  Poetry
This week: Edited by: Becky Simpson  
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One of the hardest things for us to do as a community is to give reviews. I am not talking about a three word "happy sailing" message, but an honest and useful review of another's work. I thought since December is the month of giving we ought to take a look at, and possibly even practice giving reviews. So, get your wrapping paper out and let's give some great reviews for some of our newest members, maybe setting a good example for them to begin their careers here on Writing.Com. After we take a peek at how we give reviews we will look at the best of the best in several categories from poetry posted here on Writing. We will do this so that we can understand why they are at the top of the list, and maybe figure out how to put our names up there instead. Along with that, I will provide you with this week's list of favorite poets. In closing I will answer the feedback from the last edition, listing the winners of the gift points. One last very important point, this newsletter is strictly opinion, my opinion, but it is the process I try to use to write reviews.Becky Simpson
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Reviewing is not a practice of revenge or retribution for some imagined or real snub or hurt you have gotten over one of your works. I say this, though at times I felt as if a reviewer were simply being malicious. NEVER allow this practice to become part of your thought process. Always be fair with your reviews; I often offer to re-review a work when the corrections have been made. For those who are reading this closely, copy this, because it is important. After you have given a review you may change it. Yes, I said you may change your rating. If you return to the work you will notice it shows you have already rated the item. You will see this just below the average of all reviews, on the upper right. Next to your rating you will see in brackets the red word clear. Click on this, and your old rating goes poof, then you can re-rate the work. Enough said, be courteous and encouraging. Now let's look at the process.
The first step in reviewing a work of poetry is to read it carefully. Earlier this year I gave you what I thought were good rules for reading poetry. Here they are again:
Reading the Poem:
a. Read a poem more than once.
b. Keep a dictionary by you and use it.
c. Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. Poetry is written to be heard: its meanings are conveyed through sound as well as through print. Every word is therefore important.
d. Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying.
e. Practice reading poems aloud. Ask yourself the following questions:
i. Who is the speaker and what is the occasion?
ii. What is the central purpose of the poem?
iii. By what means is the purpose of the poem achieved?
Now, if you have accomplished this, you are ready to write your review. I would suggest you keep a pencil and paper handy so you can jot down notes as you read. So, now we have the first step behind us, time to take another.
If this is what we call a newbie (someone with less than three months on site), take the time to welcome them on site. Don't be afraid of sounding goofy, you are making a genuine effort to be friendly. I would encourage you to be positive about Writing.Com; it is one of the best sites there is. I don't say this out of loyalty, but because I have seen others. It is easier to get reviewed and get help with your writing here on Writing.Com than any other site I have ever worked with. You might offer to allow them to ask you questions if they feel the need, or if your skill in a particular area is not strong enough to be helpful, suggest whom they might speak to. Remember being friendly is contagious, and if you have gotten a bad review, don't take it out on anybody.
I don't brag about things I have done; it would be wrong, but I am happy to say that Writing.Com helped me get published and to feel comfortable about getting published. With that goal in mind, it is time to take a look at the next step of reviewing.
Each poem has to be judged on its merits. What has the poet done right and what has he or she missed the mark on. This isn't some abstract idea. It's concrete and includes certain processes you as a reviewer should look at. Here is a list I have compiled for you to consider. They are in no particular order.
Spelling.
Punctuation.
Capitalization.
Poetic word usage.
Meter
Rhyming
Grammar and tense
Ability to get message across.
Flow
This is my list and of course not all poems fit into the mold. For instance free verse requires you to forget rhyme. Yet it can and should have the other components of poetry.
For us to go further I think it's necessary to provide a poem for us to work with. This is one I wrote which has been posted and has had the benefit of editing. I have added certain errors to emphasize some problems and give us a chance to identify the building blocks. So here I present "The Perfect Poem" for your edification. When we are finished, I hope the poem will take on a new form that can be posted. Here it is
The Perfect Poem
What indeed makes a poem prefect?
Is it form shaped by reflection,
or perhaps it is pure pleasure?
Maybe the meter is the measure,
That will make the poem perfection.
Oh, to create without defect!
Could be it is no lack of rhyme
Or yet, is it the voiced inflection
That brings us to poetic beauty
Think you know? Then do your duty:
Tell me what assures selection,
Of words that form a poem so fine.
For I do not know, that is true.
my fate could be to write in prose,
Yet poetry is where my heart beats.
Its beauty my rude skill cheats.
Still one desire in my hart grows:
To pen a perfect poem for you.
Have you read it? Looked up any words you didn't understand? Think you got the poet's meaning? Sometimes it is very difficult to do so when the poem is filled with distracting errors. Typically what I do is try to replace the errors as I go, making notes and re-reading each line as I fix it to be sure I haven't changed the poet's intent. It may be easier to take it stanza by stanza, but let's start with general comments in our review. So, in general what is wrong? We should try to take our list and apply it
Okay in general the things we should have spotted are:
Capitalization is not consistent.
