z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

​dear reader.

by Persistence


It's too long:
stanzas bigger than the uni-verse,
and infinitely more empty.
A failure of epic proportions.

It's too short:
Crappy meter? More like crappy inch.
Iambeing tortured. Spondeeneously falling sleep.
The battle to read it was a Pyrrhic victory.

Not enough rhymes:
Must be a snow day,
'cause it has no class.
A rubber band has more ornament.

Too many rhymes:
They are a crime.
Elude them – you're fine.
Use them – do time.

Poor imagery:
I feel sorry for it,
A painting like the Mona Lisa,
if the Mona Lisa was not a painting.

Too confusing:
Alliterating the last line is like
a large ladle lifting a lemon –
you could do it, but why?

Bottom line:
dear reader,
there's no pleasing you.

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120 Reviews

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Sun Aug 28, 2016 10:09 pm
RippleGylf wrote a review...



Hello! Ripple here on this marvelous Review Day.

So, this is one of the more humorous poems I've seen on here, and it was a pleasure to read. :D I hope to review it without falling into any of the pitfalls you discuss in the piece. ;)

Iambeing tortured. Spondeeneously falling sleep.
The battle to read it was a Pyrrhic victory.

I feel like this is a lot of puns/inside jokes that I just don't understand. I think the first one is a reference to Iambic Pentameter, but I don't see what that has to do with a short poem.
Must be a snow day,
'cause it has no class.
A rubber band has more ornament.

This feels like it's supposed to be a sick burn, but I think it's too cold for that. (Get it?! 'Cause it's about a snow day?! ... *sighs* Sorry, that was really lame.) While I get the joke, it just doesn't really fit the context. (Kinda like that joke I just made...)

Overall, there's just so much sass in this piece and I love it. :D Keep writing!




Persistence says...


Iamb, spondee and pyrrhus are the names of rhythmic structure in poetry, or in other words: meter, hence the relation to length. A Pyrrhic victory is a victory won at too great a cost, named after Pyrrhus, a Greek king who defeated the Romans, but suffered heavy casualties in the process.

As for the second quote, it's okay if you didn't find it funny. However, if I didn't think it was in context, I wouldn't have written it. There's no consistent meter, no rhymes throughout the poem except for that one part that talks about rhymes. So, that's basically what that particular stanza comments on.

