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What Caught My Eye

I was looking through newbies to review, and I saw this poem. I like the imagery that your title implies... face half in shadow... stars and blankets and logs for seats. I figured I'd give it a read.

Favorite Aspects

I appreciate the general tone. It's sort of... drama and whimsy. Surprisingly effective.

Hook
In my reviews, I like to focus a bit on the opening line(s) of a poem. Sometimes, people forget that a good hook is as important for a poem as it is for a story. It might be more important, in fact. Given the length of a poem, the intro (that hook) is a considerable percentage of the piece as a whole. It needs to be both functional and interesting to serve its purposes.

The first line set me up for the internal rhyme scheme. Fire/desire. Except it wasn't repeated in the next line. That was a pretty fast disappointment. Set your rhyme scheme and roll with it.

Language / Word Choice

The word choice could be much stronger. There is a whole lot of repetition of ideas and enough repetition of word choice to be noticeable. Masks/mask in lines 2 and 3. We tell stories and share tales... same thing.

The message and intention here seems clear to me... it's just a matter of being intentional with your word choice now. That's what 2nd and 4th and 12th drafts are for, right?

Flow / Rhythm

The flow is alright. I tripped here and there. Setting it aside for a few months and then reading aloud would help.

Imagery

There wasn't much imagery here really. And it's such a clear image that brought me here. You could work some in pretty easily.

Originality

Honestly, most of this feels... familiar. Like I've heard the ideas before. And as writers, most have probably experienced something like this before. There is some room to be unique... but really... they say every story has been told. It's all in how you (re)tell it.

One Thing to Work On?
What one thing will make the biggest difference for this piece?

Tightening your phrasing and working on the word choice would help the most for sure.

Effect

This is a decent enough first draft. The fact that it's an unpolished first draft is reflected in my rating. Don't be disheartened... we all have first drafts. And we all choose to revise or not revise, depending on how strongly we feel about a piece. For what it's worth though, I think this could be pretty nice with a few extra minutes of revision.





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