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276
276
Rated: E | (3.0)
The tale is cute and fairly well told. Your respect of the iambic pentameter is remarkable and there are only two errors in your rhyming scheme : thud/disgust and yell/snail.

There are a lot of tiny details which account for my average rating.
I would stare at him from the meat kitchen I object to the use of "meat" for two reasons: it was the end word of your preceding line and in a butcher's shop, one may have several kitchens, I truly don't know, but a "meat" kitchen is a poor adjective to describe it.

He was tall and strong and had hair of gold
His walk and his talk and manner were bold{/c)
In two lines you have four times the word AND. Replace two of them with a comma and an ADJECTIVE. My example :
He was tall and strong, his hair of pure gold
His walk, his fast talk, his manner were bold.

In my opinion, between the stanzas "He lured..." and "I could barely breathe..." you need further explanation that you have fallen under the first boy's spell. To avoid further confusion, I would name both boys.

Because in the line "When I felt a tap, "Oh God, not Lester!" my first reaction was that the favored boy's name is Lester. This is clarified right afterwards, but I would still solidify the relationship with the favored boy with an added couplet.

I turned around and thus began to yell,
"Lester, how could you, you horrible snail!"
It is not clear why your reaction to Lester is so violent. Unncecessary repetition in "How could YOU, YOU.... " Why not write "How could you be such a horrible snail?"

"I'm trying to talk to the boy I love."
"Make him go away!"I prayed to God above
I would invert these two lines, as it seems that your first line is a continuation of what you are saying to Lester in the previous couplet.

I went to give him the whack of his life
When I fell upon the meat cutting knife
What was the butcher's knife doing on the floor next to the cash register? This simply doesn't make sense. If you had really fallen, your gesture of wanting to slap Lester would not have been taken into account and both boys should normally have run to your aid. This, in my opinion, is a major error in the dramatic structure of the story because as your text stands now, it is impossible to follow your train of creative thought.

So I lost the love of my sweet young life
No boy in the land will make me his wife
What happened to Lester's undying love? Was he too running in disgust? If so, this needs to be clear in your text -- that your awkward fall made BOTH boys flee. I also find it hard to believe that everyone would run from a woman who had a nasty accident in a butcher's shop. To me, this is not good character psychology. Now, if she had tried to take the butcher's knife to give Lester a lesson and, in tripping, cut her own finger off instead, this would be plausible for her end as an old maid. But you have not told us this, and with what you have told us, I honestly cannot follow your logic to the end of the poem.

Once again I would invert the stanzas "Just look at me..." and "Don't let a mere..." Doing so gives you three related stanzas to close the poem.

Stick to your mother and a dull meat blade DULL is definitely the wrong adjective - that was the blade sharp enough to cut off the finger, don't forget what you've written previously for every detail must support the others.

You have undertaken an ambitious project with a narrative poem in rhyming iambic pentameter. In my opinion, it is not long enough because for the story to be coherent you cannot take short cuts and leave out details, counting on your reader to fill in the blanks.

Keep up the good work
alfred
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .
277
277
Review of Roses and Ash  
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
The story is well told, tender and moving.
I miss the middle years. You gloss over them, briefly and in an uninteresting way, where a bit pore "poetry" would be welcome.

In the line:
"Every moment in those memories, every high ecstatic point" I feel that the word "high" is one too many. Ecstatic is a forceful word which doesn't really need further qualification.

Your line "Feelings don't die that easily.'" is unfortunately trite and sticks out like a sore thumb in this beautiful poem. I would never classify love, or even lust, as simple "feelings". But that's just my opinion.

I am not sure that your final line:
"An apt ending to a life entwined." is necessary and above all merits a new stanza. The word "apt" is, once again, trite. The wrong adjective, if you keep the line as it reads.

A few more changes and you'll have a tighter poem with no loose threads.

Keep up the good work!
alfred
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .
278
278
Review of Heart To Pilot  
Rated: E | (4.0)
Man's obsession with machines. A man frequently doesn't need a woman (or another man) if the object of his desire is a car, a boat or a plane.

I would take something from your poem as a title - "in a hangar"might be interesting or "mechanical love at first sight" which might not be what you want to say up front through a title.

A very interesting poem, well written and just evasive enough so that we think you just might be drawing a parallel between the plane and another human being.

Write on!
alfred
279
279
Review of Scripted  
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Ah, punctuation. It's the necessary element in making yourself understood when writiing fiction, letters and term papers. And a devil in poetry.

