Somewhere in the sea is said to be
a tale set on the island Nigh.
There lived a boy of whom you may know.
With eyes of fog made with fumes of sighs.
He was king of this land but saddened oh so.
The island Nigh untraveled for many year.
The mist in his eyes set over this sad land.
A king with no subjects and none to hold near.
On the coast in hazy day does he lay.
The sound of gulls echoes through this cold land.
Yet with wide eyes, a ship sails through Nigh,
with colors magnificently so grand.
She stepped out of this ship with eyes of sea blue.
Her smile warmed the cool morning island air.
With a laugh that echoed through his lonely soul.
And her shining eyes glowed more than any star.
After time passed on this island Nigh,
from changing, falling leaves to white snow.
The boy loved the girl and she loved he.
Yet fate said it was not to be so.
The sea envied her blue eyes for shining bright.
It wrapped her one day in its soothing black bliss.
He found her asleep on Nigh's now bleak, dark shore.
With grey setting in, he gave her one last kiss.
With every shining star in the night sky,
he does lay by her side on the bleak coast.
And every rolling wave he thinks of her,
so he lets the ocean surround him and her both.
So together they stay in this sorrowful bay,
forever to embrace with each others sweet grace;
as the ocean continues to roll on the shores,
to be wrapped in sea blue and forever in place.
And not a day goes bye on their Nigh.
Where the sun doesn't shine like her bright eyes,
the breeze doesn't blow their sweet tune,
and every visitor doesn't cry.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,010 Literary Works • 672,839 Reviews
Thank you for being my first review on Judgement Day
I hope I can help you with this review!
Okay! So the first time I read it trying not to be persuaded by the fact you are mimicking, in a way, Annabell Lee from Edgar Allen Poe, and it was astounding. To say that it had quite the same rhythmic value is an overstatement but come on, Edgar Allen Poe dedicated his life to writing. With that said I will discuss the quality that differentiates Poe from other writers. I think it is a quality that may take a couple years to master ;p
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
First of all it is easy to say yours and his rhythm is completely the same, because you wrote your piece and you can spin parts how you like. For example you may say the second line faster in your poem because you are trying to mimic the eloquence of Poe, but you cannot portray that in a line too every reader. It may make a little more sense when we count the syllables of each line.
It was many and many a year ago, (12)
In a kingdom by the sea, (7)
That a maiden there lived whom you may know (10)
By the name of Annabel Lee; (8)
And this maiden she lived with no other thought (11)
Than to love and be loved by me.” (8)
Vrs.
Somewhere in the sea is said to be (9)
a tale set on the island Nigh. (9)
There lived a boy of whom you may know. (9)
With eyes of fog made with fumes of sighs. (9)
Notice Edgar added a rhythm to the poem with the second line being fast, that’s not even the half of what he did. If you include high and low tenses you can see a correspondence that is almost perfect, all so when the reader hears it he hears a eloquent poem which everything seems to be perfect because it was designed that way. Also the rhyme scheme didn’t compromise the content, I see you fare will with adding the rhyme scheme as the content wasn’t changed MUCH.
Also we can even take it line by line
“It was many and many a year ago”
Many people don’t notice the alliteration of many makes the sound in your head seem ten times more realistic. This is the foundation of many of Poe’s writings; simply alliteration.
for example:
“Once upon a midnight (also rhyme with dreary) dreary, while I pondered, WEAK and WEARY,”
Anyways this is me comparing you to my favorite poet, so obviously a review on YWS is probably being too tough. In reality this poem is good for its own reasons. One without the perfectionistic qualities of Poes writing this poem gets really deep with a very very nice word structure. If I were you, my next cause of action would be getting to know the syllables of good rhythmic flow of a poem. Also you could do some studying up on the theory of punctuation, if you notice many authors use punctuation as a sort of very very weak stall or stop in writing as opposed to no punctuation that combines two strings or words together.
also you even compromised your own rhyme scheme, which if you are going to have one it is best to stick with in my opinion, ie.
“She stepped out of this ship with eyes of sea blue.
