Young Writers Society

Hello, Alex here for a review.

I know, I know... I'm very late.

I'm not good at writing reviews, nor am I good with poetry, but I will try to give some constructive criticism. Take it all with a grain of salt!

First, I want to say that I like this poem. I like the imagery. I would've likes more description. I'm good at letting my imagination go, and I had the freedom to do that with this poem. However, for those who have less of an imagination, I don't think they would've had a very clear picture in their minds. More descriptive language would've been very good. What were the sights? What were the sounds? What were the smells?

It was a bit confusing for me in places, perhaps this was just me? I'm not entirely sure what the overall message of this piece was, nor was I able to track with the general story the whole time.
I was able to for the most part, but you lost me a couple of times.

Thy rhyming was pretty inconsistent, I couldn't tell what formula it was supposed to be.

I won't say anything about grammar, punctuation, or spelling, because those are definitely not my strongpoints.

Overall, I liked it. Thanks for taking the time to read this review,
-Alex

This is Kaos here for a review.

So the first thing I noticed about this is the only punctuation that you use in this is periods at the end of each sentence. This gets repetitive quite easily and becomes stale throughout the poem and I suggest you change it up. Instead of doing this, you can use commas or semicolons and at points you don't even have to use those, but just don't have so many periods in a row because your lines don't get a chance to build onto each other and it hurts the structure of the poem.

More onto the poem, the rhyme is something that was inconsistent through the poem and I didn't particularly like it being in there so I just suggest you take it out. If you're going to keep the rhyme in this poem I suggest you use a rhyme scheme or keep it consistent but I don't know why you would since it only restrained the poem.

The next thing that I wanted to touch on was the originality and perspective of this. We see that the person being focused on in the poem is from a third person perspective which is something that I disliked about the poem. You lack emotional sincerity with this because of it feeling distant and you have a hard time getting your message across because it's something that's been done before.

Originality is the next thing that I wanted to tackle. I see that you're trying to aim to get a theme across with this, and doing a theme that's been done before is fine, but the execution is something that should be unique, and I didn't find anything that really tried to do anything new with the idea of taking different paths in life. The imagery is something that's lacking in the poem and you didn't really have anything with it in the poem.

Use sensory details to help immerse the reader into the poem rather than just being repetitive with the starts of your lines and just talking about this man the whole time. Sensory details are exactly what they sound like: details of the senses, and they help create the atmosphere. The last thing that I wanted to bring up in my review is the theme again. From the start of the poem it's easy to see the theme and I would have liked to see more subtlety rather than the reader just knowing and the theme being pushed at us. Give the reader room to interpret for themselves. Give the reader room in the shoes of the poem and let them fill that empty space rather than shoving their toes against the toes of the shoes.

That's all I had to say, hope I helped.

Hello.

First off, consistency. The rhyme scheme is all over the place, which throws me right out of the poem. People recognize patterns, and having no visible pattern is a problem. Pick a consistent rhyme scheme and stick to it.

Topically, I had to look up The Road Less Travelled By to make sure this wasn't a copy of it. You have such similar themes and images that it brought up the immediate similarity, which just gives off the impression the piece isn't bringing anything new to the table.

Flow wise, you end each line with a period which chops everything up and doesn't let my eye travel through the poem. Having punctuation on the end of each line isn't necessary, and you should evaluate every piece of punctuation you place within the poem to see if it's adding or subtracting. Reading through this guide should give you some idea of how punctuation and poetry is used.

Clarity wise, it's really hard to understand what this poem is about just because there's no real pronoun/antecedent relationship. There isn't really a connection between which path is which that's being discussed, which in turn makes it harder to get into this poem, which, in turn, makes me walk away unchanged from it.

All in all, this needs tons of work. I'd start with the punctuation and lines, maybe ending a sentence midway through a line and not ending every line with a period, then work on the grammar relations, and finally the rhyme scheme. I put the rhyme scheme last because you should seriously ask yourself what benefit rhyming has for this poem, and that is best accomplished once you've tweaked the topic and content.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

I like the concept, and the wording of this. The rhyming however....it would flow a lot better if you consistently rhymed. It's like you couldn't quite decide if you wanted to rhyme or not. It messes with the flow a bit. Also, you mentioned that there were only two paths at first, and then there seems to be three? I don't know maybe I misread it or maybe I'm just looking to far into it.

I do, however, like the imagery that you give in this. It's really descriptive. Good job!

Sorry it's such a short review, but I didn't really see much wrong with this poem except for the flow in some places. I do really like it though!