SCRIPTURIENT REVIEWS | OPEN

❄ MORTAL LOVE | SILVER ❄

Reviewer: PeterPan2210
Reviewee: Frenzyy08
Poetry reviewed: Mortal love
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                Overall comments:
I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it because there were too many flaws for it to even be deemed imperfectly perfect. The poet could definitely work a bit more on the structuring and let loose this tight band of restricting rhyme scheme that they're enforcing on their work.
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Title:
5/10
Your poem doesn’t exactly talk about love. Mortal love sounds like you’re going to be talking about love that dies, something about how love isn’t eternal and stuff like that.

But your topics are wide and spread out, which is why your title also needs to be a bit more generalized. Something like, “3'am thoughts" or “bleeding hearts" or “Thinking out loud" (yes, that was a song reference but it can also serve as a good title tbh)

Cover:
6/10
Didn’t like it. Isn’t aesthetically pleasing and is too plain. Fancy it up a bit, maybe ask an actual graphic editor to help.

Description:
10/10
Proves it’s a poetry book and gives an apt description of the book.

Poem/Chapter names:
7/10
I mean they’re functional chapter names but nothing interesting. Also some of your chapter names are so long. Now usually, when reading or writing poetry, I prefer one or two word titles. Some of my favourites have been Howl by Allen Ginsberg, Nevermore by Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee by Poe, Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.

Then there have been some with longer titles like The Road Not Taken, Dust of snow by Robert Frost, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats etc.

Not only are these names a bit on the creative side, they’re also pretty tiny. One of your poem names is too long, the one with the mirror and the reflection (second chapter, I think.)
Plus I want your titles to be slightly more creative. You’ve just taken a line from the poem and made it your title.
For example if I’m writing a poem about death, I’ll name it cloaked. Because I’m imagining death as really discreet and hidden and dark- in other words, cloaked.

Hope you understand.

Poetic device/flow/poetic liberty (license):
4/10
I barely found any poetic devices, not even imagery. Not to mention that your rhyme scheme sounds forced. Like you wanted to rhyme, like you weren’t writing poetry because you wanted to but just for the sake of it.

It seemed like you’d fit yourself to an Abab or aabb and you stuck to it and to do that, you chose mediocre words and feelings.

This person once quoted that we don’t write poetry just because we want to, we write it to woo girls. If you’ve recognized it, great! If you haven’t, it’s what Mr. Keating says in ‘Dead poet's society’. The quote might be a bit garbled though.

Now obviously, we aren’t writing poetry to woo girls, but we’re trying to get our feelings across in a way other than prose. If your poetry sounds forced, then it’s almost always a guarantee that it sounds staged and fake. We don’t want that.

You don’t need to follow a rhyme scheme, make it free verse. You don’t need to follow the typical 4 or 6 lines in a poetry Para format, let the lines roll free.

You want to bunch two lines together, let the other lines flow alone, do it. Poetry has never known limits unless it’s conventional poetry.

Now for poetic devices. I enjoy poetic devices so this might be a personal thing. In Dust of snow by Robert Frost, he talked about his own sadness and depression by symbolizing them through a crow and a hemlock tree. If you didn’t know, hemlock is poisonous and crow is a sign of death but also rejuvenation or rebirth. He talks about snow falling on his shoulder and relates it to how he can shrug off his problems the same way the tree has shrugged off the cold snow from itself. Beautiful poem.

Symbolism is one of the main aspects in a poem, I want you to add that.

I want you add symbolism, metaphors, similes, consonance, assonance, alliteration, anaphora etc etc.

Plus, it’s fun when you write with poetic devices too.

Grammar/word usage
8/10
This was fine mostly but like I said, the word usage and the structuring sounded forced as if you were trying to force your feelings to fit rhyming words that would fit your chosen rhyming scheme. It wasn’t very pleasing. If you experimented with words a bit more on the poetic side of the spectrum, it would be nice.

Basically, improve vocab.

Overall score:
35/60

A lot of room for improvement.

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