Young Writers Society

Hey joallover,

I was wandering around YWS and I found your poem so I figured I'd give you a review.

When I read the poem, I took notes on things that sounded awkward or I thought might need some re-phrasing, so I'll give you those, but I also wanted to talk about rhyme scheme, and YWS formatting. Since YWS formatting is quicker, here's a link. How to Format Poetry

Onto rhymes. I think the only reason I'm not going to suggest nixing rhymes in this poem is because it's a sonnet. The problem I see with that is the iambic pentameter part of the sonnet. You can get away with 10-11 syllables per line, but you're ranging from 8 to 12. That's a little big. Also I'm not sure the beat is really there through the majority of the poem.

Let's look at this in a little more depth.

the GOOD you have DONE and the CHOIC-es you've MADE -a, 11
have BROUGHT BEAU-ty and FUN to ALL in your LIFE -b, 11
you SPENT your YEARS TEACHing as you PLAYED -a, 9
CAREing for ALL and STI-ful-ing ALL STRIFE -b, 11

This is your second stanza marked up. Usually, if we want iambic pentameter, which stanzas are, we would want a solid pattern of each syllable being the opposite of the last one starting on an off beat. You do start on an off beat, which is god, but you only get the "every other" part of that infrequently. Usually this isn't a big problem if your down beats are the ones which are stacked, but you've got some like "ALL STRIFE" where that's not the case. Also "BROUGHT BEAU-ty" and those are the bigger problems. When you compound that with the repeated use of stacking unstressed syllables, it really doesn't look like iambic pentameter anymore.

Granted, structures are losing their rigidity when it comes to things like iambic pentameter, but it's still important to make it sound like you're not forcing your rhyme when you're working on it.

Here are two cases where I feel like you forced your rhyme.

There’s no telling where you’ll go or where you’ll land

Why do we need to know that it would be either where they're going or landing? Aren't those usually the same thing? This must be a case where you're just trying to rhyme with "Hand".

Caring for all and stifling all strife.

So to translate: loving and suffocating all problems. I'm not sure that's really what you want to say here? I mean, sure, fight with love, but this seems awkwardly worded, like you're just forcing a rhyme with "Life".


These aren't the only places I've had problems with your wording however, and the others may be related to your rhyme scheme too, but I didn't pick up on it when I was first doing my reading notes. Here are the rest of them.

Now you may rest, you’ve done all you can

Oh, well isn't that nice of the speaker. They're letting them go instead of, what? Resserrecting them from the dead? It seems rather selfish to say that they're ALLOWED to leave now.

No one around could name a better man,

What does that mean? Why? Who's the man they named? Why could no one name a better one? I mean, it seems rather out of place in this poem. If we had a little more space in here, we might be able to understand this. Or are you meaning that THEY are the man that was named?

Your love will live on, you will never lie dead.

I'm not sure if you're going for the creepy vibe or not, but I think you hit it for me. This sounds like the person is just going to be a ghost forever, or that they're going to, somehow, through the love of this other person, come back from the dead. I'm not sure I understand the sentiment.


Some of these are just things which could use clarification through things like pronoun use, and others are phrases which I don't hear despite you probably being familiar with them. Chances are, however, if I'm not familiar with them, it won't translate well to other people also and you might want to consider rephrasing them.

With that said, in order to get a true sonnet, I feel like you need to beef up some lines and cut down others. If you focus first on the iambic pentameter part of the sonnet, and then LATER go through and make the lines rhyme, you might have an easier time of it without forcing the words. This type of poem is difficult to write, so I can appreciate your attempt, but I think you fell flat on the structure.

All in all, the poem itself could be good or bad, I was distracted by the structure and I couldn't really make heads or tales of your writing quality, so I'm not in a good place to comment on it. I do think you'd benefit from writing in an easier structure first rather than tackling both rhyming and iambic pentameter because that's oftentimes where people have the most issues.

I hope that helped in some way.
-Aley