Just Me

I love how it rhymes

Hi there,

this was a unique poem, but for me it was a little too speaker-specific to relate to. It reminds me a bit of when people do acrostic poems of their own names - while it's good poetry practice it often doesn't make for a poem that is able to connect with anyone else since we don't know the backstory.

I wrote a little article on when specificity is too specific that you might want to take a look at if you need a more in depth explanation on that; Specificity in Poetry.

That being said an aspect I did enjoy was how you balanced some of the self-depricating humor ("sorta crazy/kinda lazy") with the more positive aspects of the speaker's personality. Having that sort of balance is important, because I think readers often feel very drained when a piece is emotionally one-noted - so it's good to have some variety in there. And even the self-deprecating humor was Schadenfreude in a way, since it sounded hyperbolic, so I didn't take it too seriously.

Anyways, I hope you continue to try out humorous poetry, and maybe work on balancing those levels of specificity/vagueness.

Best of luck in your future writing!

~alliyah

Hey there toxicunicorn,
Myjaspercat, here to leave you a short review.

First of all, I do like this piece an I personally think that it's cute. However, that said there are just a few things that I didn't find very pleasing about it.

1) The punctuation at the end of each line really gets to me for some reason. I know I've mentioned this to other people and it may just be a personal hatred but I think that when you add punctuation to the end of every line it really drags down the poem as a whole. Especially in this piece when every other line ends a sentence, you can really do without most of those commas. I also noticed that you forgot to add a period to the end of the final line, was this intentional or just accidental?

2)Did the poem have to rhyme? If so then just ignore this part of the review. If the poem does not have to rhyme then you may want to think about having a rhyme scheme at all. I'm not saying don't, but it kind of made this piece very "chewy" to me. Particularly the last two lines because I feel (and this may be just another personal opinion) that 'curfew' and 'nephew' don't really rhyme. And it's that not quite rhyming that kind of threw off the feel and the momentum of the work that you had built.

Alright, I don't know if there's anything else that I'm dying on touching up on since the content of the poem seems pretty personal and self explanatory to you. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Good luck and continue writing.

Hi,
I think I had the exact same assignment last year so I kind of know what you're doing and I also know what a pain it is to have to come up with something in school when you're not really "feeling" it. I'm guessing that that's what happened when you had to write this.
Anyway, you asked for constructive criticism and my first criticism is that the rhymes are very easy and that the flow is a bit hard to follow. It's a bit bumpy, if you know what I mean, especially in the first line where 'sarcastic' is quite a mouthful to say and maybe not the best word to use in a poem.
I think you could improve the poem by being a bit more personal through like, thinking about five or so adjectives that you think really describes you as a person or a few words that you really like or you think are beautiful, and then build the poem on that instead. This kind of gives the feeling of being just nonsense and that it doesn't have a point.
The most personal part of this poem is the "I'm kinda sorta crazy" because it's quirky, it's weird and gives the reader a taste of who you are as a person and I actually like that line. But I think the rest of the poem is a bit pretentious and child-like. I don't mean to be rude now so I'm sorry if it sounds like it.
That's my opinion and my suggestions to improve it. Of course, it all depends on which grade you're aiming at and how serious you are about the subject