Her smile warmed the cool morning island air.
With a laugh that echoed through his lonely soul.
And her shining eyes glowed more than any star.”
This made me stop and say what in relevance to rhythm because I got right on board with what you were saying even though the rhythm wasn’t perfect I could easily settle in and this stopped that pattern.
And which even in Poe’s original poem I see as a small, small set back is the way he said year as singular, I’m sure he knew this but he chose rhythm instead grammar.
Also..
“With every shining star in the night sky,
he does lay by her side on the bleak coast.
And every rolling wave he thinks of her,
so he lets the ocean surround him and her both.”
At this point the rhythm goes out of the window, sorry to say but it needs to be polished to be a Gem
CONTENT
Okay so one thing Edgar Allen Poe did that you didn’t do was make the emphasize love. I see in your poem it took the fourth stanza to introduce the concept of Love with the two characters. The reason, or what I believe the reason, that Edgar Allen Poe brought the idea of Love to the start was so that the reader could be hooked in understanding the central idea of the message. At the first stanza, it is captivating with fumes and sighs but many readers will simply tune out because they do not think the message is there. This is something that happens naturally.
It almost seems as if the two parts, the first three stanzas and the last stanzas, are separated like part 1 and part 2. I think for one, you need to introduce it as both a hook and a rational approach to the story.
Now Poe had emotion in the end where he broadened the things you hinted on by so much. I think it complements the piece, so I think you should consider that.
Lastly, because this review is getting pretty lengthy, I see that the stories don’t correlate perfectly and that is okay. The only criteria people put on stories is that you must twist it in your own way. I think it helps expand the writers understanding of content. It is a lot easier to rewrite a story then make your own, so I hope that, in the future, you can strive to write your own stuff. For that reason, I will give you a bad score on “content” only because it a recreation without a very original spin, I hope you understand.
Scoring-
Structure 4/6
-leaving rhyme scheme, lack of literary devices
- overall above average and shows VERY MUCH potential
Content- 0/6
-lack of originality (might I add on purpose)
- doesn’t REALLY need much content, it is more of a experimental piece.
Emotion- 4/6
-Wasn’t as captivating as Poe but it was VERY amazing!
Overall- 5/6
-scores don’t quite reflect the above score because 1) content wasn’t quite needed in a experimental piece, 2) the structure is much better than most poems.
Thank you for letting me review! I hope I didn’t dissuade you are a writer, I am simply trying you push you in the right direction! You should also know that everything in poetry is theory so you ALWAYS have the right to pick and choose.
Your hero,
ImHero
Wow, thank you for the amazing review! This is exactly what I wanted in a review when I posted this on YWS.
I get everything your saying and I will definitely work on the rhythm and structure when I write.
I don't think this was harsh and you didn't dissuade me at all! I think everything you critiqued was just and fair, plus it will just make me a better writer if I work on the points you suggested.
Again, I can't thank you enough for the awesome review and I hope you review my poems in the future.
No problem! I will review your other poems if you don't have too many.. SOON. Thanks!
Hi there! Just a quick review for you!
This really caught my eye because Poe is my favourite poet! Also we are not that different as we are the same age *high five* and I tried to write a ballad inspired by the Poe's The Raven not long ago so I am determined to review this! =D
At first I was sceptical because I love Annabel Lee and normally fI ind adaptations of poems I love rather disappointing! However this was far from disappointing! I loved reading this! It had the same sorrow and truth hidden behind the words, giving the poem a great amount of heart.
I loved the ending, perfectly sad and sweet, leaving the reader lost within the fading echoes and flow of the poem!
There were a couple of points I wanted to suggest but the previous reviews have already mentioned them.
Overall I look forward to seeing more of your work! I really enjoyed reading this! Poe's poems are particularly difficult to adapt into your own (I've tried :/ ) so congrats on creating this amazing piece!
