Young Writers Society

Whether or not you were aware, for the most part this is written in the English Ballad form, which means it can be (for the most part) sun to Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Gilligan's Island, Pokemon, and other famous tunes.

Try it sometime.

I see what you did with the formatting to make it look like a boat (I'm on a boat!) but there are several times where this formatting made it difficult to keep up reading, so...take that with a grain of salt as you proceed. I'm not saying to ditch the formatting because I GET the reasoning and I GET the want. I'd just be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you that there were issues.

While I was a bit sad that there were parts that break away from the English ballad, I think those are the parts that really give punctuation to the flow and momentum of the entire piece:

"A sail rips, the boat tips. White foam tossed, a ship lost(period missing)"

Things like that. They Really speed things up, and the return to the ballad form really slows it back down. I like that! It gives action speed where speed is due, and gives lull where lull is due. This is actually expertly done; the meter, the rhymes. It's a well-done piece.

Good on ya, keep writing.
Ty

Hello there, Felistia!
This is Moonwatcher here with a review! ^^

I like the structure of the poem, but the way everything kind of splits up seems kind of weird. I don't really like the feeling of having to shift my eyes a lot in order to read it. In the beginning when everything splits up, I honestly got lost trying to read it because I kept reading lines out of order. One thing that I found interesting about the structure that I'm not sure of is; is this shape poetry? It looks kind of like a ship, but that's not very clear.

I didn't pick up any personal feeling or emotion from this. I agree that this sounds a lot like a narrative, and I've read several poems about sinking ships/ships in storms. They're usually only distinct in their use of metaphor/imagery, and the only thing I really find distinct here in this poem is the formatting. Everything else is kind of weak, and could use some work on to make a little more distinguishing.

There was a rhyme in the poem that wasn't very useful by being present. I don't see many shape poems (if this was a shape poem) with rhyme because there isn't really a benefit? I sometimes feel as if rhyming has a negative effect on poetry, because of how it takes away some of the freedom in writing. You become constricted to a certain set of words that you must stick to, which could stop some emotions or imagery from passing through. The poem's rhyme /barely/, just /barely/ helps out the rhyme.

What I meant by emphasizing the "barely" is that some of the rhyme sounds forced. You can tell because the transitions sound weird and choppy, and it sounds as if though you were just looking for something to say. If rhyme really gets in the way of what you're trying to say like this, sometimes you just shouldn't use it at all. However, I suggest keeping the rhyme either present, or not there at all, for consistency.

That's all I have to say about this poem. I hope this helps! ^^

This is Kaos here for a review.

So I noticed that this was more of a narrative within a poem more than anything else, and here's what I have to say about it. I didn't really feel anything oh so special with this poem, to be completely honest with you. A ship in a storm is a topic that's been tackled over and over again, and the only main thing that keeps this from being bland is probably the imagery that you use. And even there we get images that aren't really in a new perspective, and they don't exactly have to be, but give us a way to think about a ship like we haven't before or give us a new way to experience or imagine the waves.

The rhyming in this poem was subtly there but I still don't know why exactly it was added. With a structure like this there isn't really a pattern to the rhyme and a general rule of thumb is to rhyme throughout the whole poem or at least have a scheme/pattern but none of that is apparent here. It didn't add anything or take away but that's just one of the things that you should try to do if you really do want to rhyme in this poem.

One thing that I did want to mention was the structure of the poem. It was interesting how the first stanza diverged into three and I think it would be a much stronger poem if it kept this way like you're doing now and came together at the end again with the images. Have a line that starts off at the end of the first stanza on the top and then they diverge from there kind of like a tree with branches. I didn't really know if you were trying to make anything with the structure and it seemed to only be here for aesthetics but I may be wrong. You kind of do this here, but I would like to see it in a more clear form than now.

As a narrative goes, it tells. The poem did a good job at creating that and telling the story, but the reader doesn't really have a particular way to connect or care like this. There's seemingly no speaker in this poem which makes it harder to experience this and the emotions of the poem aren't really there, but I don't think it was supposed to be that way.

This brings me to the theme of the poem which doesn't exist, at least for me. There was nothing really that it was trying to get across while telling this story and I think if you wanted to create a more emotionally powerful meaning that fits, I would suggest going with the idea of "natural disasters happen" or "things happen". This would imbue a feeling of helplessness that things play out like this and they can't really be stopped, but that's just my thoughts on it.

I hope I helped and have a great day!