I object to :
" deliver us
         revelation.
         Fate twists"
"Deliver us revelation" doesn't mean anything. "Deliver revelation to us" is another thing all together.
I personally would have written
"Deliver us --
revelation."
Another possibility would have been:
"Deliver us,
revelation,
Fate twists."

As you see, where the punctuation forces us to stop, the meaning is slightly altered. This is one of the major reasons I let my ends of lines be my punctuation, giving the freedom to the reader to join or not the lines which do or do not obviously belong together.

Every poet should write this kind of poem on a daily basis. One learns so much from a change of organisation of the words on the page.

A great idea.
Keep writing!
alfred
280
280
Review of Al & Old Major  
Rated: E | (5.0)
Excellent!
Your rhyming scheme holds up perfectly for the length of the poem. There is definitely a story which has a beginning, middle and end, and you do it through poetry. Your language is clear and precise and perfectly assorted to the story you have told.
Bravo!
Keep writing
alfred
281
281
Rated: E | (4.5)
What's here is well written, witty and I like it.
In my opinion it lacks a stanza in the place of the second. After the second stanza, I anticipated a mono-rhyme piece in the third stanza and didn't get it. So, in order to break that expectation, try adding an intermediary stanza to break the mono-rhyme of the beginning.
And a last little detail - your poem ends with a question which, because you properly puncutate elsewhere, needs that famous "?" !!!
Otherwise, a great, fun read.
alfred
282
282
Review of Depression  
Rated: E | (3.5)
You capture one element of depression well. Your opening lines are the most poetic of them all.

I am not sure of the spelling in the word enveloping - there are either two "l"s or two "p"s. You need to use a spell-checker.

The three lines:
"Let me wallow .
Dank pit of despair
Taking over my thoughts." would be better combined to read "let me wallow / IN THE dank pit of despair / taking over my thoughts."
Or another choice would be : Let me wallow. / A dank pit of despair / TAKES over my thoughts.
With the exception of the two initial lines, you have used complete sentences, subject plus verb. I would try to respect that formula.

The line "I want left here alone." doesn't make sense. You have left out "I want TO BE left here alone." Even this is awkward because of the word "here."

It's a pity you didn't spend more time proofing. If you do not take the time to correctly write your thoughts, why should a reader take his time trying to figure out what you mean?

Keep writing,
alfred
283
283
Rated: E | (3.0)
There are many poems about friendship, all of them express the inner feelings of the poet. Your poem is no exception.

But there are needles grammatical errors here :
"Gives you so unselfishly" --> gives TO you.
"Who, by you is so dearly treasure". This line makes no sense. Do you mean "treasurED" ? Even so, the line is not clearly expressed.

Every writer, whether writing fiction, poetry or a term paper, has the obligation to clearly express his thoughts. If you do not take the time to proof-read and to make sure you have used the proper words to express your ideas clearly, how can you expect a reader to stop and try and figure out what you're trying to say when it's improperly phrased?

Keep writing and never forget that if you do not quickly hook your reader, you take the chance of losing his interest.

alfred
284
284
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
To answer your question at the beginning, yes, I think I would turn the page and read on. But I also feel that this is just a first draft.

(My iBook has problems lately with apostrophes - I have not corrected the question marks they leave which is why your text appears strangely in the following exerpts.)

However there are silly errors in the beginning.
1)"It seemed like they had been struggling for hours, what had only been minutes." WHAT is an improper use of the word; you need a simple "IT had only been minutes."

2)"He thought he might go for the shore one more time..." I would not use the pronoun, but be more specific - "The boy" or "The man."

3)" She?d always been such pain in the ass," --> "such A pain in the ass."

4)"As her lungs began to burn, then she felt it couldn?t end quickly enough." THEN is superfluous.

5)"The brain confused and begging for air, any air, but found only water." The brain (comma), confused and begging for air, found only water. The repetition adds nothing; nor does the word "but".

6) "Her hands madly clawed toward the surface, searching for something concrete to anchor onto. Anything to deliver her body from such a hellish end, but the water merely slipped through her fingers as her body continued its downward spiral." The phrase "anything to deliver....hellish end" belongs to the sentence before it. You need to do a rewrite here.

7) "An enormous full moon shined radiantly..."Here you are starting the second section of your introduction and you need something visual to seperate it from the death of the swimmers. I also think you need to finish that part of the introduction and make it clear that they do indeed succumb to the waters. And if they are to be miraculously saved later in the book, some trailing doubt needs to be established.

