Hello scottdaniel ! I have just finished reading {item: } and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review
Hello! I found your poem on "Please Review" . One of the wishes you expressed wanting this poem to accomplish was to hit home with the reader and to inspire love in others. I think this poem does a pretty decent job at it! There are some really great parts where I found myself enthralled in the romance of the words. Although, I do think that there are some stanzas inside this poem that could be cut out. I've pointed them out down below.


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.
No problems with the grammar, punctuation or spelling in this! Great job!


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.
The rhyming never felt forced to me. I was waiting for it to fall apart or feel like you were trying to string words together, but it never felt that way and I really appreciated your word choices, which was another thing you were looking for feedback on. The reading level of this poem is lower, but that works perfectly well. It doesn't need to be overly complex and I think it would actually take away from the poem if you tried being any more fancy with it. This is simply bare bones love splayed out in poetry form. I loved it!


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.
I understand the purpose of the fourth and fifth stanza. It's to show turmoil so that it can be brought home in the last stanza of where you are finally at ease. However when first reading through it, these two stanzas didn't quite sit right. They read awkwardly because the structure of the stanzas changed up and it was a sudden thing. The line, "I want it all" is different from the rest of them where you use the formula of ____ and _____.

You might want to think about taking another look at those two stanzas to either make them so far detached and distinct that the stanzas themselves cause an unease in the reader, which will make them coming back home in the last stanza all the more amazing. Or, maybe you don't even need those two? What would the poem read like if those two weren't in there, I wonder. See if you'd like it better!


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)
My absolute favorite part of the poem was the last stanza. It really brings the rest of the poem home in a way I think you were truly going for. Finding that comfort after turmoil at whatever else is going on. Whether it be the turmoil of your day, turmoil of your emotions, this last stanza brings it home with just one simple line, "I am at ease." When coupled with what brought you to that ease, the romance the narrator has with the significant other, it's like finding home in the arms of the subject of this poem. Excellent work with wrapping it all together.

Overall Star Rating

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Structure and Presentation - I had to look up what a villanelle poem was and I have to say, you chose some pretty hard words to rhyme! But I think you did it very well. I think you did really well with the form. The difficulty of your rhyme scheme would have seemed like an impossible task, but the tone and voice of this poem really added to it. There's just something young and old school American Dream to this poem that I really liked. It really made me think of a young kid wanting to grow up to be a famous baseball player!

Topic and Theme - The title says it all. It's all about dreams! Dreaming about becoming a famous baseball player and seeing that dream morph into wanting to be a poet. This was just a really nice poem to read. I'm so glad you entered it in the contest.

Mechanics - I saw no errors. You did very well.

Contest Relevancy - Spot on with the contest! This month's theme was sports and I can't think of anything that embodies sports more than dreaming of becoming a famous baseball player!


Star Rating

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Hello Liam ! I have just finished reading "The Cobbler"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review

Overall I thought this poem was great! I love the structure of it and the inspiration you found in a poem by Robert Frost. I think you've done a great job with it. I do have some suggestions that I'll point out below, but overall I think you have a great poem here!


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I found no spelling, punctuation or grammar errors in this poem. Great job!


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

Structure - I love, love, love the structure of this poem. I had to go back and read it a couple of times, not really to get the structure, but to read it correctly so the rhyme scheme sounded natural. I always have to do that when a structure is unique or really complex like this one. But I loved it. I didn't think the rhyming felt forced except for in one spot, which I'll point out below. But other than that, I loved it.

Imagery - With a highly structure poem like this, its sometimes hard to fit in some imagery because you're so busy trying to get the words to sound natural together. But I think you did an excellent job. My favorite line of imagery was this:

His tiny hammer strikes a chime,

There were a couple of reasons I thought this line worked. Not only because of the word "tiny," (which admittedly made me giggle) but also because of the word "chime." You use different senses with your imagery. I can hear that tiny hammer hitting its chime! I can hear the small clink as he's striking away on his shoes.

