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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/drszioli
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7 Public Reviews Given
300 Total Reviews Given
Review Style
I offer critical reviews that are nevertheless constructive. I'll review anything, but poetry and short fiction are my strong suit. My focus is on organization and structure, though I will likely comment on some line-level edits. Any piece of writing is primarily a piece of organized information, so before you can even get into aesthetics, you have to start with a solid foundation. Style will be the final, least accentuated part of my reviews. A well-executed piece gets 3.5 stars or above. A piece that succeeds fully on its own terms, so to speak, earns 5 stars. You don't have to be Hemingway to write something that is perfect for what it is.
I'm good at...
Thorough editing in all facets. I take writing and make it perfect. I try to strike a balance between my own preferences and the style of the author, and I try to take every piece seriously.
Favorite Genres
Hard sci-fi, short poetry; the absurd.
I will not review...
Erotica. I swear I'm not turning my nose up at you; I always look like this.
Public Reviews
1
1
Review by Sz, the Poet
Rated: E | (4.0)
This is an excellent poem that I feel could be formatted better. To start, let me make some punctuation and spacing suggestions:

Drifting balls of cotton, shining lustrous white,
glide across the skyline, almost dreamlike.

When in gloom, they don a dark coat of grey,
breaking into oceans of tears when the sun is far away.

In mirth and gaiety, the blue canvas is awash
with streaks of pink and purple, floating

like strands of candy floss.


The second thing I want to touch on is the second stanza. This stanza feels off-balance due to the repetition of the word "when." The word "when" associates the sentence with a certain setting in time. However, the second stanza is a single sentence marked with two different time settings by two appearances of the word "when." To streamline this, remove one iteration of the word "then," or split the sentence into two actions that happen at separate times.

Overall: I find that the fatal flaw in every mediocre poem is that the poem simply doesn't accomplish anything. Your poem stands head and shoulders above mediocrity, because it does accomplish something -- in the way that you summon the image of cotton balls in the mind of the viewer before metaphorically turning the cotton balls into cotton candy. The sensory experience of watching a changing sky is mirrored by the sensory experience of reading the poem. A very strong piece.


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
2
2
Review of The Why's  
Review by Sz, the Poet
Rated: E | (3.5)
Take this all with a grain of salt: I'm a poet with a very idiosyncratic theory of poetry. I have my own method. You have yours, and it can never truly be the same method, no matter how much I try to impose on you. Ultimately, this is your style.

That being said, I view poetry as a way of taking aesthetic-sounding words and arranging them in a visually aesthetic way. Something like decorating a Christmas tree, if you're into that kind of thing. The selection of the decorations matters, but on a grander scale, the arrangement of those decorations is how you achieve your overall creative effect.

So, on the grander scale, I think you should take a look at your formatting choices. I personally would not capitalize each line, since the lines, though broken, form a single grammatical thought. I also would consider shifting the question marks to the end of each sentence, or inserting a long dash to indicate a break in the thought. For example, the section below...

"Why lie when you can lay?
Lay with a soul
Who’d hang the stars for you
Everyday."

... might be formatted to look like this, which I find more elegant:

"Why lie when you can lay;
lay with a soul
who’d hang the stars for you
everyday?"

Alternately, this is an option:

"Why lie when you can lay?⁠⁠—
⁠lay with a soul
who’d hang the stars for you
everyday."

Other formatting ideas to throw out are...

1. You can format the first line as

I’ve got a case of the "why"s again,
so bless your souls, but why?

OR

I've got a case of the "whys" again,
so bless your soul, but why?

OR

I've got a case of "the whys" again,
so bless your soul, but why?

2. Note the change in the number of lines per stanza. Is this intentional? You could go back and re-work the poem so that each stanza has a uniform number of lines. Or, you could keep it wabi-sabi.

3. Note the change in the rhyme scheme. Most stanzas rhyme on "-ay," but not all. Consider making this uniform.

Overall: I found this to be a solid poem. The poem has a strong foundation in that it has a rhetorical repetition that drives it. The length of the poem makes sense, as it is enough to explore that foundation without building on it in a cumbersome fashion that risks collapse. Polished, this poem could be brought up to "the next level."

Write on!

Sz


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