Thanks for reviewing my poem.
~~~



Persistence says...


My poem aside, there's something else I would like to comment on. After reading your review, I felt like it was pretty short, but I understand how it's difficult to review a work such as this one. So, I decided to I go through some of your other reviews for Review Day. I noticed that they are all relatively short, and have a generous amount of quotations in them. This led me to believe that you wrote your reviews for the purpose of getting points for your review team, and not for the sole purpose of helping others.

Now, it's your choice how you write reviews, but when it's something I believe is bad for other people, I will speak up on it.

Firstly, the point of Review Day isn't to compete with another team. It's to work together with them to write as many helpful reviews as possible in the Green Room. I'm not saying that your reviews aren't helpful. I'm saying that given their average length, they couldn't possibly have enough content to adhere to the need we all writers have to have our work read and talked about. So, I'm saying they're not living up to a review's potential.

It would have been understandable for you to favour quantity over quality if you didn't have as many reviews to your name as you do now (hence as much experience). But you have as many as 98, and you've been a featured member, if I'm not mistaken. So, feel free to think of this comment as a review to your reviewing.

Firstly, there's this "work": work/Lantz/My-Prologue-131026#c595327

Clearly here the member is new, and they messed up when posting their prologue, or have removed it after posting it. This is not a work, and you clearly abused that in order to gain points. "You asked for a review." There is nothing here to review. So, your intentions here are transparent. Furthermore, you quoted every single line, commenting on the apparent "mistakes" in it. However, since it's not part of the work, or the work itself, the member didn't have to pay attention to mistakes in that particular "section" of the work.

Next, we have work/cleverclogs/doppler-effect-131157#c595234

Here, it's more than obvious what your intentions are. You quote the entire poem, and these quotes take up more than two thirds of the entire review. While the previous review I mentioned wasn't as harmful because there was no work to review, this one obviously does cleverclogs wrong. Not only does it not provide any critiquing content, that she may improve her writing, but it pushes her review out of the Green Room, making her less likely to get another review on this particular poem. So, one can see how this review does little good, no matter the intentions.

In work/fortis/The-Study-of-Spiral-Galaxies-131033#c595335

you finally have some actual content. However, I should mention that in poetry you don't need accurate capitalization or punctuation. You mentioning this is a quarter of the entire review. So, for future reviews, there you have it: a lot of the time it's the poet's choice of aesthetics. It doesn't need to have a special meaning, although in most cases it does have meaning.

Here's another review which relies on quotes to boost its word count: work/rissymay/Take-Away-131089#c595164

This following review's okay, actually. I just found the title of the work ironic, given the situation: work/Augustus/Quotations-131224#c595021



Think about it this way: if the review doesn't, or barely meets the minimum requirements for it to be considered a review without the quotes, I would suggest that you revisit the way you write reviews. If you need tips on how to do that, I would suggest following this member: profile/ReviewBuddy/wall
or checking out some of YWS's ample resources on reviewing, many of which are linked on ReviewBuddy's profile.

Though, I will still give you some advice on reviewing in the form of things you can comment on:

For poetry: rhythm, rhymes, content, how it made you feel, whether or not some lines work, as well as providing an alternative to said lines.

For prose: pacing, content (plot, characters, conflict, theme, setting), inconsistencies in grammar (tense, punctuation...), point of view, whether or not some passages can be improved, and how to address the issues you discovered within the work.

For articles/essays: grammar, whether or not some lines work, whether or not you agree with the content, and if you don't agree, why you don't agree and what is more accurate in your personal opinion.

You could also keep doing what you're doing and tell them to keep writing and all. No argument there. Writers crave motivation.

Bottom line: there are many things you can talk about in a review. You don't have to resort to quotes in order to boost your word count to get more points. The point of reviews is to help others just like you or me, and if we all do that we can expect reviews on our works to be just as helpful as the reviews we write for others.

I hope this helps you write future reviews. Have a great day.



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Sun Aug 28, 2016 2:06 am
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Pencils77 says...



I loved this poem. Dripping with attitude. Keep up the good work!




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Sat Aug 06, 2016 7:22 am
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Malamaya says...



Clever poem! The message really relates to anyone, keep up the good work.




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Wed Aug 03, 2016 5:44 pm
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Aley wrote a review...



Hey CandyWizard!

I like this message. You're using a very structured format, and taking all of the critiques that are typical here on YWS and giving the reader something to think about. I like that it's YWS directed, but, I mean, we have to critique. XD Sorta the point of a review.

This being a review, I'm going to go over the poem with a fine toothed comb and see if I can't hazard out any errors. I mean, that's what they're supposed to do, right? Give you ways to improve? Well, not always. Actually what I'm going to do this time, since this poem is asking for it, is more of an analytical style, telling you how you did what you did.

First, you created suspense in your poem by piling on all of these different things. You don't start with an explanation, but you jump right into the examples of things that people say when they're trying to review a poem. This helps give the reader a sense of curiosity as they go through the rest of the poem and provides them with nothing to hold onto when they're hopping from stanza to stanza, however, they can see the pattern.

Next, you use a sense of voice in each of the individual stanzas that plays towards showing the error that the stanza is introducing, while at the same time, avoiding doing that error as you express it. That's tricky to do. In the second stanza, for instance, we're talking about a poem being too short, and in order to counter that stanza being short, it actually has the longest lines in the poem. This is mostly because of the puns on words that are talking about meter in poetry, iambic, spondee, Pyrrhic, and while the poem doesn't stick to that sort of jargon, it gives the reader a sense that you are not a novice poet.

Another example is that the first stanza, about poems that are too long, is only two sentences, and despite containing large ideas, "Universe" which, again, has a pun in it on 'verse' you still get a sense of huge proportions in a short space.

The most interesting example of this, however, is imagery. We interrupt the reader for a second in the first line and you, the speaker, actually talks to us, "I feel sorry for it." That changes the tone of the poem entirely, it's a unique line in the mass of humor. Of course, we jump right back into that humor when the Mona Lisa is compared to a painting, which it is.

Overall, the poem is engaging because it talks about writing poetry in a way that is unique, through the eyes of the critiquer, so when the punchline comes at the end, it fits. This poem has a good sense of who the audience is.

Now, I will say that I want to see you exploring the nuances of voice more in more poems. I think you've done a wonderful job of it here, and I'd like to see what you do with it in new situations. As for how to improve? Keep writing. Write more! You understand so much, just keep going, and don't get disheartened. Make this something you love to do because you enjoy doing it, not because you want everyone to love it.

That's all I have for you. I hope it gives you a different perspective on your poem or confirms what you already knew.




Persistence says...


Hey Aley! Thank you for reviewing! I really appreciate it, and it's definitely a huge help and motivator. Also, I'm super glad that you liked it, and I hope you have a wonderful day! ^^



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Wed Aug 03, 2016 8:06 am
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Wolfi says...



Wow, talk about clever! :P




Persistence says...


Thanks! <3




Don't be sad bc sad backwards is das and das not good
— LadyMysterio