Young Writers Society

I liked the simplicity of this piece. In four lines you cover an important theme and with great rhythm and rhyme as well.

I have two short pieces of criticism:

1) The word "conqueror" does not lend itself very easily to poetry because it's difficult to say and the second syllable being a closer rhyme than the 3rd syllable makes it fit oddly with the preceding two lines. If you could somehow change it to just conquer or pick another rhyming word I think it would flow better - but I know that is more easily said than done.

2) I really don't think the lack of punctuation helped this piece. It didn't add clarity and the rest of the poem actually seemed pretty formal (in word choice & rhyme & theme) so I would throw a period at the end and maybe a comma too.

Overall, this is a good short piece, that succeeds in clearly communicating a message.

Best,

~alliyah

This Review was brought to you by Team Cardinals! Happy Review Day!

So hello Werthan. I'm here for a quick review.

So I don't have much to talk about here. This is a short little quatrain with a rhyme scheme of ABCB. In my opinion at least, writing four-liners are rather tricky because you need to throw your "theme" or "impression" out there in a few, structured lines instead of the longer poems, rhyming or not.

So right now, I believe you've snagged a pretty good impression. I especially liked the satirical quirk about how long you'd last at the end, after building up with the preceding examples of Bonaparte and Genghis Khan. And in history I've noticed how short-lived conquerors' successes are, and the theme definitely resonates with me.

But I agree with Kayla that this might not make as much sense to people who haven't heard of Napoleon Bonaparte and Genghis Khan. While they are famous names, there may be some who have not heard of them and if they happen to read your poem, they won't understand the significance of it.

I also feel as if the analogy between the two doesn't exactly match up. Bonaparte at the end was exiled to a distant island from what I remember while Genghis Khan didn't have exactly that "tone" of end. So I see that your theme is "Conquerors don't live forever" but there are two different ends for the two conquerors. Both died but Genghis Khan died still as a king. Well, my word isn't law so that's just what I call food for thought. So just think about it

Hope I helped. Send me a PM if you want to discuss!

Short and amusing, not even mentioning true! I love it!

This is Nikayla here dropping in for a short review!

So you'd think that a short poem of this stature or length would have been blown out of the Green Room already, but apparently not. Maybe it's because there's not much content to go off of since it's only a quatrain, but I found that to be untrue--you just have to dig a little deeper. The poem obviously doesn't appeal very much to those who haven't heard of Bonaparte or Genghis Khan. The rhyme scheme here is a little weak and since this piece is so small, I believe that you could focus on it a little more.

From what I can tell, at the moment we're using a ABCB rhyme scheme though I believe that the second and fourth lines are more of a slant rhyme rather than a perfect one. Overall, the poem works for what it is and gets the message across that conquerors don't last forever, and it's written in the perspective of someone on the outside. That being said, there's a need of some background knowledge about famous conquerors to enjoy or understand this poem (which can't really be avoided unless you want to drag it out and give some context clues, and those are already pretty apparently), but other than that, I didn't have any large issues here with your poem.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. I hope I helped and have a great day.