Hey Darleen! I can't even remember the last time that I reviewed you. Possibly since you were a newbie... or near it. Well, okay, I know that I did an anniversary port-raid for you a year ago or something like that, but you know... real reviews? For writing? It has been a long time. So... I'm working on a challenge and need to review some members of "Fantasy and Science Fiction Society" . I might as well review some friends, hmm?


What Caught My Eye

I went to your poetry folders first because... well... you write poetry and I review poetry? I guess there's no real shock in any of that. I saw that you have a Fantasy/Supernatural folder, and since this is a FSFS challenge, I thought that was fitting.

Really, it's the form that caught my eye the most. Ballads. If I do write meter and form (very very VERY rare), ballads are as natural as breathing to me. If that rhythm is off at all, I'll hear it without even trying.

Favorite Aspects

The narrative moves along. I believe that I have only written one narrative ballad, but one was enough to know that it's not the easiest thing in the world.

Language / Word Choice

The use of "ye" is odd here. Using archaic language is difficult for modern writers because it seems to cause consistency issues. If you only use one or two instances of archaic language in a poem written with modern language, it doesn't work well. This one even makes reference to the modern a few lines later with "runs out of gas".

Flow / Rhythm

The rhythm here is very rough. It hits iambic here and there, but really, it isn't in meter. It fell apart on the second line, really. Though "Red-Eyes" doesn't really work for iambic anyway, and it's hard to get away from that, clearly. Here is just one example for you:

just as our hero had wished = ---'--'
Pieces of his dignity dropped = '-'-'--'
he was sure he'd be squished = --'--'

This is just one little chunk. Now, some of these are questionable whether someone would stress them or not, but regardless, they are not iambic. And since there is no guiding force to indicate where a reader should stress those simple monosyllabic words, the rhythm totally falls apart.

Let's just say that the rhythm is really not on point here. Since this is an old piece, perhaps it would be easy to fix knowing what you know now?

Technical / Grammar / Syntax

This is not an E-rated poem. I'll let you change that yourself.

The dialogue being unbolded seemed really weird to me. There is nothing wrong with using dialogue in poetry just as you would a story. Again, this might be something that you know now but didn't know then, hmmm?

Effect

Okay, so I'll go ahead and leave you with this. Really, the rhythm needs the most work if you intend to edit this sometime. You may or may not do that. I know that I don't have plans to revise many of my really old pieces from when I first joined. My style has progressed since then... and my interests have changed as well. But you know. I was here and had something to say, so why not review it?




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