This is interesting.

The first poem, being (as far as I can tell) free verse, felt weakest to me. Well, I'm not much of a poetry critic, but I feel like free verse needs to invest a lot more meaning into what words it picks and where it puts linebreaks and things, and... I'm not really sure I'm seeing that in the first poem.

Your word choice seems a bit loose, with things like 'supple sphere' not really doing much for me. How is Equus a supple sphere? I don't get it. Sure, the alliteration is nice, but it would take some pretty strange circumstances for me to describe a planet as 'supple'. Moreover, you have those poetic contractions, like 'upon't', which have always struck me as a crutch even in places where they actually help with meter and rhyme. Since you're writing free verse here, I think you'd have been better of eschewing them. Sure, they make your work look kinda 'poetical', but that's like randomly throwing 'thees' and 'thous' into modern english to get Ye Olde. It's going to look off no matter what.

Anyways, I think the second poem is my favorite. Did you know, though, that dark mode apparently inverts that nice purple text into a fairly bright green? I'm not sure if that's something Roger should be appraised of, but I was like 'Is this supposed to be Twilight because of the 'search for knowledge' thing? If so, why is the text green?' The 'run/to ground' split line confused me a bit, since 'there I run' actually makes sense by itself in a pursuit of knowledge meaning, so continuing on with 'to ground' forced me to re-read it.

The third poem is probably the easiest to understand, and I liked the 'arise arise' ending, although 'awaken with surmise' just feels... forced. Like, I know rhyming is hard, but I think that line kinda clunks.

The fourth poem does a particularly nice job of tying the first three together. The 'subtle things' of the first poem, the 'arise' of the second poem, and the search for knowledge in the third poem, all inform this one. I think I'd be more personally satisfied if there was a stronger indication of what Twilight's epiphany is; what the deeper ties/passions felt actually are. As-is, I buy in, but if I felt that realization along with her, I think it would be an even stronger ending. Well, maybe that's a bit much to ask, or not the direction you wanted to go. Anyways, the last poem is pretty satisfying.

I think, if I were doing this, I'd have swapped the positions of the first and third poems; tying what's presumably Luna's section to dreaming Twilight more clearly. Although this way it does kinda bookend stuff, so I can see why you'd do it the way you did.

Anyways, this was pretty good. Poetry is harder to do than prose (at least for me) so I applaud your ambition. The gimmick is used really quite well, so props for that too.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Nice work, thanks for writing!

Right away, I'm thrown by some of the rhythmic choices. The first line is in perfect iambic pentameter. That may be unintentional. In fact, I bet it is, because you don't fall back into that at all. The second line isn't in two ways (though the extra unstressed syllable at the end is allowable as 'female rhyme'). But then I don't get why you're going for contractions and elisions like 'pon and upon't. It's not to get it to fit a rhythm. Do you just want it to have an antiquated character to it? If so, I think poetry of that era would even more likely keep to a meter. I don't know. It bugged me, it won't bug everyone, and in poetry you can do what you like even more, provided it affects the reader the way you want it to.

The poem likely to be Celestia's much more faithfully comes in iambic pentameter, but there are a few notable misses, like the stress being wrong on "globe encompassing." Its ending really puts me in a mind of Maya Angelou. Twilight's second poem likewise has a couple of egregious rhythmic misses in "That guide but constrain reason" and "The map is not the world; spurn its extremes!" Her first had only "Seek deeper threads than black and white reason." If I'm to read anything into the difference with Luna's poem, I'd say as the only one without rhyme and rhythm, it's showing her absence of harmony, plus the more antiquated mode of speech reflects how Luna still talked at that time. The thing is, you're inconsistent. You have "she knoweth" and "hour doth," but "lance[...] cleaves." I know poetry is hard mode, but that's a choice, and there are all these considerations you wouldn't get with prose. It's like judging dives, I think, where the harder ones get you a better starting score, but there are more things to get potential deductions for.

Another thing I'd put forth almost as an axiom: don't make people go find part of your story. Only half shows up, and you'd have to surmise there might be more there to try highlighting it. And in light mode, it's pretty hard to read the hidden lines.

If I'm reading this correctly, the first scene is about Luna trying to subvert Celestia and the second is about Twilight trying to figure out the legend of Nightmare Moon some time around the pilot episode. Though on reread, Luna's poem doesn't sound antagonistic. It's only slightly so, then when coupled with Twilight's urgent pursuit of knowledge it seems to go that direction.

It seems most of the poetry we get in write-offs is the kind that tells a story, which makes sense and also makes it easier to compare with the prose. Or maybe that's not the case. Poetry that only evokes a feeling isn't much different from the scenes we get that don't tell a complete story arc, I guess.

Anyway, this one has very lovely language use, but I feel it's caught between whether it wants to tell a story or not. Each scene individually doesn't. Luna's just saying how she can sneak around unnoticed while pursuing her agenda, and Twilight's saying how the knowledge she seeks eludes her but she'll keep following it. Provided I interpreted that right, of course. So both of those are just a state of being, and the poetry is all about creating the mood of it. However, juxtaposing the two suggests creating tension by having the two together. They'll soon be adversaries. But nothing actually happens, except Twilight's second one does skip to the outcome, or means of achieving it, I suppose. They're both just describing a state of being, one which will come as no surprise to anyone who's watched that episode.

If I look at each sentence individually, it's very pretty and well crafted language, but it doesn't adhere to any kind of structure even though it seems visually like it's supposed to. So just reading it, I like it a lot, but to me it kind of takes the easy way out on both the structure and storytelling fronts.