Also I really enjoyed this line:

That sings the tale how wars are lost

This line sort of put me in the era that this poem is taking place. It puts the reader back into a time where horses were used for battle. Personally, I think of the civil war era. Now, you leave enough of it open for interpretation to the reader, but I just really enjoyed thinking of a civil war era cobbler pounding away on a horse shoe. It was a really good image, whether that's what you were going for or not.

Repetition - So many times when I'm reviewing, I point out needless repetition. I'm so glad to see a poem that uses repetition the way its supposed to. Your last two lines are great. Now, I'm not familiar with Robert Frost's poem that inspired this one, but I'm assuming that's where you got the idea from. Either way, whether it was your idea or not, I think it works great. It gives the reader the feel of all this work that needs to be done by the cobbler. "So many pairs of unshod feet," just really gets us inside the cobbler's head to where he sees all this work he has to do. It really works here.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

Forced Rhyme - Here's the one part I was talking about where I thought that the rhyming felt forced. And I think it's simply because of the structure and wording of the sentence it's in. It's in the second stanza there, this line:

Committed to the need to meet - I think the dual use of the word "to" is what makes it sound funny to me. Maybe look at changing it to something like, "Burdened by the neverending needs to meet" or something along those lines. the line just sounded funny to me the way it was written and I really would like for you to look it over and tighten this poem up, because I think you have something great here. But that's really the only place where I think this poem needs work. The rest of it works for me.


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

Overall, my favorite thing about this poem, is the setting. I like so much about this poem, I think it's amazing. But I like thinking of a cobbler sitting there with a ton of work to do. I like the way you use repetition to create a sense of overloaded work on the cobbler's shoulders. And I liked the rhyme scheme you used to help the flow of the story and tell the tale. You've done a great, great job! Just take a look at that one line and I think you could tighten this poem up a bit and make it wonderful!


Overall Star Rating

Write On!
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

Hello Raven ! I have just finished reading "Magdalen in Lent"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review

Overall, I really enjoyed this piece. I think being a PK (pastor's kid, haha) helped me to understand this poem a bit more because I grew up going to church and learning about the important events in the bible. I like how you don't just come out and say where they coincide, you leave it to the reader's own knowledge of these events to make this poem what it is.


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I saw no grammar, spelling or punctuation issues. The only thing that I would point out would be this line:

Imprinting crisp fruit with toothed mark - It just reads odd to me. Maybe because I'm so used to the phrase, "teeth marks" instead of "toothed mark." But other than this line, the rest of it flowed beautifully.

Also, I love that you capitalized the word "Heart" in the third stanza. That technique is one of my favorites when it personifies something that normally wouldn't be capitalized like that. Great choice to do so!


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

Biblical ties - I really enjoyed the biblical ties, like I said above. And you don't even come out and say this is what you're talking about. You just go with it and leave it to the reader to know the stories already (which most people who read this will know at least a couple of them.) For instance:

And so ashes, and death for forty days. - it took me a couple times to figure this line out, because I was thinking where the heck the ash and the forty days came into play. But then I realized they were two separate events form the bible, especially in the next stanza when you talk about stilling waves and storms.

That great Heart that shook the world by stopping - I really liked this line because it's reserved while at the same time being colorful and emotional. I say it's reserved becaues you don't just come out and say it's talking about the crucifixion. You leave it to the reader to make that tie.

Imagery - This poem has really good imagery in it. By playing off some of the better known stories in the bible, you're able to create pictures in your reader's minds without having to put a lot of effort into it. But even for people who don't know the stories, I believe this poem has a good amount of imagery on its own. I don't think people would get this poem if they weren't familiar with Mary Magdalen and how she tied in to all of this, but I do believe they would at least find the poem well written and colorful.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

There's not a whole lot about this poem that I would change. I would take a look at the line that I pointed out in the Mechanics section of this review. The "toothed mark" just reads funny to me for some reason. It's not that it's wrong or even bad, it just seems difficult to me. But honestly, that's really the only thing I could even suggest you change.


