Hi Carly. Judy Brown's poem, "The Trough", was just what a lot of people need right now, with so much worry and even panic with our current situation. Your analysis of it was dead on and your own poem, "Just Breathe", was a very well written and excellent companion poem to Judy Brown's. I couldn't agree more (with both of you) that this is not the time to panic, but to stay calm, think things through and do whatever we can to help. Thanks for that reminder. - Jay
This is a very interesting philosophical question that I think you handled quite well. There are only a couple of issues I see. First, saying that the odds of entering the world as a human are 400,000,000,000,000 to 1 seems like a random statistic. I can't tell from the text what the basis is for that number. Secondly, the sentence "I’ve never really given it a lot of thought before, it could be a question you may ask yourself in the dead of night." appears to be two complete sentences separated by a comma. Maybe the comma could be replaced by "but" or "though" Overall, this an excellent and thought-provoking piece.
This is a beautifully written poem capturing every detail of the picture. I especially liked the many references to food (marmalade, honey, tangerine, meringue) though it made me a little hungry! The only issue I noticed was with the tense of one verb. Everything is in present tense (dance, encircles, stand, etc.) until you get to the past tense "guided", then it goes back to present tense. Very well done. - Jay
Hi, bas. This was a very interesting story about perseverance. It's the old idea of falling off the horse and getting back on right away, but with a nice application to a tennis player falsely accused of fixing his matches. While there were some sentences that were a bit long with lots of commas making them difficult to follow, there were not many technical issues. In the first sentence, the word "seemed" should be "seem". Also, the phrase "workers of the ground" seems a bit awkward. Perhaps "groundskeepers" would be better. Overall, this was a very nice story. I especially liked the title, "Rebound", which accurately summarized the story using a tennis term. Keep on writing! - Jay
Thanks for a very nice poem, Tinker. The form was perfect with 2 tercets with 8 syllables in lines 1 and 2 of each and 14 in line 3 of each. The iambic tetrameter in Line 1 of each tercet gave it a nice balance. There were some very good word choices clearly speaking of beauty in an otherwise cold and dark place and the second tercet was filled with religious imagery using stigma, grace, testament and sacrament. Nice job!
I don't have much experience with poetry in general and even less with free verse, but at the direction of "I Write 2020", I'm dipping my toe in new waters with this review.
As there is no rhyme or meter, there is nothing to critique on those points. I saw no spelling errors and grammar is mostly meaningless in something like this. This is clearly poetry, given the word usage and metaphors throughout. I have seen some "free verse" that was simply prose broken up into lines to make it look like poetry, but this is definitely much more. I learned in a poetry course many years ago, that poetry is more about feeling than about meaning, so I will tell you that what I feel in this piece are things like "apprehension", "uncertainty", "pain" and "disappointment". Rather dark, as I'm sure it was intended, so great job!
Hi, Mastiff! Well it looks like I reviewed the wrong entry for the "I Write 2020" contest, the right one being this one, so here goes.
This is a good story with plenty of action, excitement and emotion. If this were written for a hockey magazine, there would only be a few spelling/grammatical issues that I'll get to shortly. For those who know very little about hockey, though, there seem to be a lot of technical terms that are not clear. It wasn't until the second paragraph, that I realized that the speaker is on the team. But terms like "dasher", "redline", "blueline" and "twine" were lost on me. However, those things did not detract from the overall story and I felt myself caught up in the excitement as the team went on to win the big game!
The first issue I had may be just a personal thing.The fourth sentence begins with "None of us" and the next sentence starts with "All of us" which for some reason caught my eye. Maybe the second sentence could start with "We all" to avoid the repetitive sound.
In the third paragraph, the tense changed from past to present and back to past with "dropped", "slide", "bounces", "hit" and "rebounded".
Also in the third paragraph, the word "past" should be "passed".
Thanks for this story, Mastiff. I don't watch sports much, but I do like a good game and this was a good one!
Good story, D.Nic. It flowed very nicely with some subtle hints about the surprise ending, but no obvious giveaways. In, fact, I didn't really notice the hints until the second read. There was only one minor detail that I noticed. The entire piece is written in past tense, except for "I've got a mix of all three." For consistency, that could have been "I had a mix of all three."
Again, a really good story. That can be hard to do in flash fiction! - bluejay
This is an interesting, small piece of fiction/philosophy which at times is even poetic. The message is clear, being the importance of duty and that independence is not freedom from responsibility. I am a little confused by the use of "d" in place of "the" and did not understand "undermined d importance of its claim at its rights at day."
Overall, though, well done. Keep on writing!
Hi, Maolla. I enjoyed your story and, though it is a little unusual, I wouldn't call it weird. For someone who is not a "native speaker" your use of English is very good. Here are some comments about your story from my American English point of view:
I think it would be better to use double quotation marks (") for your dialog.
The story has the tone of a "fairy tale" that might have been written hundreds of years ago to teach some lesson to children. Your use of phrases like "Once upon a time", "the Boy", "the Mother" all make it feel that way. I kind of like that, so great job if that's what you were going for, although the capitalizing of so many words throughout the story seems a little odd.
When I read that the boy was walking down a street, I was surprised that it was right in front of his house, since he found the apple near the neighboring garden.
When you say that his mother "spent the whole evening washing the dishes..." it sounded like she did that after saying "What is it" and before sitting down. Might be better to say she "had spent". Also 'have some rest" is a little strange sounding". Maybe "sat down to rest." would be better.
When his mother says "They can't be blue" that seems to refer to all apples. It might be better to say "it can't be blue".
"He noticed a crowd of people nearby, they were arguing about something." This should be two sentences with a period after "nearby" and a capital "T" for "They" or better yet "...people nearby who were arguing..."
After identifying "a man in a grey suit" the next reference should be "the man in the grey suit".
"What a nonsense!" should be "What nonsense!"
I've never heard anyone call their children "darling" but mybe that's just the places I've lived. Also "A man to be!" is not an expression I've ever heard - again maybe just where I've lived.
Again as a fairy tale, I was kind of expecting some kind of moral or lesson at the end. Maybe something about adults taking the wonder and excitement away from children because they are "too busy". Or maybe that's clear enough in the story.
Anyway, I really liked the story and hope you keep on writing!
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