I am not sure that the verb "shined" is correct. I would have written "shone" and then consulted my dictionary. I'll leave that work for you.

There are several other spots of this nature in the rest of your introduction which need attention.
A writer spends just as much time proofing his work for silly mistakes as he does finding the words to be put together one behind the other.
We owe our readers the cleanest copy that we are humanly capable of creating, so that he has no reason to be interrupted in his pleasure.

As I am not a fiction writer, I will not proffer the comments I have concerning the way you have laid out the information in front of us. There are others more qualified for that type of work.

alfred
285
285
Review of SONG OF SILENT  
Rated: E | (2.5)
You have a few nice ideas in this poem. Unfortunately, you have problems expressing them.

It's always admirable that people write poetry in a language which is not their mother tongue. I speak from the following experience : for 26 years now I've been living in France, writing and speaking fluently in French, not my native language. Whenever I have an important text to write in French, I ALWAYS have it checked for silly mistakes by a native speaker.

You must absolutely learn to do this also, for your own education and above all for the reading comfort of those desiring to learn what you have to say about life.

Your title and the first line of your poem are not written in good English. There are two or three other errors which need to be corrected.
286
286
Rated: 13+ | (2.0)
The presentation here is prose like, not poetry. And since you have used that form, your sentences must be clearer.

With the passings of time comes the bringings of another beginning
is filled with errors. Poetically, passings does not really exist. It is awkward. If you keep it, out of poetic liscence, you MUST use COME instead of comes as the verb. Poetry does not mean we forget about conjugation. Bringings is not good English, poetic or not.

Going about unaware to what matters most - the proper conjunction is OF, not to.

peices of the puzzle - pIEces is the correct spelling.

{c:rose)I go hour to hour and minute to minute oes not work. The correct conjunctions are BY and your play on words adds nothing to the proper sense of the words, so why provoke the reader with poor English? Is does not help us to WANT to follow you in your troubled path. There is nothing wrong with a troubled path, but the responsibility of a good writer is to guide us on the proper path to interpretation; too much vagueness will only lose the average reader.

realization is what completes it. does not complete the beginning of your phrase, since you have chosen prose. IT remains too vague.
{c:rose)A DELICATE FLOWER............SPROUT.

...................................GROW...then slowly rot
Even in your suspended phrase, we are free to imagine other items in the plural, but you have only listed a single flower, so your three verbs must be in the singular : sproutS, growS and rotS. You have no choice.

We all have our reactionary tendancies, there is absolutely nothing wrong in expressing them. But if you want to learn to become a writer, you have to first be able to show your readers (and future editors) that you know how to PROPERLY manage the language you have chosen to use, (I write fluently in French and English myself) before breaking the rules. There have to be excellent reasons for a young writer to break the rules, and those reasons must be extremely limpid for ANY reader happening upon your writing - not just the select few who somehow automatically follow your wanderings.
alfred booth
287
287
Review of Beloved  
Rated: E | (3.5)
There are many beautiful phrases in this long poem.

I have often been criticized myself for lengthy lines. Yours are enormous and detract from the ease of our reading experience.

When I have an idea I do not want to cut up, this is one of the ways I deal with it:
Your fierce eyes send me tumbling to depths unknown -
         merely a glimpse of what lies beneath

To me the indentation keeps these words unified, where as continuing on a second line gives them a different importance.

You may want to think about this approach to overly long lines.

A lovely read all in all,

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288
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Review of Sacred Ground  
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
With tears in his eyes, the troubadour tells you that last month he lost his grandmother to old age. That he lives far away and couldn't be there to hold her hand. That she did not choose to be buried and that there will be no place he can go to in order to cry on the permanance of love inscribed on a marble tombstone.

You have given me a piece of my mourning, for which I am very grateful.

You write beautifully yet simply and the words have an extraordinary power which grasps the reader and doesn't let go.

Thank you for this marvelous story

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289
Review of Pedro's Boy  
Rated: E | (5.0)
I maybe should not have read this poem today, I didn't really need another bout of tears, but once again your art as a poetic portrait artist is extraordinary. You say so much in so little space and we are immediately drawn in to the picture and our empathy is total.

Thank you so much for this beautiful poem.

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290
290
Rated: E | (5.0)
Although I'm not a conventionally religious person, this is a wonderful prayer to God. It is simply written and you use discreet images to show us what you are hinting at instead of telling us "I have a whole bunch of God in my soul."

