Young Writers Society

Dear LadyBird,

My nine year old cousin says, "That made no sense. Doggies are cute! How dare you say that they're evil! Please don't. I have a puppy and she's vicious. Sometimes. And I don't want you to say bad things to puppies cuz they're adorable."

I understand that you didn't say anything bad. But she does have an imagination.

I love how you worded this poem, it's very cute.

- B

This is fun. I like the humor and creativity here. I think it's rather clever to make a poem about animals in satirical reference to religion (i.e. the Children of Dog, as God spelled backwards). I think this is a very well-done piece that should definitely be held onto for its wit and humorousness. You should do more of these, if you haven't already! One thing to keep in mind is that usually in poetry people capitalize the first letter of every line, but you don't necessarily have to do that, but it is recommended. Anyways, good job!

I don't think I can give a proper critique of this poem. But I at least have some general comments that I'll share.

So I really like this, and not just because you wrote it, but I think it's actually pretty clever for a humorous poem. The cadence that mimics the beatitudes just perfectly, the humor, the rhyme and alliteration here and there - it's just an enjoyable piece to read.

I'm not 100% sure you intended some big meaning to be taken from it, but I think there's no reason that someone couldn't.

In my mind this poem could be read from a moralistic standpoint to 1) be reminded of how extreme and ridiculous the beatitudes would have actually sounded to the people hearing them. I mean Jesus might as well have been talking about raccoons and trashcans -- and a lot of times people forget how dramatic and revolutionary he was. Like we needle-point "blessed are the poor" on pillows and don't really sit with that, or analyze the paradoxes and our roles in them. So this poem is a wake-up call that there's something ridiculous going on, and we need to pay attention.

2) This poem could be interpreted as a reminder to Christians or non-Christians that scripture often served a poetic function. Meaning Jesus played with pretty words in his parables and the psalms were intended to be songs and poems. Re-writing the beatitudes in this form reminds me of the poetic origins of scripture - which is a good reminder to those who pull at different strings of the Bible trying to squeeze out meaning from removed contexts. Sometimes if we don't take the context -- it ends up being gobbly-gook, far removed from the original.

3) This poem can just be a fun way to poke fun at some scriptural themes, and open up the beatitudes to animals too who are just trying to get by and obtain meals and bite ankles or what ever they need to do.

Either way, probably the best part is the tone. I appreciate this poem as poking some fun at Christianity even as a Christian, because honestly none of this is in the least bit blasphemy and is all in good fun. I think too often poems that are written in satire or poking fun of different sides of issues get the tone all wrong and end up sounding angry, violent, vitriolic, and just hateful - which I don't think ends up resonating across the aisle of any issue very well. This poem on the other hand is respectful, but it still takes risks and is a humorous enjoyable piece that I think anyone can appreciate.

Let me know if you wanted feedback on anything else specifically in there!
All punctuation, line breaks, grammatical choices, and such seemed just fine to me.

~alliyah

Also, going to be honest, the best part of this review is how well the signatures go with the content of the poem.

This is brilliant. I love it.

This is great. No words. Utterly speechless. 14/10 made my day.

Hi there @LadyBird I am here to do a review on you poems first things first.
What I like about this
for they shall inherit the estuary, I like this for it just bings a really nise feeling to it I think, sorry about my spelling it is a bit of a mess I think, I try to cur eked my self but it all was terns out wrong again.
searching for righteousness, I really like this for it is just really I nise word to say about sir tin animals.
blessed are the magpies, I have seen Magpies be for they are really nise birds, but then again I pea fer kookaburras more for they look so cuddly and worm.
some help
for theirs is the kingdom of hues. the word hues dose not really make sens to me, also to tell you the truth I have never come a cross a word like this before.
for they shall bite ankles in comfort. okay this sounds really pan fill to me I can not really amajen some thing more pain fill right now eney way
for they shall see Dog. I am going to give you a Suggestion here so that would be down it
suggestions.
the Children of Dog. I will do the same thing here and finks it down in Suggestions for you.
Suggestions
1 For: for they shall see Dog. for they shall see Dogs running and chasing them.
2 For: the Children of Dog. the Children of God. okay so that is all that I can say, so keep up the good work.

@EagleFly out to seek and kill

mad mistake here sorry

Hello LadyBird! This is Selina, from DoubleRiders doing this review! In case you didn’t know, there are two of us on this account - Honora (my little sister) and me! Hence the specifications...

I am not a great reviewer (this is my first one in quite a few years) but here I go:

The only correction I can see (and it may just be my personal opinion), is when you say “ blessed are the panthers with ‘a’ pure heart of kittens”; my first thought was that it should be changed to ‘the’ or ‘their’ (example: blessed are the panthers with their pure heart like kittens).

I leave it up to you, it was just my suggestion! Other than that, I found the poem very humorous and I enjoyed it very much! Good luck with your writing & I hope you get many more reviews!

~DoubleRiders