Young Writers Society

Hey there~ It's me again.

This is an okay start. You definitely have a lot more philosophy in this poem than the other one I just reviewed. I really like the message that you want to get across, and you pick really good vantage points from which we, as humans, can understand what you mean.

I think the biggest problem in this poem is the repetition. You don't want to write things in a piece that your reader is going to skip over reading, and that's what I found myself doing with the beginning of each stanza, looking only for the meat and meaning at the end: what each animal wanted to say to me, the human. So the first thing I'd recommend is seeing if you can't weave all these meaningful pieces together in a more elegant fashion.

The second thing I want to talk about is the idea of parallel structure. It's funny, because you seem to get it in the fact that you kept the beginning of each stanza the same, which means the structure of each matches the structure of the last, but you kind of mess it up when you get to a smaller level. It's here at the end:

Rest.
Loyalty.
Home.
Live.
But above all
Feel.

Hey Kay!

I'm going to do a quick stanza by stanza review. I'm not good at poetry, but I'll do my best to point out your strengths and weaknesses. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me any time! I hope my review is helpful, here goes.

Stanza One

You are already off to a good start. You present a unique idea, and you raise more questions than you answer. This pulls the reader into the poem really well. One thing through me off, and it was these two lines:

The cat dreams one day
Humans will know the truth.

When I read this, I considered the first line a complete thought, and the next line a complete thought. It turned out, after some rereading, that the first line is a dependent clause, and the second line is an independent clause. I think you can avoid this confusion with a comma after the first line. Then again, I could just be reading it wrong. That is always a possibility... :p

Stanza Two

Now I'm starting to understand the idea behind the poem. At first, I expected it to be about the cat's eternal hunt, and how cats relate to humans. As it turns out, you are presenting morals, values, and ideas that are presented through each animals traits. You may want to add a stanza that shows, 'This poem isn't just about the cat's hunt, there's more to it.' That way the reader isn't surprised or taken aback.

Stanza Three

I loved this stanza. It was easily my favorite. I could really resonate with the idea. The fish is trapped in a lake, but its world is as big as it makes it. That hit deep, nice! On that note, there should be a comma at the end of the next to last line.

Stanza Four

Okay, in this stanza, you say 'the butterfly believes humans will know the truth.' Was their any particular reason the butterfly feels differently from the others? What quality makes the butterfly have this sort of faith? It could also have just been a typo. But, if it wasn't, I brought this up because I'd like to know why the butterfly feels the way it does.

Stanza Five

The final stanza sums things up well. All of these animals think the humans are missing something, but they are also closed off to the other qualities we must one day come to realize. I love how you presented the final quality, it was really well done.

Anyway Kay, that's all I've got! If you have any questions, catch me on the chatbar or PM me. Keep up the good work!