Young Writers Society

Hey Arc,

here to review as promised! First, thanks for writing a chicken poetry poem, they're delightful and you certainly delivered.

I don't have any critique on the form, I love the way you've added some light rhyme / assonance at the end of lines. It made it sound a bit more like a nursery rhyme to me and reminded me of "the three little kittens that lost their mittens" where the mother figure is also a bit strict. There's something really nice in the sound of these lines in particular,

so when we go
where the cat may roam
cluck and scold
and peck us back home

I like that you didn't end up putting the chicks into any violent danger, but the reader can kind of assume that the chicks are okay.

The poem on it's surface is a nice little reflection about a mother chicken caring for her young, but written in such a sweet way reflecting on the internal emotions of the little chicks that I think it causes the reader to want to reflect on their own relationships with their mother - I think that's ideal to be able to elevate a nature reflection or animal poetry into something a bit deeper.

One critique is it tripped me up a bit when you said, "we're chicks no more, we're your eggs" -> isn't it the other way around, that they used to be eggs, but not are hatched chicks? I'm wondering if that was a mix up or if I'm misinterpreting something there.

More of an observation than a critique, but your poem seems to have four movements:

1) Hey mom, this is who we are (lines 1-4)
2) If we get into trouble bring us back home (line 5-8)
3) Hey mom, why are you so sentimental, you're strange! (line 9-12)
4) Ah! It's cold! Let us rest under your wings. (line 13-16)

While having each movement held in four lines makes the poem logically flow nicely and keeps it very clean, it makes it a bit hard to see the transitions between the movement. What makes the chicks go from movement 3 to movement 4? There's not really a transition between thinking the mom is strange and sentimental, to thinking it's cold.

At the same time, I kind of feel like that jumping logic is a little reminiscent of how really young children jump from subject to subject where at one moment they may be talking about a tv show and the next they're pretending to be a frog.

Another small critique, is I love how you use both "mother dear" (a bit more formal, adoration) and "harsh momma" (a bit more casual and even a bit abrasive) - I wonder if in the other place you use "momma" in "soft-feathered momma" if you could switch it up one more time just to create one more mood. There was quite a bit of word repetition between the two stanzas eggs/eggs, momma/momma, feathered/feathery, home/home - > and while it is a bit repetitive it also gave a sense of continuity between the two stanzas.

That's all I got! Overall this poem is definitely the type to make a person feel warm and fuzzy, and is just a delight - it uses one of my very favorite pieces of poetic imagery too with the mother hen, so I really can't help but love it. If there was some aspect of the poem that you wanted feedback on that I missed in my review feel free to let me know! Thanks for participating in this challenge.

alliyah

Happy Review Month!