Keep writing,
*~Annapurna~*
Howdy there, I'm June. After seeing you do some good damage in the forums, I figured the least I could do was pay you a review. I must start by saying I'm a huge Poe fan and Annabel Lee is one of my favorite pieces by him. More often than not when someone models a work after Poe, I'm disappointed, but here, you did well, and you should be proud. Let's have a look at some of the finer details:
• I like your opening-- it's strong, but not too strong, and gently walks us into the poem. What I don't like, however, is the last line, because the length and amount of syllables does not match the pace of the surrounding lines, which seems to be an issue that occurs more than once throughout this poem. Every little detail in poetry counts towards the overall experience of a poem, so I would suggest saying something like "With eyes of the fog of sighs" or "fumes of sighs. I would recommend paying close attention to this throughout the entirety of your poem; in fact, a a good way to check for consistency is to read your poem aloud and check to make sure that ll of the words, ideas, and rhymes flow together consistently.
• I want you to pay attention to your punctuation, too. For the most part you do well maintaining a good command of it, but in some places, I would change a few things. Take a look at this stanza,
Every line in this stanza ends with a full stop, or a period [.], and to be honest, I don't think a single one, save for the final line, should. I think the first should end in a comma, the second in a semicolon, and the third in a comma. The YWS knowledge base has an article about poetry punctuation that you should look into, because it explains when you should and shouldn't use each sort of punctuation.
You did a great job here. You have an excellent command of rhyme, it was enjoyable and graceful from the start to finish. Well done.
June
Hey, thanks for the awesome review and I see what you mean by punctuation.
In the first stanza, I used an anapestic trimeter, so each line has three anapests and nine syllables. So when I broke the stanza down, it looked something like this;
Somewhere in/ the sea is/ said to be/
a tale/ set on the/ island Nigh./
There lived a/ boy of whom/ you may know/
With eyes of/ fog made with/ fumes of sighs.
Each anapest is separated by a slash and every line has nine syllables. So this stanza will have a total of thirty six syllables. And even though the last line has more words than the preceding lines, it still meets the nine syllable requirement.
So, I did something unique with this poem that I haven't tried before and wanted to see the outcome. I used an ABCB pattern, not only with the rhyming, but with the meters in each stanza too.
So the first stanza was an anapestic trimeter (A)
The second was a stanza made up of every line being hendecasyllable (B)
The third stanza was a basic iambic pentameter (C)
Then back to hendecasyllable (B)
I think alternating between these gave the way someone read it a different flow, and I like the outcome plus, it's not breaking any poetic rules (Poe did this a lot in his poem Annabel Lee)
I made sure every line had the correct amount of syllables for the corresponding meter it was in, so don't worry about that. But I'm sure it was confusing counting the syllables of each stanza and having them be different each time, without knowing the meters I was using.
Thanks again for telling me about punctuation, this is exactly what I wanted in a review when I posted this on YWS, honest feedback and what I could do better, since I have only been writing poetry since a few months ago.
I will take your suggestions to heart and will be sure to check out that article on puncuation. Thanks again for the review and I hope you have a great day!
Oh I really liked this, it's definitely similar to Annabel Lee. I do have to say though, in the beginning you repeat the word fog quite a lot, he has fog in his eyes, the island is foggy, it just seems very restated. It's an amazing poem though, for someone just starting out, I'm kind of envious, I don't think I write nearly this well and I've been writing poems for years now. I would work on finding more descriptive words, rather than for example just repeating that her eyes shone or were bright, find some other way to show it? Anyway it's really excellent besides! Thanks for writing.
Hey thanks for the review! I will try to use some different/more descriptive words. Also thanks for telling me I repeated the word fog a lot.
Let's just say I LOVED Poe's Annabel Lee poem, and this poem furthered my likings to the poem. The rhyming schemes are correct as far as my knowledge extends, and the resemblance to the inspired by author's poem is similar yet have their differences that create it unique. I'd say you're pretty decent at this and the words used to express the emotion in rhymed words are well-carried out. Reading this reminded me greatly of the that poem, with a bit more expression sprinkled onto it.
Really good for someone of your age. Reading this reminds me of pirate adventures or a grand love story.