If I could

by Hijinks, RubyRed, Sassafras, alliyah

whatcha --> If I could fly,
through the skies I'd soar.
Every day and night,
till death came to my door.

Sassafras --> If I could swim
seas both black and blue,
I'd search every coast line
until I found you.

RubyRed --> If I could run
to your arms outstretched,
we'd take a moment to read
the memories we etched.

alliyah --> If I could dance
around the moon and back,
I'd stay with you
no matter what we lacked.

Comments

Points: 16
Reviews: 265

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Thu Jul 20, 2017 8:35 pm

myjaspercat wrote a review...

Hey there,
Myjaspercat here to leave ya'll a review

For the most part I really liked this piece. Grammatically I didn't see anything wrong with it so that's a plus. There are a few nit-picks that I have, so let's look at those.

First stanza:

Every day, and every night

I would take out the second 'every' as I find it to be a bit repetitive and the line would still work well without it. As well, I would also take out the comma since you have the conjoining and in there.

till death came to my door.

So this one is more of a personal preference. As I was reading this piece, I felt that saying "came to my door" threw off the flow of the stanza. Maybe it's just me but I would suggest probably playing around with the wording a bit.

Second stanza:

seas both black and blue

Add a comma after seas.

^^Also, end the stanza with a period since you're also ending the idea.

Third stanza:

Mainly, just add a comma at the end of the second line and a period at the end of the last line.

Other then that I think we're all good. For the second and third stanza's I did notice a lack of punctuation which isn't always a good thing. Remember that your readers need that punctuation to know when they should take a breath and to know when an idea has ended. Capitalization wise, I think you all did good.

My last comment would have to be that I agree with Nikayla, in the fact that this piece is really simple. I could expect a single poet to write something this simple but knowing that it was four poets kind of makes me a little more bored with the piece. I would think that if you were going to collaborate with other people you might want to go into a little more depth, make it have more of a punch you know. I want to see this piece with a little more emotion. Right now you all just skimmed the fat off the top and didn't actually dig in.

Anyway, I hope I helped some. Despite what I said, you all did a good job. Good luck and continue writing.

Hijinks says...

Thank you for the review! I just published the punctuation people wrote, but I will change what you suggested for my stanzas.

Points: 220
Reviews: 1081

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Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:47 pm

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Virgil wrote a review...

This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review! I believe that I've reviewed one of these group poems before, though by a couple different people. That being said, I'm excited to jump right in, so without further ado, let's do that!

I can see that this is the standard four stanzas with four lines each, and I can't say I mind this much. The other poems that I've seen and read that have been created by the club I've seen to also use some form of structure. These structures are usually simple and attempt to keep the stanzas of the same length, which makes sense. That being said, I also noticed that this uses repetition at the beginning of each line.

Using this to tie the poem together and make this overall a bit more cohesive is beneficial even if this does come off as a little simple. I'm still wanting to see a longer poem being the output of you lot since what you've published so far from the club is still pretty minimalist. I want to see experimentation with writing off other people! I want to see the bouncing back of ideas and all that other fun stuff. I see that rhyme is in play here with a rhyme scheme of ABCB, though! I can't say that I'm unfond of this though for me this doesn't add much to the poem.

The actual content is a little simplistic, I found. While this isn't necessarily always a downside, this doesn't go into as much depth. This is more of a skeleton and instead keeps to the surface with the repetition coming back again before we can delve deeper into the imagery. The last two lines don't make too much sense to me? They seem to be more based on getting that rhyme in instead of actually making the last stanza work. Dancing around the moon and back and because of that the speaker would stay with this other person? Do you see what I mean by that not making sense?

Not only that, there's a lack of consistency with the punctuation. The beginning and ending stanzas both make use of punctuation while the middle two don't use any at all. Keep this consistent and try and communicate to each other what you're going to be using. One last note that 'coastline' is one word--small error. Overall, for what this is, this works, though it's nothing that amazed me or made me emotional, so keep trying and experimenting if you're aiming for that. This is solid.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.