In the past two weeks, I’ve actually had three submissions for Open Pen Critiques. Thanks for being patient as I post each one over the next few weeks!
This Saturday, we have a short poem from Emily who just started her own blog a couple weeks ago! If you want to check out her blog (which also has an Open Pen Critique page), you can here: The Priceless Pen.
Emily is not looking for any particular critique but said she would appreciate anything we can tell her. Also, she mentioned that it was only a first draft. So feel free to give any advice on her poem. Thank you for taking the time to critique her piece; I know that she is very grateful!
Have a great week!
God bless,
Gabrielle
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Snowfall by Emily M.
The snow it filters and it falls,
Causes hazardous, blustering, creamy white squalls,
Dances in the streetlights glow, landing on the vacant roads,
Whispering amongst the forest trees, resting on a bed of leaves,
Dotting the silent, midnight sky, smiling down from way up high,
Fluttering past the moon’s bright glare, spreading happiness and good cheer,
Waking me up after Christmas day, I never knew what it did say, to rouse me up in early dawn, perhaps to say goodbye, before it was all gone.
The snow it filters and it falls,
Then travels back into the sky, where it belongs.
*Please note that Emily originally had an extra line space between each of her lines. This is not normal poetry format, so I removed them. (In other words: Emily, this is your first critique; you will want to remove the extra lines 😉 .)
Write for the King 
This is really nice! I like the adjectives used, but I think the rhyming in the first two lines is a little stilted. I do like the way the next couple lines have internal rhyme, though. Nice poem!
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Thank you so much, this is incredibly helpful! I appreciate it:)
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You’re welcome! 🙂
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I love the personification here, describing the snow as “smiling,” “whispering,” etc. and there’s some lovely imagery and alliteration. My biggest critique would be to keep the structure of the poem consistent. For the most part, it seems that each line consists of two parts that rhyme, but then the “Waking me up after Christmas day …” line has four parts with two different rhymes. For that line, I’d suggest making “To rouse me up … before it was all gone” a separate line to stay parallel with the other lines. Perhaps also consider making the last line rhyme a bit better with “falls” to keep the rhyming consistent and similar to the first two lines. However, nice job overall!
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Thank you so much for this critique and feedback! I do agree some of the consistency wasn’t so great in the lines of the poem, I’ve never been really good at structuring stories or poems, LOL:) Thank you!!!!
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You’re so welcome! Yep, that can be hard, but it definitely gets easier and more natural with practice. Never stop writing!
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Nice poem, Emily.
Here are my comments:
– Line 1: I do not think that “filters” is the word you are looking for. “Filters” means to pass through or as through a filter or to partially block the passage of something else.
– In line 2, your adjectives were contradictory and a bit clunky (“hazardous, blustering, creamy white.”) The first two adjective do not fit well with the rest of your poem, so I would suggest replacing them or adding onto your poem to show how the show can be both “hazardous” and “spreading happiness and good cheer.”
– I really like how lines 3-5 have parallel structure; however, when you keep repeating that structure (ing-verbal phrase + ing-verbal phrase) in lines 6 and 7, it felt a bit too repetitive for my tastes
– Line 7 does not look like poetry at all– it looks much more like prose. I would really suggest braking this line up into multiple lines.
– Also you had a couple of punctuation errors that you might want to check for
Good luck with your poetry!
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Thank you for your feedback/constructive criticism! And thank you so much for posting my poem and linking my blog:) I think I have quite a lot of editing to do, and I agree about the last line, I didn’t really love it, I just couldn’t really think of a closing. I’m going to be racking my brain today for new endings!!!!
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This was a beautiful poem, Emily. Nice job. The feeling that snow creates can be hard to capture but your poem really holds that sense of magic that snow has. My suggestion would be about Line 6. Glare and cheer just didn’t sound right together. I kept trying to say “chair” in my head. Maybe try something different. Great work though!
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LOL- it does seem to have that effect now that I’m saying it over again. Thank you so much for your feedback, it was very appreciated!!!!
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