Young Writers Society

Hey, anonymou5. Firstly I want to say really quickly that I see you've posted a lot of pieces on YWS and haven't posted even one review. You are already benefiting a lot from the people that give their time to review you, and I'm sure you've learned a lot already, so I am sincerely hoping you'll pay it forward in the future. I'm going to PM you after this review with some helpful links.

Now, for the poem.

Those first two lines are magical. They are full of imagery, personality, situation, and a sense of stillness where movement is caged. I will not be able to express my love of them enough. The title, too, is intriguing.

But the rest of the poem is something I cannot get along with at all. I don't understand, really, what you thought you would get from a poem that just followed the easiest rhymes you came across. You lost your magical start completely in following silly rhyme to silly rhyme. It's as if you bring in a new character for every line, just making their names rhyme with whatever came before: you've got too many people on stage trying to play a part, and none of them are related.

I really hope you'll consider rewriting this poem with intent, because for now it feels slapped together and not-cared-about. If I'm wrong, that's fine. But I'd really love to see a thoughtful edit.

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck, and keep writing!

Hello anonymou5, welcome to YWS. A few observations I have made here:

There's a heavy stone,
sitting on my cage.
The barrel inside it feels alone,
and I will die at a young age.

Hi there Anonymou5!

I'll focus mainly on the rhymes in this review, because that's something I'm quite passionate about!

So you've written a rhyming poem - that's cool! I like rhymes. At the moment, the formatting (in need of a better word) of the poem doesn't really do justice to the rhymes, though. If you read this out loud (and even if you don't), you'll notice that the lengths of the lines are quite uneven. You have short lines like "and let loose his rage" mixed with long ones like "The prisoner inside will break your bones". Variety is usually good, but less so if it disturbs the flow of the poem. Here, the rhymes don't get to shine because the inconsistent rhythm prevents them from being read in the "right" way. I say "right", because of course there are no rights or wrongs in poetry or literature in general if you only know your grammar well. And poetry doesn't even need to be grammatically correct!

I like the way you managed to keep the rhyme scheme as ABABAB almost throughout the poem and then ended in a rhyming couplet like in a sonnet of sorts. However, some of the words seemed to be there just because they rhymed with the previous lines, not because they were something you really wanted to say. It's a tricky thing, I know, but the ideal situation would be that you say exactly what you want to say *and* manage to make it rhyme as well. The meaning should come before the rhymes.

The rhyming also stumbles a little in the middle, since "shone" is actually pronounced like something between "shawn" and "shun". I know there are differences in pronunciations around the world, but I wouldn't pronounce it so it rhymes with stone, alone, or bones. Maybe someone would, and so there's no problem, but it bothered me a little.

But keep writing rhyming poetry, because it's really cool! Sorry my review was so one-sided!


Demeter
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