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

Like I've said before, my favorite thing about this poem is how many subtle ties to the bible you put in here. I'm glad that I know most of the stories that you refer to, because I really got the full meaning and backstory to this poem. Without it, I don't think I would have gotten it. I think you've done a beautiful job with this poem and it has great meaning and emotion. Great job!


Overall Star Rating

Write On!
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

Hello ShelleyA~13 years at WDC ! I have just finished reading "My Poetry Nook"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review

Shelley, I've got to tell you. I don't normally review folders, because I like to go over people's writing and how to make it better. But I just had to make an acception for this folder. I came to your portfolio by way of the SAJ group, so I wasn't sure what I would find to review. I clicked on this folder, seeing the (37 items) next to it and expected to be able to pick from 37 poems, which is still a lot. Oh man was I wrong! Your poetry collection is extensive and amazing! So I just had to comment on the folder that kept them all together!


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I saw no flaws with your punctuation, grammar or spelling in the body of your folder. Good job with this!


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

Here's what I love about this folder and what made me review this rather than one of your poems. You have your folders within this main folder separated into what type of poetry form you have stored inside. I love this idea. You have an extensive collection. By titling the individual folders after the poetry forms, not only did you pique my interest and let me know what to expect once I went inside, but you made me wonder what the heck a Tetractys was or what a Rispetto meant. This is great! This opens up for so much learning about different poetry forms, I just love it.

I also really loved the header you have at the top. Kiya is so good with images, I often go to her shop as well. It fits this perfectly because there really are so many options to choose from it's like looking into a library of poetry.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

These aren't really bad things, but they're things I'd like you to consider.

Uniformity - I think it would be great if the descriptions of your folders all fit the same uniform style. For instance, you have "Poetry Form: Triolet." I think they should all be like this. It would just make it seem more like these are all part of a collection. The description of your main poetry is great, and then when people come into this folder, it'd be great for them to know it's a form they're picking.

Body - I think you should add more to the body of your folder. You description already tells us this is a folder for different forms of poetry. You could add something more below where you link your merit badges. Perhaps you could even highlight a "poem of the week" where you post one of your poems there as a suggestion to people who come to this folder. Otherwise they'll be like me, too many folders to click, I don't know which one to choose first!


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

My favorite thing about this folder is the variety. There are 37 items to choose from and most of them are folders! You highlight different forms and it's great for someone who wants to learn about the different poetry styles out there. You deserve the ribbon you received for this folder because I think it's a great idea. Extremely well done!


Overall Star Rating

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My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

Hello kiyasama! I have just finished reading "Justice"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review
Overall, I enjoyed this poem. I hadn't been formerly aware of the Fibonacci poetry style, but it's simple enough to understand and you fit to the pattern easily. I like that you wrote this for a prompt on Justice, because it's a unique take on just the one word. You've done well with it!


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I saw no spelling, grammar or punctuation errors. I love poetry that uses it's natural flow or structure instead of punctuation to dictate the rhythm and flow of the words. So your lack of punctuation (aside from the first line) really scored great points with me!


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

Links - When you use a unique style like the Fibonacci, I'm always glad to see links where I can look up what the form is. I think a lot of people would come into this poem and if there weren't a link there, they'd tell you to break up the last line. It definitely sticks out there, but it fits the form.

Topic - The topic of the poem, though somewhat dark, was interesting and a good choice for the prompt you were given. Racism is something I just go through learning in depth in my Diversity in the Workplace class last semester. I watched a lot of videos from the Civil Rights Movement. I got to see through the videos the stories from both sides. Interviews with African Americans who went through it and interviews with Euro-Americans, from back in the time, and their thought process and how they convinced themselves it was right. Their logic was understandable, that's the scary part. They were so sound in it - but logic, in this case, would have to be overruled by compassion and, I hate this term, but common sense.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

Word Choice/Emotion - There were two lines where I thought your word choice could open up for some more imagery or interpretation. The first was this:

accusatory eyes upon - instead of using the word "accusatory," I think you could use a word that paints more of a picture. Like maybe an allegorical word that refers to someone famous who accused someone else of something. Maybe even take names from the Civil Rights movement itself. I know there was the famous case of Emmett Till. If you've never heard of him, here's an article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till

