Damaged
by mirkwoodminstrel
Poetry

Clarity
9.5/10

I'm trying as hard as I can to be unbiased in my reviews, especially as regards poetry, because I confess I'm something of a traditionalist there. I hope I'm not giving you such a high score just because I'm more used to reading poetry like yours. But examining, rereading, I only draw the same conclusion. Your poetry, while requiring a careful eye and mind like all poetry does, depicts its scenes and emotions with a beautiful and seamless clarity, drawing the reader easily from one transition to the next. I was not at a loss, never bewildered and turned off by illogical breaks or juxtapositions.

Form & Rhyme
8/10

As a rule, you seem to employ a long meter with rhyming couplets for your poems, an appropriate choice for the subject matter that I read. While your execution of that was generally good, you tended to be a little careless with the meter on occasion. Also, some couplets were joined on a single line(this may have been intentional, in which case just ignore me).

Your rhyme: same score. It is imperfect in many places, though so close usually that it almost doesn't matter. I know how hard it is to find those rhymes!

And whoo, I love them! "abyss" and "miss"; "rotten", "forgotten"; my goodness, your rhymes are gold.

Vocabulary
9.5/10

Your word choices are neither pretentious nor stale, but varied and well fitted to each poem and style.

I had a few questions, for instance in Helm's Deep: "To a craven's death I shall not cow" seemed an odd phrasing. I would consider revising the rhyme in that couplet, or maybe change "cow" to "bow"? I understand that the term "to cow" is to make someone yield, rather than to yield oneself.

But overall, your vocabulary was outstanding. Great job.

General Grammar
9/10

A few typos here and there -- mostly nothing a proof-read can't fix. "it's" instead of "its" was the one that stood out most to me, near the end of "Fate".

Your use of commas is sometimes careless, where a colon or semicolon would be more appropriate: for instance the two final lines at the end of Helm's Deep. As a rule, if the two phrases can stand as two separate sentences, you should use a semicolon rather than a comma, or a colon if you want to emphasize the following phrase particularly.

Overall
9/10

I've enjoyed little poetry as much as I have yours -- this is definitely something that deserves a suggestion mark by it! You have amazing work going on here. Please, please keep it up. I'm not ready to stop reading yet.

~

Thank you for letting me read your book! I hope this review was helpful. Please acknowledge it, either by comment or PM, and let me know if you think anything was overly critical or deserves a redo. Again, thanks!