Bike Race

Hi there Midnightmoon! This is Kays here dropping in for a review. I see that I may as well review a poem to get to my next star which is currently only one away! With that being said, let's not waste any time and jump right into the review.

I can see that the poem keeps the stanzas even for the most part in terms of length which I enjoy. The structure is a little...standard? The structure at the same time is interesting because the poem is in the shape of a triangle or to be more specific, moves toward the right side of the screen and then moves left again. I'm going to suggest (even though the structure isn't the worst, I'd enjoy seeing experimentation/playing around) taking a picture or screenshot of the poem while the formatting is done elsewhere (in Word, Google Docs, or wherever you do your writing).

That's only a suggestion though if you're looking to do more with structure than left-aligning, centering, and right-aligning, I'd look into that. Moving on from that and delving more into the actual content I can see that this piece is about a bike race. I wanted to point out the last line first because 'began' should be 'begun'. I agree with Alliyah in that content and making sure that the poem doesn't stretch that content out too far is more important than parallelism even if I enjoy seeing that.

While there's not a lot that's particularly wrong about this poem that I found there's not a lot that's particularly right here either. Nothing that stands out and makes this different from other pieces on the same subject matter. What I wanted more of is a unique perspective. Imagery and figurative language that sets this poem apart from other poems about biking (if there are any, there probably are).

Give us more of how the bikers are feeling before the beginning of the race. Show us that adrenaline ready to burst. Show us the butterflies bouncing around in their stomachs. Do the bikers feel the weight setting down on their front pedals? Do the bikers have a sense of anxiety and excitement in their hearts like puppies eager to go outside? Give us metaphors and similes and other figurative to better connect for those of us who haven't been in or experienced a bike race. Go from there in making this even stronger and listen to the other reviewers as well because they speak truth. Add imagery. Experiment around with the balancing of different elements to make this poem that holds a lot of unused potential use that potential and become even more solid.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! If you've got any review requests be sure to hit up my Will Review For Food thread and finally, I hope I helped and have a great day!

Hello, @Midnightmoon! I'll be dropping by to leave a review on your work!

This poem was simple and quite short, which gave it a minimal and clean feel. Your writing style can definitely be expanded in the imagery area, though. I loved the third stanza because of this; it had not only good imagery but wonderful descriptive words as well. Even though I would like to see more imagery included in your writing, it could be limited depending on how you like each individual poem to write. Adding more imagery (or just adding to the poem in general!) will help make it more powerful -- because this poem is based on a specific moment, whereas a lot of other poetry can be based on emotions within -- so this will have an advantage against "emotional" poetry that is packed smack full with so much juicy feeling. Anyway, there is a lot left that you can write about for this poem, whatever comes to you and then feels right for you.
I applaud you for punctuation. It breaks my heart when punctuation isn't used properly, if it's not the person's style of writing, because it makes it harder on the reader's eyes. Because of this, the flow of your poem is spot on.

That one moment in time,
That few minutes that

You see these riders frozen,

Hi Midnight! I'm here to leave a quick review on your lovely poem.

I didn't have any issue with the formatting of it, and kind of liked it's "cyclical" nature -- the readers goes to one side of the page then the other side, kind of like wheels turning or pedals moving. I think it also helped that most of the lines were around the same length so even though the alignment changed, as a reader I didn't have to adapt too much to read, and it didn't become distracting. These types of pieces can end up being too hectic to understand with the white space, but I actually liked how you did this one.

While I liked that you also had parallelism in the amount of lines per stanza (6 for stanza 1 & 5, 5 for stanzas 2 & 4, and 3 for stanza 3) it felt a little like you were stretching for content in some of the lines. To be more specific, some of the stanzas felt like they had a lot of content that was repeating itself. In stanza 1, it was odd (for me) that both feet had to be described as "ready to push". Stanza 2 seemed like it was moving in really slow motion, and also was a bit redundant for me. Stanza 3 was fine. But stanza 4 we get that the feet are on the ground and are waiting for like the 3rd time in the poem. And in stanza 5, we here that "you see these riders frozen" which is similar to the line in stanza 4 "frozen in time it seems".

I liked that you had a few stanzas to really build up some tension to the end bell, but I think some of the content just got drawn out a bit too much and did start getting repetitious. I would suggest maybe cutting some of the repetition and draw out some of the emotional moments out a bit more. For instance the lines where you go into the speaker's mind "A deep breath" and "My heart begins to race" and "feel like a lifetime" --- I think all of these moments could be expanded and delved into a bit more.

Another way to expand the content without getting redundant would be to add a bit more specific imagery. I've never been to a bike race, but I can guess that it's people and bikes at a starting line, what are the other specific images that come to mind? Are there uniforms? What's the weather like? What can be heard? A bit more figurative language would also make some of these details you describe stand out more.

Overall, it was an engaging short read, about a subject that I don't think I've ever even read a poem on before! Nice work!

Best,
~alliyah