The rhyme scheme fails in one spot.
Punctuation is missing in various places.
Flow – the odd rhyme scheme does not allow the poem to flow well.
Meter – check it
Others more astute than I may be able to point out additional errors, but these are the ones I think we should look at.
First let's talk about the flow. I don't know when I picked up or created, if you wish, this particular rhyme scheme "ABCCBA". It has taken me some time, but I have come to the conclusion that it is cumbersome to say the least. Please note that the indentation scheme used is supposed to accentuate the rhyme scheme as it places rhyming lines in effect on the same indentation. This is fine if you need to use it to point out your rhyme scheme. I am not sure that it should be necessary for you to identify the scheme for your readers. It should be readily apparent. How do we fix this? The only way is to re-write the poem using a different rhyme scheme that improves the choppy feeling of the poem. You could count off for the choppiness, but it might be hard to quantify how much should be taken off.
This poem has spelling errors in it. In case you didn't see them they are:
In line one prefect should be perfect.
In line seventeen hart should be heart.
Spelling errors are possible, occasionally, these are known as typos. A large number usually just represents a careless review by the author. Either way spelling errors should be noted and some points taken away. The larger the number of errors the larger the deduction of points.
Capitalization – It is a normally accepted practice to capitalize the first letter of each line. However, this is not written in stone, and it is possible that a poet may use a different scheme. Any scheme should respect the normally capitalized words, such a the beginning of a sentence, names of people, places, etc. In this poem our poet changes back and forth; note that in line three and line fourteen, the poet does not capitalize. We as reviewers should point the error out, encourage the poet to be consistent, and of course count off for the errors.
Rhyme scheme – If this were a free verse poem, there would be no rhyme scheme, but this poem does have a rhyme scheme. Earlier we said it was an odd scheme being ABCCBA. It seemed to add to the choppiness. We already suggested that the best fix is to re-write; however , in reviewing, that requires a lot of effort that is rarely appreciated. So for this review we simply note that the rhyme scheme fails when the poet tries using fine and rhyme on lines seven and twelve. If you're in doubt as to whether two words rhyme, you may check it on rhymezone.com. In any case, this failure in the rhyming should be considered when reviewing the work.
Punctuation - I have noticed that many of the poets on Writing.Com simply ignore punctuation all together. Their words flow in an unbroken frenzy until the end of the poem. I think that if we were to ask these poets to read their works aloud, they would pause in places, stop in others, and shout in still others. Our nation's top poet reflected upon the form of poetry and stated that he learned from an early age to punctuate his sentences. For him and many others, poetry without punctuation is not poetry. So if you're an upcoming poet, I encourage you to use punctuation, and if you're a reviewer, I encourage you to help where you can and subtract points for errors, especially if they are numerous. This poem has a couple of errors in punctuation:
Meter – Checking meter is perhaps one of the hardest things for me to do, and quite often I would say affects the poem on a level that most do not recognize. We had a discussion about meter in an earlier newsletter, but let's take a stanza of this poem and do some counting, first just counting syallables:
What indeed makes a poem prefect? – (9) Syllables
Is it form shaped by reflection, - (8) Syllables
or perhaps it is pure pleasure? – (8) Syllables
Maybe the meter is the measure, - (9) Syllables
That will make the poem perfection. – (8) Syllables
Oh, to create without defect! – (8) Syllables
A quick observation, if the syllable count changes, it should not be possible for the meter to remain constant. Now we need to look again at the meter long and short syllables arranged in a particular form, I will use "L" for long syallables and "S" for short syllables.
What indeed makes a poem prefect? LSLLSSSSL
Is it form shaped by reflection, SSLLSSLS
or perhaps it is pure pleasure? SSLSSLSL
We don't need to go any further the meter obviously does not remain constant. This is for me the most difficult part of poetry. I would encourage you to be careful about taking points away for it.
Okay those are all of the absolutes we can look at. Let's look at some things which are mere opinion such as, did the poet get their point across? If we read a poem and had no idea what the poet was talking about, the answer would be NO. If we read the poem and understand the majority of it, we should ask for help with the rest. We might not understand why they think a sky should be pink for instance. In any case you as the reviewer have to decide if the poet succeeds.
Poetry is written at many different levels, from a child's rhyme to an intricate balancing of words and images that challenge the wit of the brightest. Our poem as it stands is okay, but it isn't really great. It gets its message across, but does so as if we are riding in a truck hitting potholes. This I wouldn't suggest to the novice reviewer, but I think we should try re-writing the poem. Let's start by simplifying the rhyme scheme. We do this by moving the lines to our new desired scheme:
The Perfect Poem
What indeed makes a poem prefect?
