Hello Marci Missing Everyone ! I'm reviewing "Invalid Item"  today as part of your Nuclear package from "Invalid Item" !

Title:

I love the almost oxymoronic nature of the title - a poem about a prose challenge. I actually misread the title the first time and thought it was Ode to NaPoWriMo I think I was just harking back to my own creation during troubled times "Invalid Item" .

Form:

I love reading and writing in the various Celtic poetry forms and although I haven't written a poem in this form yet, it is one of my favourites. I particularly enjoy the variation that it brings to the basic sestet form and the fact that the rhyme scheme is split up and not line by line.

What I especially love with what you have accomplished with this form is the almost limerick-like reading pattern that develops with the first four lines of stanzas one, two and four. Granted I haven't read hundreds of poems in this form, but with those that I have read that limerickal pattern seems almost to never be present (similar to stanza three).

You have included links and an explanation of your form at the bottom of the poem and I like this. This is really beneficial to people who may not have come across this form before, or those who might think you've just tripped off the line and gone to town on a limerick or four .

Your poem conforms to the stanza layout, syllable count, and rhyme scheme of the form. Yes, I counted your syllables just to make sure .

General impressions:

I love the poem. You extol what authors hope to accomplish during National Novel Writing Month, and you remind us of all of the things that get in the way.

It is easy to empathise with your narrator's struggle, even if the reader hasn't taken part in NaNo before. Many of the things that interfere with your narrator's NaNoWriMo aspirations, are things that commonly interfere with our normal lives - the fact we have to eat and sleep, and that we always have competing tasks.

Favourite parts:

I love the use of near-rhyme in stanza three with nature/creature and fear/here's. This is something that I still haven't yet experimented with in poetry and I do keep on meaning to, but something constantly stops me.

There is also your narrator slacking off from churning out those NaNo words by writing a poem ! The sacrilege of it. You want to write poetry, you wait until April !

Favourite quotes:


This is very true of NaNo (and the same can be said of NaPo as well). We all set out with our sights on that word counter waiting for that magic 50000 words to appear. For some of us that can be a very lofty goal, and for others (those NaNo experts out there) it can be an easily achievable goal.



Yeah. Been there and done that. Last year I ended up failing miserably and had to bust out 15K words in the last week of NaNo just to reach 50K

Closing remarks:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your poem Marci, and it is very deserving of the Awardicon that graces it.

It's not very often that I come across a poem that I enjoy enough to re-read it, but this is one that will go on my re-read list. That in of itself is an achievement .

Thank you for sharing this item! Please keep on writing!


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