Reverie Reviews

review #29.S3: Inspirational Thoughts

Inspirational Thoughts

Author: Steph_4life
Reviewer: -sylver

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SYNOPSIS

""""""Had I known, I've reaped what I've sown,
Though all have been warning me,
I thought they were as noisy as they can be,
I listened to him and what he whispered,
In darkness, his eyes glittered,
He said I should do it if I cared,
He didn't care of what I feared,
Then so children were my sadness,
I gave In, forgetting the consequences,
It's been nine months now, my belly has sagged,
Remembering the trails, how my mother had nagged,
In the labour room, where my thoughts were frozen,
At the race of my bastard child, my heart was broken..... """

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INSPIRATIONAL THOUGHTS is an original poem written directly from the heart. I really hope you guys enjoy it
❤Steph

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Review: Inspirational Thoughts is a nice title but I don't think it fits your collection of poems. Your poems give romance/chicklit vibes so I'd expect a title more catered towards those genres. When I read the title it felt like the poems would be about personal experiences and life in general more than just about romance. Your poems are more about love for family, friends, and burnt out flames.

2. COVER (5/10)

Review: I really like the image you used for Inspirational Thoughts. Makes me think the poet's brain is the paper and their thoughts are the ink. What I dislike about the cover is that the author's name is larger than the title. Makes it seem as if Stephanie is the title. Even though I like the picture, I don't think it's on theme with your book either. The image seems to fit a fantasy-royalty genre.

3. SUMMARY (7/10)

Review: When I read the summary it made me think of a relationship where one person wants to keep a baby, and the other wants to abort it. Then by the end of the pregnancy, one person walks out of the relationship leaving the other person to take care of the child by themselves. I think the extra quotation marks (") in the summary is very unnecessary and only needed one or none at all for the poem. I like the rhyming pattern that you've done with this poem but the fact that the first line didn't have a line that rhymes with it kind of ruined the flow for me and I had to reread it a few times to digest the format and find the pattern. The last line in your summary "Inspirational Thoughts is an original poem written..." you should change "poem" to"poetry collection" as the poem you quoted in your summary is titled "Had I Known" in the story so "poetry collection" seems like a more appropriate term.

4. THEME (8/10)

Review: From what I read I think the theme of the story is love whether it's from a friend, a family member, or an ex. You do a nice job depicting this topic and describing how it feels to the narrator and telling it to the readers. My favorite poem for your collection is "Truth Hurts" as it describes a scenario where one partner doesn't want to take responsibility for their own actions with the other partner and points the blame, and then the child has to reap the sins of the parents unfortunately. The themes of your poems connect so I liked that factor a lot.

5. POETIC ELEMENTS (8/10)

Review: You use nice similes throughout the poetry collection. My favorite was "My tears burn my face like hot fire, spilling like volcanic coals on my skin". Very vivid details. A lot of your poems seem to be free verse which is a nice aspect. Your word play is great and how you depict your topics. I think the only poem without a consistent theme was "Drown In My Soul". In this poem you talk about flying and being a bird freed from a cage at the beginning of the poem and then at the end it switches to a different theme that isn't exactly fitting for this poem which was "always be a drowned soul", because your poem wasn't really depicting anything along the lines of that so feels off topic. If you had said something about waves crashing on the surface and trying to pull you under it would've made more sense. But since it was about flying and the narrator compared themselves to a bird I think "I couldn't stop myself from crying because I will always be free falling" or something because when you stop flying you're free falling. Anything along the lines of that would make perfect sense. Make sure to keep the poems themes and comparisons consistent throughout.

6. STRUCTURE (6/10)

Review: Though I like your word usage, I'm not a huge fan of the structure/layout of your story. The layout of your chapters are very inconsistent. You sometimes keep the text in the middle or to the left. Then the chapter titled "Such A Liar" was completely different using (-) at the beginning of every line. Just makes the chapters look unorganized and uncertain of a theme. Then the use of ellipses and commas were iffy sometimes. You're allowed to use periods in poems, and it seems like you're hesitant to do that.

7. GRAMMAR/PUNCTUATION (7/10)

Review: Haven't noticed any mistakes in your writing involving misspelling. But your use of ellipses needs work on. When using ellipses make sure to do three dots and nothing more or less (...). Don't add a comma to them as ellipses already indicate a pause. Referencing poem "A Precious Mother".

8. WRITING STYLE/FLOW (7/10)

Review: You have a nice writing style but I think there's room for improvement involving details. If you could format your poems better and use punctuation more appropriately I'd like it a lot more because the poems are very well written but presentation also matters.

9. CREATIVITY/ORIGINALITY (8/10)

Review: Your poems are nice and well-written and you describe the topics of love and life very nicely with your own personality and twists to them. I have come across many poems with similar topics to these so I'm hoping in your future poems you talk about family matters more than just ex-boyfriend leaving the narrator alone with a baby, and try and maybe describe the healing aspect and the moving on.

10. PERSONAL ENJOYMENT (7/10)

Review: I did enjoy the poems and I loved the themes. Some of them resonated with me a lot. You did touch my emotions as a reader, but because of the lack of a structure/layout wasn't as good as it could have been. My advice would be to focus on structure, punctuation, and staying consistent with the theme. Other than that lovely anthology. I enjoyed reading them very much.