One tiny detail. IN your second line you say
"When the moon IS full." I think you need to keep this in the past tense, "when the moon WAS full."

You have written an excellent suggestive work. You show instead of tell. This is the type of poetry you should aspire to write more often.

Thank you for this poem,

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291
291
Review of Josephine  
Rated: E | (4.0)
You beautifully paint two pictures : one of yourself and one of Josephine. Both are tender and loving; both are still full of life; both will remain connected through the simple bond called love.
Bravo.
alfred
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Review of So Simple  
Rated: E | (5.0)
Dear fynix,

I feel very small next to this poem. It is a masterpiece of praise to the love which keeps a relationship going. You write well, your images are superb and your poem grabs a hold of me and doesn't let go. I will certainly place it in my Favorites list.

I particularly like the stanza in the forest. "Be a deer..." and I thought "oops spelling error" until I got to the end of it and realized the scope of your genious.

My poem "a thousand paper birds" just won the contest we both entered.

For me, I have a long way to go before writing like you have done here with "so simple, really."

A thousand thanks for your talent

alfred
293
293
Review of Winter Venture  
Rated: E | (4.5)
Dear Creative Person,

(I've written 754 words, you may want to print this out.)

My first reading of this poem was rapid, on line. I realized that if I were to send a critic I would have to spend some time with it, so I copied it onto my machine - never fear, it will be erased when I send this to you. I will wait until you're a published author (if it's not yet the case) and can purchase a copy of this poem.

My second reading was in a calm atmosphere, and I was completely in tears at the end of it. My first words to myself were "God, why can't I write like this!?"

Your poem is excellent. The drama is well drawn out, your imagery is creative, your choice of vocabulary excellent and your mastery of the sistera style is impressive. After several readings, I am convinced that there are no wrong words, no words too weak for their context and that is a huge achievement, given the sistera style you have used.

It is an excellent poem, when read. If it were only a text, as a novel or article, to be read, I would easily have given you a 5-plus rating.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, poetry is also meant to be recited, and here is the rub. As a professional musician, I am extremely conscious of poetic rhythm and when it comes up lacking, it always makes me say "that's too bad. With a tiny bit more work, the problem could probably have been solved, or at best glossed over." In my opinion I'm not sure that by using your wrap-around lines where one sentence finishes and another starts in the same line respects the rhythm one wants to ideally establish.

If I take the example of the fourth stanza third and fourth lines : "still of weakened bones, aching now with more than cold. Still we ice/slide back towards…" There are several problems here which can or cannot be resolved. The second sentence starting at the end of the phrase and leaving us at the end of the line with the word "ice" forces us to read the following line immediately in order to understand your new verb "ice slide". Thus altering the rhythm of the reciting. "Ice slide" is a lovely creation and I certainly understand why you wanted to include it. (I'm all for inventing new words and do so all the time.) I myself would have saved the innovation for another poem and written at the end "since, on ice/we slide back towards…" which better finishes the line, giving it more rhythmic stability and by doing so I haven't changed the syllable count if you are ultra-sensitive about that. Try reading it out loud and I think you'll follow me.

The other examples of this overlapping and the disruption in the rhythm you'll easily find. Along the same lines, in the second sestina, you have overlapping between the stanzas (2 to 3, 3 to 4 and 5 to 6) which mean that they don't stand on their own and must be immediately relayed to their neighbor.

Here again, I am completely aware of the problem one has in telling a story, not making too many compromises concerning the way it unfolds and the need to remain within the structure. I think you have probably made the correct choices, but as you have placed your poem into the Auto Rewarding Items, I feel as though I may voice this slight objection.

We all make sacrifices when using structured forms - unless we are doing so for a class or contest when the use of form itself is the focal point for judging. It is true that I use free verse 75 percent of the time because I don't like my ideas, my stories, my emotions being restrained by the imperious need to stick to form.

I personally like the use of structured form, I experiment all the time. But through my own writing experience these pieces are rarely my best; they too often tax my creativity and keep it from flowing naturally. There is nothing more beautiful than a Shakespeare Sonnet; yet at the same time one can't help but see the architecture behind it's construction. Which for me, personally, lessens my attachment to it as a work of art.

The upshot is that you have written an excellent piece of literature. I am privileged to have read it and will look forward to discovering even more of your talent.

Sincerely, and with much gratitude,
alfred booth
alfredbpiano@infonie.fr (my private e-mail)
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