Young Writers Society

Hello, funkyeddie92! It's review day, and I've come to review your poem!

I see that DrThomas has already reviewed the content of the poem, and I agree with everything she's said. What I'm going to go through today with you is the structure of your poem.

The first thing that I noticed while I was reading this is that I wanted it to be in stanzas, not just one big long chunk. On YWS, the editor can be a little confusing sometimes. If you want your lines to be single spaced, just hold shift while you press enter! Then, when you want to separate a stanza, just don't hold shift! I've done this so many times that I often hold shift when I press enter when I don't need to. You'll get used to it! ^_^

The next thing I saw was that you don't end your sentences. You use plenty of commas, but you don't use any semi-colons or periods. I mention semi-colons because I think several places in your poem could benefit from them. Semi-colons connect two independent clauses that are related. They could grammatically be replaced with a period. For example, I could say "Wingman is my dog. He is sitting next to me." Or I could replace one of the periods and this would still be correct: "Wingman is my dog; he is sitting next to me." It shows that the two ideas are connected.

While grammar doesn't matter as much in poetry, I felt like sometimes a phrase really needed a subject to feel complete.

Should never change a thing

Its a nice piece of work.

The idea is a good one. But I would say, it lacks the essence. Like I mean the character is not clearly sorted out. Readers could hardly make it out.

But towards the end, I think its more clear about what you wanted to convey. Next time, please be more specific.

I thought this was a funny poem that certainly fits into the satire genre! I like your thought of it, the feeling of being a lady, in the 17th or 18th century, and all the unspoken rules that probably came with it. The twist on the end makes it interesting as well, but I think the poem as a whole is a bit hard to understand - mostly because, as the other reviewer mentioned, I don't know who is speaking, and to whom this person speaks. I believe it would make the poem even better if those things were clearer!
I understand what you mean by saying that the lady does not prefer pet names, because, in this particular case, that diminishes her and makes her feel like an object who, perhaps, belongs to a man.

Keep writing!

Hey Eddie! Stella here to give you a review today. The title of your poem drew me in because I love stories and poems about ladies, noble women, aristocrats, princesses, so I was interested to see what your take on it was. I loved your structure here with the whole thing assembled as a set of rules and regulations, and your surprise ending.

That said I found that the rules didn't really match any definitions of ladies that I've come across so far. For sure, being quiet, and prim and proper, but there were some things that I felt like they didn't exactly fit... for instance not being allowed pet names. Have you ever read Anna Karenina? You know how all those fine Russian ladies go by Dolly and Kitty rather than their own longer names? And then the one about "four white walls" - I know what you're trying to get at is the restrictive lifestyle, however what it conjured up for me was a sort of monk's cell, not exactly the place where I'd imagine a lady such as one you're describing here. Then I felt like some of the rules that you'd written were more what we used to hear said about Victorian children - seen and not heard etc. - but that you wouldn't really hear about women. So the whole set of rules together didn't really come together for me because they all seemed to be a bit conflicting.

The other thing was that I couldn't work out who the speaker in the poem was, because they don't turn up until the last third of the poem. I think for the last lines to pack maximum punch we need to have more of a sense of who is speaking, from what perspective, and how what the subject of the poem is affects them. Otherwise it's vaguely comical, but not much more beyond that.

Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!

-Stella x