Young Writers Society

Hey there! Sky here with a review for your poem. Let's jump in!
I like to read the poems in my head, then out loud, to find the flow. The cadence of the first stanza is good. I would separate the lines further, but the longer lines work well as strings of thought. In the second line, you could omit the word "do" and omit the word "the" in the next. The first and second line would flow into each other better. The short line at the end of the first stanza is well placed. The transition into the next stanza is very neat. The only problem I have is that the sentence running from the first stanza into the second is long. The punctuation of that sentence is clean, though.

A great man once said we all were created equal.
A pity we killed him; no sequel

We as a people have learned to hate and fear
all things that should be revered.

I say it's time to make today that tomorrow.

Hey there ChildofWriting. It's just Lizzy dropping by real quick as requested, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.

Though I do review poetry, it's not my best field. (Well that depends who you talk to.). If you find that this review isn't very helpful to you, I believe a couple of te poetry mods have review forums. You might want to check them out.

I see that you were trying to get a lot of the lines to rhyme but in this format it just sounds weird. The previous reviewer already went into this a bit but I felt I should add on a bit more. When I'm reading this in mind and I see a couple of stanzas that the lines rhyme, I sort of expect the whole poem to rhyme. You know what I mean? It's like when you see something repeat several times and you go 'I know what's going to happen next'. Except this time it didn't and it threw me off a little bit.

Also exscuse the lack of quotes. I've recently started doing all reviews on mobile and my fun doesn't like to copy and paste anything.

Up in the top two lines, it seemed like you were trying to rhyme them and then decided not to. I may or may not be able to make this quote work so don't hold your breath on my comments.

I wish I could explain how words always astound me,
though they also do worry and endlessly confound me.

Howdy Chilow ~

As I've told you, I don't write poetry. So, I guess, don't take my advice too seriously If you want some serious poetry advice, find a poet in the WRFF forums, and ask them for a review.

You were so uncertain about posting any of your poetry, worried that you weren't a good enough poet. But I had a feeling that you were just being humble and this poem would be great. And I was right! Your message is really strong and I like the different cultural topics you covered.

However (and this is my main critique), this is a free-verse poem, and it wasn't necessary for you to rhyme every single line. Some of them come off as forced and don't fit in with the stressed/unstressed rhythm. I think it's usually more important to maintain a steady rhythm than find a way to rhyme everything. If you've read any Shakespeare, you'll know what I mean. He saves a rhyming couplet for the most important lines, and simply maintains a nice rhythm everywhere else.

A great man once said that we all were created equal.

A pity we killed him; no sequel.

no matter the sparkle, no matter the glisten

----

ing of their words, their ideas, their ideals.

We as a people have learned to hate what is new, but

now I propose we stand up and fight for that too.

Review time!

I very much enjoyed the poem, and how it described how powerful words can be; be it killing someone or motivation.
I also really like the fact that you speak of how we should more importantly use words for good and not bad. It reminds me of my own story I am working on (I swear I am not advertising my work) .
Keep up the good poetry!

gracevan here for a review!

let me start by saying that I particularly enjoy poetry about poetry (and the power of words) and rhyming poetry is always more difficult for me so props to you for accomplishing that!

A tiny critique would be that there are a few inconsistencies with the rhythm, however it didn't distract from the overall piece. I would recommend reading it out loud, you might catch the places where it doesn't quite flow.

Also most of your stanzas have a varying amount of lines, which is totally fine if that's the way you want it, but a consistent amount of lines per stanza might make it have a more steady feel.

I really enjoy the places where you break the stanza in the middle of a word, like in the fourth stanza. That's very unique and piqued my interest.
Overall, this is a great job with a purpose I can stand behind and a killer ending. Nice work!!