It would be great if you could incorporate someone from that time, maybe with an author's note at the bottom, into that one word. Maybe "Bryant eyes" or something like that, since the Bryants were involved with the following incidents. But these are just suggestions to liven up the word "accusatory" into something more provacative.

the Negro cursed with the - I was torn on whether or not you should just come out and say the word "Negro." I think I'd like it better if you made the reader work to understand this poem. Or, use something scandalous or derogatory. I might suggest "Boy." And it's not disrespect or anything, but it would provoke emotions and anger towards the way those times were back then. it would put powerful emotion into this poem.


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

My favorite thing about this poem is the last line. Or maybe the juxtaposition between the first word and the last word of the entire poem. Either way, I love this:

innocence denied by society where truth remains hidden in its system of injustice

It's great. And it turns your poem into a poem about injustice rather than justice, giving it even the slightest of little twists there at the end. Well done!


Overall Star Rating

Write On!
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

Hello aralls! I have just finished reading "Cavity"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review

Overall, I enjoyed this piece. Not only was the structure unique and fitting to the theme and meaning of the piece, but I found it to be a unique and strangely saddening. I related well to this piece, taking pills on a daily basis to help control my depression, I found a connection with this poem.


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I found no spelling, grammar or punctuation errors in this. I did question for a bit why you capitalized the word "Ancient," in your third stanza on the second line, but as I thought more and more about it, I found that I rather liked the idea of having that word capitalized. With a poem like this, where normal sentence formalities have sort of been tossed aside (capitalizing words, specifically) the author really has to take a look at why they're capitalizing words. It sticks out here and it took me a while, but I finally decided I like it.

It actually took me to look up the word "ancient" in the dictionary to try and see if it was normally capitalized or not. I found it wasn't, but I also found this definition:

the civilized peoples, nations, or cultures of antiquity, as the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and Egyptians (usually preceded by "the" ). - taken from Dictionary.com.

Whenever a single word is capitalized like that, I think of it as personifying the word in question. So you're personifying the word Ancient and when I relate it to the definition above, I realize that not only are you personifying the word, but you're personalizing it. It's not an ancient burial ground in regards to time, it's an Ancient burial ground, in regards to what's buried there. Your old memories. Your old self. Your old thoughts and feelings, all buried in the ground here. That's what made me really love it. So actually, it's brilliantly used there. Very well done.


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

I liked pretty much everything about this poem. But here are a few of the highlights that really stuck out to me:

Ability to Relate - My ability to relate to this poem was compounded by the fact that I take pills to manage depression. I have it under control now, but it hasn't always been so. I've been through the struggles of wondering why we are the way we are. Where did everything go wrong, why can't I be the person I was way back when. When did my mind betray me? It's relateable to this because in your poem, I just get the sense that anything happy or worthwhile is buried deep down, unable, leaving you hollow and empty. Thus the "cavity" of your brain. There's just a cave where you once were. It's really deep and not a lot of people will be able to relate the way people who suffer with brain disorders will.

Imagery - I really enjoyed the imagery. The cave images just kept coming and I'm glad that you did more with them than just say, "my mind is a cave. there are bats." You used those images and showed what they were doing and the images became metaphors for other things and it just wound and weaved back and forth. It's really well done. One of my favorite was this:

recreation for the naïve explorers confident - I gather that the explorers are the psychologists and the psychiatrists. The doctors trying to fix it, trying to make it go away. I have a concern about this line, though, that I'll express in the next section.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

The only place I would look at trying to reword would be the line I pointed out above:

recreation for the naïve explorers confident

The reason I want you to look at it is because all of the lines have a natural pause at the end if they had been written without line breaks except for this one. But this line requires you to read the next one to realize what it's saying and that sort of threw me because it threw off the flow of the poem. I would stick with your trend of inserting natural pauses in the line breaks and try to rework this line and the one following to both be able to stand on their own.


