this flopped so hard
z
Bare save for a cloth, one night
a child sat - 'twas quite a sight.
Would have made even St. Nicholas jump
to see such a dirty, sad little lump.
"Why do you sit here, not clothed as a whole?"
A poor lady asked in the silence's lull.
And to herself, she did confer,
I pity the child, yet there are many like her
" 'cause I was tossed from hearth and home,
and sent here, to the streets, to roam.
Could you spare but a cent for me?"
The lady said yes. "Let me see - not one, not two, but three!"
The stooped child thanked her, and stood to stretch.
"Oh! My mother I was to fetch ..."
Said the lady, her eyes looking as if into hearts they could see.
"Farewell, so long," said the girl to she.
"I will! And you, shall one day do the same?"
"Yes, I shall, thanks to you. Say ... what is your name?"
But as others who deserve true fame
the lady melted into the fog down the lane,
Anonymous.
She gave her fortune, three pennies at that;
While millionaires, a distance away, sat.
WOW! I was looking through the poetry section after recently publishing one myself (shameless plug) and the title caught my eye. The title, like everything else in the poem, was very creative and well thought of. I enjoyed reading this and I look forward to reading more of your poetry in the future. The flow of it sort of reminded me of a Robert Frost poem, which shows how highly I view you and your poetry! If my opinion matters at all, I highly suggest you submit poems like this one somewhere because you have true talent and you mustn't let that go to waste! I hope you continue to write like this because I will continue to read it! With love, Gina
Hello there! Sumer here to review your work.
Alright, I see that this is a poem that tells a great story and makes an even better statement. This piece of work here also shows emotion, heart, pain and giving. Although I do love this poem and could hardly believe it hasn't been published, there are a couple of things that catch my eye. Such as, 'Anonymous.', this caught my eye because it is the very heart of the poem but in all honesty I don't think it flows well... seeing that all of the other parts of the poem rhyme. Now, then again this may have been your trick of the cards by making this simple word stand out, as you already have by making this one line have a single word. Another thing that caught my eye happened to be, 'I pity the child, yet there are many like her', this caught my eye simply because it played with my heart strings. By this I mean it was a very emotional part to me and I have nothing bad to say about it 'nor can I correct it in any way. For this I say continue making more poems and continue to shake people with such words.
-Sumer
Hey there,
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review.
Before I get started I would just like to welcome you to YWS, it's always great to see a new person here and I am totally looking forward to reading your work.
LINE-BY-LINE/NITPICKS
This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review!
What I'm most confused by here is the rhyme scheme. The main complaint I have there is that this isn't consistent. What I mean by a rhyme scheme is a pattern of rhyme to follow throughout the poem, though this doesn't seem to have one in complete. Here's what I see now when I read this poem: AAABBCCDDEEFF, and so on. This poem takes on a strict rhyme that holds back the rest of the piece. I wish this were a bit more loose though more thoughtfully structured since this seems to be a poem that'd work with rhyme if done given given the subject matter, though as of now the rhyme feels pretty forced. Working on the general flow would be beneficial since this is more based on a narrative, which isn't something we always see in poetry. Incorporate more elements into this such as imagery and give this more of a neat form.
An aspect of this I haven't seen done too many times in poetry is dialogue and I'd have to say that while this fits, I'm not much of a fan of this since it's not very well-executed compared to the few other cases. Let this have more of a natural flow and also try and make the dialogue a bit less over-the-top if it's supposed to be representing this theme of a lady giving...a couple pennies to a girl? For this to be more effective I think it'd have to be more money, and you can still say that's her fortune.
People giving a dollar to those who need it aren't automatically heroes is the point I want to make here and those gestures don't need to be recorded. They're anonymous for a reason because it makes the people doing those acts feel better. It's an act of kindness that doesn't want to be showed off to the world since those people are usually timid and don't want fame. Giving a girl three cents isn't something to be famous for, though, which is what I'm attempting to say. It is nice, though! Those people don't want to be famous, they don't want money. They want to feel warm inside, and that's what you should try and hit the reader more of with.
If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.
Hi there! Congratulations on posting your first piece on the site!
It's well-edited and I like the old-timey feel of it. For me some of the rhyming felt a bit forced. And I wonder if you could sneak "Anonymous" into the line after or before it to keep up the rhyme scheme. Or maybe just italics it, if you really want it to disjoint the flow (not always a bad thing in a poem). Another small piece of criticism is this poem is almost all dialogue and that makes it a bit difficult in some places to follow -- if you italicized some parts or off-set one speaker this may aid the reader's clarity.
Anyways, well done! And I hope to see more of your work around the site in the future! If you have questions about any of my review please don't hesitate to ask.
Best,
~alliyah
Hello, Fea here to review!
So firstly, I must say, this was a very well-written poem. It was easy to follow, and the rhyme and rhythm were spot-on. The only time either was broken was with the word 'anonymous', which I will say broke me out of it a bit.
It was short, but engaging, and easy to read. Nice job!
~ Fea
Hey there! First of all, welcome to Young Writers Society! I hope you find the sort of critiquing you need here
I'm just going to go through this line by line pointing out nit-picks (ie little things that I don't think quite work) and nice moments.
On the streets, bare save for a cloth,
"Oh! My old mother I was to fetch!"
reading the news, sat
Points: 85
Reviews: 218
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