Hi Sum 1, I'm here to read and review your

Nine  (E) It's hot out, the game must be played. A fight? Good thing Dennis is there. #1794061 by Sum1

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First impression: The title "Nine" is just enough to spark some curiosity. The length of the poem is intimidating.

Form A poem written in 13, alternating rhymed, quatrains. No apparent metric or syllabic pattern.

Texture, rhythm, word choice, and sonics. "baseball language" When read out loud it has a fairly fluid rhythm with occasional awkwardness. It reads like a ballad without the rhythm. (Read it out loud, you'll hear it). Despite its length, the story moves along quite quickly with some twists and humor.

Suggestions If this were mine, I would find those lines that throw off the rhythm a bit and make subtle changes such as "For what he’d said, had been uttered on a whim" changing to "For what he'd said, was uttered on a whim." Or to take it a step further. Bring this into real ballad mode and lose a few, change a few syllables and use the metric pattern of the true ballad.

The elements of the Ballad are:

1. a lyrical narrative, a story to be sung. The poet is the story teller.
2. stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains. Whatever it takes to tell the tale.
3. often composed in accentual verse with alternating lines with 4 stressed syllables and 3 stressed syllable. Some literary ballads are metrical, L1 and L3 written in iambic tetrameter, the L2 and L4 are iambic trimeter.
4. usually rhymed, either alternating rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef . . . . or staggered, sequential rhyme, xaxa xbxb, xcxc etc (x being unrhymed).
5. composed with the subject focused on a single, crucial episode. A stanza shows the audience a dramatic moment and then jumps to the next colorful moment without always supplying the connecting thoughts between stanzas. This is called "leaping and lingering".
6. dramatic, we are shown, not told the tale. It is common to hear a character speak from the poem, bringing the story alive

You have already checked almost all of the boxes.

This is your poem, I am merely showing you your writing through another's eyes. Use what you find helpful and ignore the rest.

Conclusion I enjoyed the trip, interesting, dramatic, and humorous.

~~Tink


My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .