Young Writers Society

Ok JCK. As requested I am here. First off this is insanely short. And sometimes it can be a good thing or a bad thing. Right now....I dunno. I don't, to be honest, have much of an opinion. I kind of understand it. No point in me going line by line because this is a short one.

JCK wrote:

The man who knows what knows nothing,
And the man who knows how knows little.
But the man who knows why knows all there is to know;
of knowledge, nonsense and the weather.

.....

I am sorry, but I really don't know what it is about. A lot of poets get their point across with 2-3 lines, but I really think you should add a lot more stanzas in there. Who is the man? Is he a chicken? You see what I'm trying say, right? Make it a bit more clearer.

Now, time for my star rating. Well seeing how I don't have much of a positive/negative on this one, if anything at all, I won't give any stars until I decide later on. In terms of vocab it's passable, but the whole thing can't be a few lines. Seriously, it needs to be longer.

?/5 stats

This really makes me think, just because it's quite confusing, but I like that. The one thing I don't like about this is the last line: "of knowledge, nonsense and the weather." It's great, up until you say 'weather'. It feels like a weak way to end it, because the weather seems so unimportant and simple compared to the rest. Maybe change it to something a bit more powerful, like "of knowledge, nonsense and life." Apart from that, I like it!
-Anna

I quite liked this poem for how brief it was, though there are a few things I think could use some tweaking. Right now, the first two lines are a bit confusing at first read due to how you're treating question words as nouns. If you set those words off somehow, it makes it a bit easier to realize this sooner and indicates to your reader that the phrasing was deliberate rather than possibly the result of a missing word.

For example:

The man who knows what knows nothing,

But the man who knows why knows all there is to know;

This line struck me as being a bit wordy. The semicolon is also quite superfluous/grammatically incorrect. Semicolons link two independent clauses; "of knowledge, nonsense, and the weather" is a phrase, and so a colon would be more appropriate.

In any case, instead of "knows all there is to know", which is quite a mouthful and doesn't match up with the rhythm of the previous lines, something more concise like "knows all worth knowing" flows a bit more smoothly while still getting the same point across.

Even though this was the only line in the poem that felt off, because of how short the poem was, this one line threw the sound of the rest of the poem off. If you could smooth out this snag in the flow, this piece would become a nice little poem to mull over.

annaseale1998 wrote:This really makes me think, just because it's quite confusing, but I like that. The one thing I don't like about this is the last line: "of knowledge, nonsense and the weather." It's great, up until you say 'weather'. It feels like a weak way to end it, because the weather seems so unimportant and simple compared to the rest. Maybe change it to something a bit more powerful, like "of knowledge, nonsense and life." Apart from that, I like it!
-Anna

Who says life is more important than the weather? It seems that you (and the others) have perhaps missed something vital! Think on it.