Young Writers Society

This is as much for me as it is for anyone else who find themselves befuddled when reviewing poetry. So, what are some tips? What do you look for when reviewing a poem?

Showing instead of telling-- that's pretty huge in poetry. You have to say a lot more with less words, and if you don't try really, really hard to convey the emotions and thoughts through images then your poem comes off as kind of, I don't know, stale.
And people always see people commenting on this in poetry.
The real problem is how to turn a "telling" poem into a "showing" one.

(I am basing this purely off of the idea of a poem that is written properly, no large glaring errors in grammar or spelling.)

This one is actually sort of hard for me to explain. I do things a bit differently than most, as I typically review purely content and flow, if I can. The first time I do is read it three times, once in my head, once out loud, and once in my head again. Then I write the very first thing that comes to mind, and I call it my "First Impression." In the first impression stages, I try to give out equal parts compliments and criticism.

Then, I make comments on flow, if I had a hard time reading it out loud, fumbling on words and line breaks constantly, I make a comment on that next. I like to point out specific areas where any flow breaks happen, and reading it aloud usually helps me pinpoint exactly where the major problem is.

Then I move onto content, and I always ask myself the same question. Do I care? If I am left with the feeling that I could hardly care less about the narrator or subject of the poem, I fear the poet has not done their job. Whether I love them or hate them or whatever, I should always be left feeling something. I'll tell them why or why not their subject/narrator was effective in my opinion.

I try to throw out a few helpful tips or articles and then I am on my way

What I tend to do is pull out each stanza on its own and comment on how it works by itself and how it connects with other stanzas, as well as any sort of meaning I can come up with. In the process, I'll pick out individual lines that feel clunky or detached from the rest of the work. If there's a lot of those lines, I'll just pick at them and summarize how I feel about each stanza once I'm finished picking out individual lines from that stanza. I'll usually comment on everything if it's a short poem, saying what impressions I get from what lines and word choice. I call these reviews "rambling" because I just talk about every impression I get from the poem, so the author gets an idea of what message the audience is getting.

Then I go on content, flow, meaning, consistency and any "staying quality" I can find in the work. Staying quality means anything that makes me remember the poem for longer than a few minutes. If I have to think a bit, then I give suggestions on how to create that staying quality. If I can see it but it doesn't feel right, then I saw to pull that quality into the rest of the work. If it's there and I find it's done well, then I just say "good job."

Also, this is more what *not* to do, but when it comes to poetry there are no conventions. So saying stuff like "you must do X to make this fit poetic form" doesn't usually go well. Go by what you feel about the poem (and if it's consistent! If they mix caps and no caps, then you can say to pick one or the other) and not what you were told in school.