Hello Amethyst Angel. I'm reviewing your poem Bohemian Ballad after seeing it entered in the WDC Media Challenge: Bohemian Rhapsody. You know your writing better than anyone, so please disregard any of my comments or suggest that don't fit with your idea of what you're trying to say through your poetry.


The Poem's Title: I'm not sure whether the title of this poem is meant to be funny, or intentionally silly. A ballad makes me think of a sentimental song or story that a troubadour might tell. And then the description or subtitle continues with, "Queen meets the limerick..." I could imagine somehow putting a fun twist on Bohemian Rhapsody and writing it into a silly limerick. That's not what this poem is, though. When I read it the first time, I didn't recognize it as a limerick. The rhyming pattern fits that of a limerick, so I can see why this distinction was made; however, limericks are traditionally meant to be humorous, and this poem lacks fun twists.


Rhythm/Repetition/Rhyme: The rhythm in each of the three stanzas are inconsistent. If you're going for a limerick, they're usually a five line poem (a single stanza) with a rhyming pattern of AABBA and a syllable structure of 8/8/5/5/8, 8/8/6/6/8, 9/9/6/6/9, or 9/9/7/7/9. If we look at this poem as three connected limericks, the syllable structures are good attempts, but don't there isn't the clean rhythm of a bouncy limerick. By my counts, the first stanza is 8/8/5/6/9, the second is 9/7/5/5/8, and the third is 9/8/4/5/8. If the syllables were cleaned up to be consistent within each individual stanza, it would be possible to read them with the expected stress/bounce of a limerick.


Theme: This poem does attempt to find common ground with the story told in Bohemian Rhapsody. The story it tells seems to be of a criminal who considers himself a tough guy who ends up double-crossed by the mob and is arrested. It is hard to tell who the criminal is, what he's trying to accomplish, and most importantly (to me) what it means for him when he loses to the law in the end. The character doesn't grapple with what he's done, though I don't really know what he has done, or why he says, "Mother Mary pray for my sinning." (Shouldn't he be praying to Mother Mary?)

          When poetry has a specific rhyming pattern, finding words that rhyme can sometimes distract an author from putting thought and energy into the whole of the poem. I think that might be what's happened here. It feels to me as if the rhymes were chosen and then phrases written to piece the rhymes together. The rhymes sound good if you read the poem aloud, but I find the poem lacking meaning to give it strength.


Layout: On a purely visual note, I'd recommend changing the font on the item here to one that is easier to read at a normal text size. I believe the current font is a display font that is meant to be used for titles which usually appear in much larger size and are therefore easier to read. If the idea in using that font was to create visual tension, perhaps using a regular text font in bold would be sufficient.

Wrap-Up: This was a good shot at writing a rhyming poem that follows a theme similar to Queen's rock anthem, Bohemian Rhapsody. Sometimes writing poems with short lines and tight rhymes are quite challenging, not because of the difficulty in finding rhymes but because of the tendency to let the rhyme take over the poem rather than add to it.


Thanks for sharing your writing with me and WdC, and great job getting involved in WDC-sponsored writing challenges! I hope you'll find something useful in the comments I've offered in this review. I wish you all the best on your writing journey. As always, write on!

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