Young Writers Society

Hello Archaeopteryx,
Myjaspercat here for a review for you...

Alright, so I'm glad to be able to review your revised piece. First thing however, I haven't written a review here for a while but I will try my hardest to give you the best review that I can. Now, onwards...

Her tired brown eyes rose to meet mine,
shining faintly in the soft light.

---Ok so the first thing that I myself, don't particularly like is the use of the word 'rose'. I don't really think that it fits, I do like the concept but maybe a different word choice would be better. Another thing, I really love the whole eye's shinning thing, it really works.

With a deep sigh she looked away,
her grey hair wafting in the breeze.

---Ok, so the flow from the first to the second sentence here, doesn't really work. I like the idea, yes, but it just doesn't feel right. Maybe you could play around with the wording a bit.

Once more she turned her gaze to mine,
sorrow replaced by startlement.

---Ok so why is this girl suprised? Instead of just telling us I think it would be better if you showed us a littl bit. Also, I dont like the feel of 'once more' Again, I don't think like it works with the rest of the flow.

Overall I do think you have a clean poem here. There are a few places (in my opinion) that could be worked upon, wording wise, but it isn't that much of a big deal. I do like this and I thought of it to be really cute. I can't wait to read more from you. Good luck and continue writing. ---Myjaspercat.

Hello!

I think you've got a very good idea and talent here in the end part of your poem. You've got a good flow of words, good description, apt language for said description, and a nice range of words. You're doing very well with structure and flow too, so I think you've got a lot going for you in this poem.

The reason I'm picking up this review is because I would like to do two things, first, compliment you on your phrasing in the end of it, and proceed to scold you about the front of it. Okay, not scold. Let's go with, encourage edits, to the front of it. So to do that I'm going to go a bit off script and provide you first with this: How to Format Poetry it's a link to one of several guides for how to format poetry on YWS so you don't have the double spacing.

Now then, what I really liked about this poem was the ending, after "Another distant glimmer" and the reason I break it there is because you really get into the action and the noise, feel, senses of the scene after that. You talk about the draping, and the shimmering, the crunching underfoot, all of that. It's beautiful, and you surprise us with the fact that this isn't a human friend later on. I really enjoyed that. These things work well because you're working within a scope of something that's within our senses. It's something we can perceive without being told by word. These things usually only include the five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear. A really positive way to engage a reader is to engage all of these five senses, and you do that in the latter half of your poem.

What I'm not liking about the first part of your poem, "another a distant glimmer." is that before that line, you don't have much in the way of senses to describe what's going on. Now this can be easily explained away by saying "But Aley! I don't want to spoil the end." and sure, you don't want to spoil the end, that's true. You want to ensure that by the time we get there, we're still wondering about the friend. You can also say "But Aley! I have sight in the first line!" and yes, you do. The thing is, when you tacked on the object phrase "a story of sadness" you made that less tangible. We can't see a story of sadness literally, we can see a mood, we can feel a mood, we can sort of pick up on what other people might be feeling from time to time because we're used to their micro-expressions, but we can't literally read a story of sadness, or listen to a story of sadness by someone looking at us, we can only guess that they're upset. The reason this becomes a problem, because poets mix things all the time, is because that phrase "a story of sadness" comes off as cliche, it comes off as something that is typical for a poet to say and thus turns the brain off in my case.

For me, I read that and I thought "Oh man, we're going to get a preaching. What's the sob story?" and then I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't a sob story at all. My suggestion would be to not misrepresent your poem by having that in there so early. Just cut out the second through fourth lines. That will make it:

Her deep brown eyes rose to meet mine.
With a deep sigh she looked away,
her grey hair wafting in the breeze.

You already have a deep sigh in there, which indicates she's not really interested in dealing with whatever nonsense you're planning on doing. She's just not in the mood right now for whatever, and grey hair, so we know she's old, or assume she's old. After that, you get into the beautiful language and it flows smoothly, and we find out the catch and everything is grand.

So! That's my suggestion: Remove the preachy language and set up in lines 2-4 and go from line 1 to line 5.

Last but not least, please recognize that I must throw in a disclaimer because you've not had many reviews on here yet: In modern day poetry punctuation at the end of lines is completely optional, along with capitalization. There are some people who leave out all punctuation, but leave in capitalization, others who leave everything out, and some who put it all in. It depends on the poem and the feeling you want to go for. There is a brief overview of some of the things I've learned about that here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/view ... 2&t=100881 I'm mostly telling you this just so you know that's how we see poetry here. It might help you in your reviews.