Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Gnome: Tempest (Part 2)

Title: Tempest 

Author: __A__Poets__Heart__

Reviewer: GnomeMercy

(This is the second part to a review of the same poetry collection, and I read until the poem "Untold".)

Summary: 4.5/5

As mentioned in the previous review, your summary introduces everything you need. I think forgot to mention this in the previous review, but this little stanza needs some work:

Poems are made to show
That which your afraid of
The things that make you
Happy, sad
The things that used to break you

There are two errors here. Firstly, it should end with a full stop as it's the end of the stanza (preferably). Secondly, "your" is a possessive word. Like "your pencil", for example. In this case, you should use "you're"—the abbreviation for "you are". So, in the end, it should be:

Poems are made to show
That which you're afraid of
The things that make you
Happy, sad
The things that used to break you. 

Other than that, your summary is great! I suggest, perhaps, talking about some topics you'll be covering? Is it a book of random poetry? Will it talk about love, sadness, emotions, and more? I think it's a good idea to give the reader an insight to your poetry collection. Maybe even talking about why you made these poems could be added, but I highly recommend talking about the topics you'll discuss in your poem.

Grammar: 3.5/5

Overall, your grammar is great. When it comes to poetry, there's a different set of rules, though. There were some typos, however, so I'll try to catch them all (that was an unintended Pokémon reference, sorry).

In the poem "Stars":

Stars,   stars, I want to talk about stars...

There is a double typo here (first line).

In the poem "Famous" there was a line:

No, darling no.

It should be:

No, darling, no.

In the poem "Not Excited", there was an error here:

Not for Halloween
Though its October

The "its" used for this sentence is incorrect. It should be "it's", the abbreviation for "it is". So, in the end, it should be:

Not for Halloween
Though it's October

In the poem "Favourite Song", the last line is dialogue, however, it doesn't have a period at the end of it:

"Darling, I see you"

I suggest you change it to:

"Darling, I see you."

In the poem "Friendship", there was a similar problem:

"It hurts me too"

And:

"We're just strangers with memories"

It should be:

"It hurts me, too."

And: 

"We're just strangers with memories."

This is just so it looks a little cleaner, otherwise it looks a little messy. I saw similar errors throughout your story, and dialogue should never end without some form of punctuation. I think I saw about seven of these errors in total (one more in "Letter", three in "They're Watching"), but that's it.

Another error I noticed in "They're Watching" was a mix up between "who's" and "whose":

Who's feet leave tiny webs in my brain

"Who's" is an abbreviation for "who is", and if you're ever wondering which one goes where, always try the sentence out with "who is". So, in the end, it should be:

Whose feet leave tiny webs in my brain

Overall, your grammar is pretty decent—it's just some small errors that stop it from being perfect.

Diction + Figurative Language: 4.5/5

In terms of literary devices and poetic technique, I think there were quite a lot of lovely examples throughout your collection.

However, as I read more, it did feel like poems used the same or similar style(s) and had similar meanings. (Though I adored the emotion behind the words.) Your meanings were straight to the point, however, some earlier poems (and some later poems, too) had some wonderful usage of metaphors.

My only complaint was that, in some poems, lines would have either too many syllables or too little at some times. I understand that some times these are used for emphasis or a unique twist, however, there were examples in which I felt that the line sounded a little out of place. Of course, there are too many poems to actually spend hours rereading and editing them, but I think, for future reference, it would sound and look much better if poems had similar syllable usage. However, this is just me being nit-picky, of course.

Other than that small problem, I think your poems had lovely usage of language. I think some more techniques could be used—but I'm being a bit picky. Earlier poems contained lots of different poetry schemes, but then you stuck to a style towards the end. I would suggest trying different rhyming schemes in order to mix it up a little.

Message Conveyed: 4.7/5

I loved the different messages your poems had, they sounded and felt as if they meant something to you personally. It was very clear, and it gave the poems more depth.

My only problem would be that quite a lot of poems had similar meanings. I consider this an extremely small problem (hence the specific decimal) and I had to dig deep to think of it, but a lot of poems did talk about similar problems. I think it would have been cool to see different topics being covered, and while some poems definitely had some lovely meanings behind them, quite a lot of them where similar.

Of course, I absolutely adored some of these poems as they came straight from the heart, so this is something that you don't exactly need to change.

Emotions Evoked: 5/5

Definitely your strongest point. I think emotions definitely oozed out of your poetry—you really felt what you were talking about. It added to your poems by a mile, and I enjoyed reading it because of that. There isn't much I can say here, honestly, (sorry about that) just that keep writing about topics that mean something to you—as emotion and passion behind words makes poetry even stronger, and makes it more engaging to the reader.

Subjectively speaking, some poems didn't mean too much to me (though there weren't that many of those) but there was emotion behind it, which I could definitely feel from the words.

OVERALL SCORE: 22.2/25

That's an amazing score! I think there are some small typos that need some working on, and trying to make sure the rhythm of a poem stays (by using similar amounts of syllables on lines) but, other than that, there wasn't too much else. I enjoyed your poems quite a bit, and there's clearly a story behind each of them, which added to their power. Keep writing!