cc, we expect aa again because it's already been every other one is the first one. That's forgivable, dd, NOW we expect cc thinking it's the start of the next one. instead, we get another couplet, that's acceptable, ee, but then fg? that was 'again' and 'win' by the way, those two don't rhyme, at all, when I say them. I don't know if your vowels are shifted enough for them to be acceptable when you read them, but it sounds very different for me. After that we seem to be following the pattern alright, until we get to you, you, you... five time. Five yous in a row. Now, repeating last words in a rhyme scheme is somewhat taboo, but five times? That bothered me, especially since everything was in couplets, even the fact that two things didn't rhyme.

I wouldn't mind the rhyme scheme so much if the poem was a little more subtle about it, but when you've got fire and desire, and you use fire and ice to set up the poem, it is really, really obvious, and it sounds very forced. I liked it better, surprisingly enough, when you seemed to break the rhyme scheme and I stopped caring about it. It took a little while since I've been working on structured poetry lately and I kept looking for a pattern, but the poem was more enjoyable without the rhymes. It still had it's common things, but it was alright.

Another thing in this poem that bothered me because it reminded me of novice things was that you had the same phrase structure repeated so close together (e1-5) without really needing to. It's easy enough to make a list, I hated, despised, and betrayed you without going through the hassle of reading the same line over and over again. In a way, this became the same monotonous beating of whatever this guy told her, into my own head instead of hers. It was amusing, by the end that I was annoyed and frustrated with him, just like the person who left and didn't believe him. It was a great way to build his character, and supplement showing instead of telling, but I'm not sure that was the original intent.

That being said, don't make it worse. I'd stop reading half way through. Actually, what I would like to suggest you do with this poem is chop it in half. Something Skorlir once told me while we were surveying a poem I was fiddling with, was that there was a woman who said she took out everything she loved about her poems, and that was her finished product. I'd like to see you do this because some of these lines feel more like they were written to be said, instead of written to create a message. Just take out the things that you think are pretty, and not necessary to the poem. I think you'll find a poem that is nearly crying in despair from the loss of this other individual, instead of a raving mad boyfriend who's trying to drag someone back kicking and screaming.

Oh, most importantly, use white text to break the poem up into the proper formatting. If you know the HTML to code text white, just use xs or whatever you want, dashes if you must. If you don't, just use the color box for text.

Black, wow. Just wow. And don't curse or kill the formatting, it works really well here. (Although, truth be told, there are times when I want to enlist you in a murder plot.)

You've managed to capture something..........Jeez, I can't even find the words to describe it. It's like you dug into one of the darkest parts of your soul to find the words for this. That thought does scare me a little, but truth be told I think that we've all felt like this at some point. (This is why I love dramatic poetry.)

And I think that people can relate to it in some way, even if it's just one or two lines. I personally can relate to it.

I really don't see anything that I can criticize. Except maybe line seventeen (I think that it's seventeen anyway), and this is more of a personal quirk of mine then me pointing out an actual mistake, but I think that you should separate the two "Whispers" with a comma. It just looks a little weird to me without them.

And it felt a little choppy on the longer lines, but truth be told I'm not sure I want to change that since I feel that the choppy parts add to the work rather than take away. It can be a little weird to read a times, but you counterbalance the long lines with the short ones really well, so in the end it all fits.

I love this, by the way. You're writing is amazing.

Happy Writing!
HT

Wow

DIE FORMATTING! >> Don't mind the formatting.