The sea

Hello!

I like the approach you have to showing something about the sea rather than telling us directly. I think that really works well in a lot of cases and you're working in the right direction with it. The more visual you get with what's going on, and the less you lecture, the better. This has no lecturing at all which is good.

I do, however, think that you are holding yourself back by keeping the rhyming in the poem. Not only does it make a lot of your line-ends awkward, but it's not allowing you the full breadth of what you want to say. If you expand your horizons more and allow the poem to leave the zone of rhymed lines, then you're going to be able to say exactly what you want to say and describe this scene in vivid detail which is exactly what it wants.

I also want to hazard you against how you ended the poem. A poem ending is best done through an action because you're going to get a response that's visceral from your reader. They're going to remember what you say if you leave it with something happening, but here, we have a summary of what is going to happen, not what is happening. This sort of blocks off the dramatic punch-line and pulls us out of the poem before we have an emotional connection, just like the rhyming stops us from seeing this as anything more than a child's poem about how tsunami's look.

To advance the poem forward, we're going to need to have the rhymes either a lot better so they hide within the poem's natural syncopation, or we're going to have to get more detail. I would push for more detail because getting rhymes right is really hard, and getting detail is going to be the easier first step. If you absolutely have to have rhymes in poems for you to consider it a poem, consider going with internal rhymes. They don't need to be at the end of a line and you can then take away the end punctuation.

Aley

Hey, ticktock! IronSpark here to review your awesome work. To keep this as helpful and concise as possible, I'm going to talk about two things I think you should consider for the future. Ready? Set? Go!

1. Rhyming.

So... your rhyme scheme here is technically executed correctly. However, I felt that the rhyme really constrained you as a writer, making you opt for simpler, shorter, and less expressive alternatives. If you're going to rhyme, have a good reason to. I'd advise removing the rhyme altogether, and really putting your personal voice into the poem more. Poems like this have been done before: we, as readers, just want that really your unique spin on the idea--and that includes your voice as a poet. I only heard it a few times throughout the poem: as you'll see in my next point, your message falls a bit flat--what I mean is, it doesn't carry the weight and poise I expect of your awesome writing. And the rhyme scheme really drives home that idea, forcing you to settle for less-expressive words. Just something to think about! Really, before using a rhyme scheme, ask yourself why it's important to do that. Try writing it without the rhyming and then with it! Does anything change? If you're not sure, you can always ask a friend, family member, or YWSer. That's what we're here for, you know. -- Anyway. I'm done rambling about this. Onto the final thing to ramble about!

2. "Show, don't tell!"

So. Showing vs. telling. It's important to understand the nuances of these two ideas. "Telling" doesn't have to mean something like '1. I walked down the street. 2. I went to the grocery store'. And "showing" doesn't have to be "It was such a sunny day! I trotted across the avenue, glancing left then right as the automobiles whizzed passed me in a beautiful slew of colors. My song danced off my tongue, and all of the passing folks smiled at the endless, beautiful, perpetual blue sky." Yeah, that's over the top, but you know what I mean. "Showing" doesn't have to be blatant imagery, and "telling" doesn't have to be a list. It's actually a spectrum: how image-focused is your piece? Well, I see it as further towards "telling" than anything else, if you want my opinion as a poetry-enthusiast and reviewer. There are too many abstract concepts for me: "children cry 'mummy! mummy!'", for example. Maybe children are crying, and maybe we have that snippet of dialogue, but it really isn't enough. These days, a lot of pieces are image-driven. Yours doesn't have to be, but it's designed to be sudden and impact us emotionally, and the easiest and most effective way to do that for a poet at your level (a very high one) is giving us this perfect picture using the five senses, and then slowly tearing that image away until we see the harsh reality. This will be one thing that will be easier if you remove the rhyme scheme, as well! Take all the creative freedom you need as a poet. -- Anyway: that's all for me. Keep writing and don't forget to be awesome!

IronSpark

Hi Ticktock,

This is an interesting poem, an I'm not sure after reading it what your intent was here. Were you looking to write a series poem, or were you after a simple poem that has a little dark humour? The second option might seem a bit odd but that's what happens when you have this kind of obvious rhyme in a serious poem. The rhyme scheme is sucking the life from your poem, making it into something silly or something childish. It doesn't have to be either, and I suggest you get there by removing the rhyme altogether and exploring your lines as individual lines. You have quite acceptable imagery and an interesting way of speaking that might be too ties to rhyme but is sweet and lyrical all the same.

My suggestions for this poem are to drop the rhyme entirely and consider making this poem a bit longer. It is a good length now but has the feeling of needing more space or something, I could easily see it grow. The tone of your poem is hugely confusing, this is because the rhyme makes it sound like a singsong question and answer rather than a response to a serious natural disaster.

Thanks for posting this. Poetry is always a gamble and this is a nice, simple piece that has impact and interest without overwhelming the reader. If you make changes to this in the end, please let me know, I'd love t have a look.

- Penguin

Simple and short, but this poem hits the reader hard. It expresses the unpredictable ways of the sea and how a moment is all it takes to shatter a world. It's very emotional and sad and makes you wonder what it would be like if you yourself were in that situation. Very well written, with excellent rhyming scheme, I'm gonna give it 8 thumbs up!!!!! ;D Way to go!!

Hey TickTock123,
It's MergSword here ready to review another of your AWSOME works!

Let's begin with the neatness, overall I think the poem could be a bit neater. Although a glitch on YWS doesn't allow to make spaces sometimes, you could always do: -------- where the space should be across the page, or centered, or you can even use: ********.
I see that you like writing about the fears and dangers within, and I think that's AWSOME!


Children cry "mummy! mummy!"

Aww....poor kids.

Fish flapping in the sand,

Wait what....I don't think that really make sense. They have to be in the water. Also if the fish were on the sand, they would only flop for a few seconds, or a minute before they die.

A distant roar can be heard,

Seagulls cry and suddenly take flight,

These two lines really fit together especially with,

For now we have a tsunami.

Three and a half out of five I say!

~MergSword

Totally love the two first lines! Attention catcher that is! It gave the poem a good start and enlightened the whole poem.

The sea crawls out,

Still under the skies of blue coat,

Great poem!

Hi again, ticktock123! RagingLive here yet again to review one of your poems!

This was a very nice poem with a good sense of rhyme and rhythm. I don't quite feel like the title does the poem justice, maybe entitling it 'The Tsunami' would be more clear. However, I think that if you either strike all capitalization from the title, or use correct capitalization amongst the entire title, it will look more uniform. Giving the format of your poem, I would suggest you do the latter.

Still under skies of blue coat,

"Look look!" everyone shouts

Seagulls cry and suddenly take flight,

It gets bigger and bigger,

It's simple and snappy, it also has a very nice rhythm could do with a little more tension for whats about to happen in the poem and possibly add parts of what has happened after the tsunami has hit land but all in all a pretty good poem