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

My absolute favorite thing about your poem is the thought that went into it. I'm not sure a lot of people will be able to relate to this the way I have, but coming from the days of being in that dark place and going to doctors and trying new meds to try and bring me up from the depression, this poem fits. It fits well. And the mind really is something we've not yet begun to explore fully, which makes your image of a cave all the more realistic and fitting. Well done.


Overall Star Rating

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My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

Hello nomlet ! I have just finished reading "King Tare"  and would like to take a moment to review your work! Please remember I am not by any means a professional writer or reader and these are just my opinions on how you could better your writing!

Overall Review

Overall, I think this story shows off great intelligence and writing skill. The mechanics of the story are all there and in place. I know this story was written with a rather low word limit, so I think you did a really good job meeting that challenge. However, I think the audience for this story is small and the plot and meaning of it will be lost on a lot of people.


Mechanics
This is where I go over your punctuation, grammar and spelling.

I saw no punctuation, grammar or spelling mistakes within your story. It's clear that you've gone through it with a fine tooth comb to pick out any flaws in this area. Well done with that.


The Good
This is where I go over what I enjoyed about your writing.

Voice - Any story told through first person point of view requires there to be a strong voice. I think this story has that. The voice is extremely strong. The langauge used in this story is what makes it that way - an extremely intelligent, scientific verbiage that sounds exactly the way a highly skilled geneticist would tell a story like this. So it fits.

Description - You do have some good moments of descriptive sentences in here. Here's one of my favorite:

Bodies had been coated with a sap which hardened to form a crystalline shell. - It's easy to picture this. It could have been elaborated into what the bodies looked like now - where they morbid? Frozen? Eternally positioned? So on and so forth. However, with the way this is written and the language that's being used, the bare bones description and straightfoward, lack of metaphors way to describe things really fits with the tone and feel of this piece.

Story/Plot Mechancis - I get an almost sarcastic tone from the main character towards the end. The tone really took a turn there in the end. It left room for a twist that fit the mechanics of a short, tiny story like this. So the story is all there, and it's interesting.


The Bad
This is where I go over what could use improvement in your writing.

Language - I think the biggest thing you'd want to look at with this story is the language. And I'm not talking about English vs. Spanish or cuss words or anything - I'm talking about the intelligence level of this piece. The advanced scientific language of this piece is really going to narrow down the audience to only a few people who are actually going to understand what's going on. I have to admit, I had trouble with this piece. I know nothing about genetics or geology or chemistry. I don't know really what happened in the end other than they found a species wiped out by a "meta-virus" which I can't honestly tell you what it is or what the significance is. Now, if I studied science and was familiar with the terms you used, I'd understand this piece and I know I'd get a kick out of it. But unfortunately, I'm not ashamed to say, it went way over my head.

An example of this would be this line:

Iridium complexes with an appropriate structure can efficiently catalyze the assembly of simple organic organisms—viruses, microbes—from scratch.

I know this is supposed to be a line that explains things, but it took me several times to read it to figure out what exactly it was saying. You're going to find people reading this and not understanding what's going on. It's intelligent to the point that you've really, really narrowed down who is going to be able to appreciate the story behind it. It's up to you to decide if it's a good or bad thing.


The Beautiful!
This is where I go over my favorite part of your writing! (Because who likes the ugly?)

I think my favorite thing about this story is the opening line.

I stepped through the portal and suddenly I was surrounded by an arc of stone effigies, ending with King Tare, the last of his line.

I usually judge whether or not I'm going to read something by reading the opening line. If it doesn't grab my attention or draw me in, I'll make that decision to move on to something that seems more exciting, before even getting to the body of the story. With your story, I was sucked in immediately. You set the scene in an interesting and blunt way - but it works! It draws your reader in because not only do you paint a unique and interesting picture, but you introduce something who is "the last of his line" and anyone would find something like that intriguing. So well done grabbing the attention of your reader right off the bat!


Overall Star Rating

Write On!
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .

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