Oh, to create without defect!
Is it form shaped by reflection,
That will make the poem perfection.
Maybe the meter is the measure,
or perhaps it is pure pleasure?
We move pure pleasure to the last line of the first stanza since because poetry is a pleasure for me, and I hope for those who read it.
Could be it is no lack of rhyme
Of words that form a poem so fine.
That brings us to poetic beauty
Think you know? Then do your duty:
Or yet, is it the voiced inflection
Tell me what assures selection,
Again we move two lines because we are asking a question and this does not happen in the last stanza.
Yet poetry is where my heart beats.
Its beauty my rude skill cheats.
My fate could be to write in prose,
Still one desire in my heart grows
To pen a perfect poem for you
For I do not know, that is true.
In the final stanza we have the punch line, as it were, our poet wants to write a perfect poem for the reader. So, we move these lines to the bottom and because the poem loses continuity we have to make the last stanza make sense. Notice I left the punctuation alone and we shall need to fix it.
Obviously this alone does not solve the problem. We now have to re-word our poem slightly for it to make sense.
And here our re-written poem:
The Perfect Poem
What indeed makes a poem perfect,
Its beauty created without defect?
Is it form shaped by deep reflection?
Can this make one's poem perfection?
We should not with meter measure
How simple poems give pure pleasure.
We shouldn't think its only rhyme
That makes a poem sublime
And brings us a poetic beauty.
Think you know? Then do your duty,
Tell me is it the voiced inflection
That assures a poem's selection?
Poetry is where my heart beats,
Yet its beauty my rude skill cheats.
My fate could be to write in prose,
Still one desire in my heart grows:
To pen a perfect poem for you,
This would be a dream come true.
Okay now we have worked out a poem that flows very nicely and has everything in the right place, so lets review. When reviewing remember these things:
Be respectful
Be Encouraging
Look for errors in:
Capitalization
Punctuation
Rhyme
Flow
Grammar and Tense
Poetic Voice
Spelling
Finally allow me to say that free verse poetry and many other forms do not necessarily follow all of these points. So judge the poetry you read on the points that apply and remember the greatest gauge of a poet's and a poem's success is how you feel about it. If you like it, tell the poet. I hope this helps our many reviewers.
And now a look at the best of the best. This poem is the highest rated poem on Writing.com. Tell me what you think your review and rating would be of this jewel written by Ann Ticipation 
"Shadows"
Shadows amused me when, often as a child
I'd laugh when it copied my waving hand,
I would not do that today, now I understand,
For I know better now, that shadows are wild.
They creep up behind like a silent dark beast
Stalking their prey, until suddenly they catch
A right moment, then they pounce and snatch
Their unsuspecting owner, devour, have a feast.
Shadows nowadays play out only in the sun,
They jump and skip, do everything to please,
They lull you into a false sense of relaxed ease,
How do I know this? I am behind you - I am one!
My fangs are sharpened, you're right to dread,
Your fate perhaps lies within my wicked grasp,
I can't wait until I lunge, grab and hear you gasp
Out a sobbed prayer, as I rip off your sweet head.
But wait, what's happening, I must go and play
For the golden sun is shining brightly in the sky
You're very lucky for now I'll hear another's cry
Yes, I think I'll choose a little girl to shadow today!
Things to note: No spelling errors, rhyme scheme is consistent, punctuation is okay has a couple problems, and the poem flows well. What do you think?
Tip of the Day: Imagery, flow, and presentation are keys to good poetry. I think John Ashen just finished a newsletter on imagery check it out.
Next month: Christmas poetry. I am always at your service.
Becky L Simpson
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The following members of Writing.Com are some of my favorite poets on Writing.Com. They exhibit and understanding and skill that, simply put, amaze me. I hope those I have forgotten will forgive me, but as time goes on and my memory prods, me this list will change.
Vivian 
reblackwell
Stormy Lady 
Theday
Tornado Day
wittyvixen
Ann Ticipation
SUGGESTED READINGS:
These are the remainder of the top ten poems and poets on Writing.Com. Check them out and see what makes their work good enough to make it into the top ten. I should note that some of these works are rated +18 so check them before you read them. I tried to simply list those that you yourselves thought were the best without regard to rating.
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CONTESTS:
The challenge for this edition is: Simply let me know is you have reviewed, send me a note and I will reward your review. For this contest there are 20,000 points for the reviewers to share.
The winners from last month:
jpfarris9
Mwrites
auteurpauvre
reblackwell
razpersonal
Mothermouse--come visit me
SaxonLass
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Poetry: November 30, 2005 Issue [#744]
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but you did leave the door open. Thank you for the smile. – Hugs Becky 