I like this in concept, though I question the wisdom in hiding part of your story, and it has enough niggling breaks in form to detract from the whole, plus it's telling us a story we already know. As a mood piece, I'd like it better, but Twilight's parts suggest a plot thread. Still, I think I'll rate this pretty highly.

The previous two comments do an excellent job of going through various critiques that might be had with this. Frankly, I suck at poetry. Always have, likely always will. More of a prose guy.

So my critique will mostly be restricted to variations on this theme: I fyay!ing loved this.

What little poetry I do love I have tended to relate to on an emotional level, and not always to the themes; sometimes, I just love the way the language flows. All four poems remind me of both Shakespeare and of Eliot in Prufrock, not in any particular stylistic or thematic ways (outside of ye olde english) but more just in the lovely turns of phrase I can't help but grin at.

I like the connection to the inspiring art with the two Luna/NMM poems hidden inbetween the lines, although unlike the original you don't see them by switching to dark mode, meaning I had no idea they were there until I read the previous comments. That's pretty much my only problem with them though, and it's a pretty minor one.

Content wise, each poem feels very in character. The word choice, the flow--it all feels right. Not perhaps the most eloquent of appraisals, but this is a top contender for me nonetheless.

My first go at this I highlighted the whole thing and tried reading straight through. That did not work so well. It's also worth noting that I am not particularly great at poems, either writing or reading.


The Luna poem was a little hard to follow at times, also referencing guards by name broke my rhythm, as I wasn't familiar with them. 'honored guards' might have been a smoother way to refer to them.

The first white poem was easier to follow, but as I went along, it started to feel like it overly relied upon the 'ise' rhyming scheme.

The purple and last white poem both suffer from it not being clear exactly what (presumably) Twilight is trying to find, but provide a nice point/counterpoint of her doing it in day, than night.

Hard to follow the overall arc of things, and I'm not really all that well equipped to comment on it, but it was intriguing, and I respect the effort.

It's only now that I really get the gimmick going on here: that there are four poems, not two. Since I was on dark mode, I just assumed that the green one was the "dark mode surprise"... and then it turns out I completely missed out on the light mode poems. From what I could gather, this feels like a retelling of Nightmare Moon's in poetic form in four parts, from light mode to dark mode.

Well, I'm not an expert on poems so I don't have much to say. While the poems seem to follow a consistent pattern (save for the first dark mode poem which deviates from the ten-syllable pattern of the others), the constant mid-sentence line breaks make the poems a little janky to read. Though that might be a valid thing as well; I'm not so sure.

Overall, this is a creative and experimental work of poetry that I would appreciate more if I knew more about poetry. Good job!

My approach to reviewing poetry has always been, "I may not know much about poetry, but I know what I like!" and unfortunately, this isn't one of my favourites. The best way I can explain why I didn't like it is to compare with previous poetry entries I liked, namely Bachi's AJ poem from last fim mini round, or Baal's wonderful Ode to the Artistic Temperament. What those poems have, that I feel this is missing, is that the poetry is the supporting act for the main show, the stories being told. AJ writing secret messages to her parents, Medusa disguised as a sculptor. Here, just looking at the story, there isn't much of interest being told.

All I see here is Luna and Celestia waking up and/or going to sleep, and the fact that they like their jobs. And some nmm being evil, I think? At the end of the day it feels like I'm reading first-person snippets of stories I already know very well, told in the most purple prose possible.

Perhaps it's the metering, or the word choices, like Pasco and !Hat mentioned, but I just felt barred from entry.

Also, I don't like poems hiding from me in the background. That may feel like a double standard when compared to the art, because I thought that was neat, but I really feel your words should be visible. Put simply: I read writing to find meaning, but I search pictures for it. I don't like searching for writing.

That's all I can really say on this one. I've read it a few times, but it's just not sticking. Still, it looks like there are those who enjoy it, so take my grumpy opinion however you like.

Good luck in the contest!

Poetry is always a bold move (and one that I never feel competent enough to critique!). So good on you for finding inspiration and taking a risk!

Now, I'll be upfront about the fact that I've read each of these poems 4 or 5 times, and I'm afraid I'm still not sure what their meanings are. Now, I know I'm not the best reader and that I miss things a lot, but it does feel frustrating that I'm putting a lot of effort into understanding these poems, but still feeling like I'm going nowhere.

Now, I think it's pretty cool that every poem has its own meter/structure. It was easy to pick up on the rhyme scheme and beat of the hidden poem and the purple one. But to be honest, I'm having a lot of trouble with the first poem. I'm going to make a tentative guess that this is free/blank verse, but even then, it kind of feels unstructured. Remember, blank verse has no rhyme or meter, but it still heavily depends on repetitions to maintain its shape. Most commonly, people like to use paralleled sentence structures, recurring phrases, and strategic line breaks to convey a sense of flow to the reader. Poetry in all forms (even free verse!) is absolutely built around the idea of letting the reader "feel" what comes next, even before they've read the next line. Since there doesn't seem to be much signaling built into this one, it is difficult to get into the flow of it, and it became frustrating to read for me.

Outside of that first poem, I had a much easier time with the other two. There's some really fun word choice and imagery here, and being able to get a sense of the beat really helped me enjoy these elements. But still, the fact that I'm not sure what the meaning as a whole is, really hurts my ability to get a sense of payoff from them.

So in the end, I guess I'm saying I'm a dummy. I would personally like it if these poems were easier to understand and (in the case of the first) easier to get into the rhythm of. As they are right now, they're high-effort-mixed-reward sort of deals.

This is another abstain for me, on the simple grounds that I am not a poet, and cannot appreciate poetry enough to properly grade it.

I'm sorry, author, sincerely. I wish I weren't a phony English major too.

Late review incoming!

As with many of my fellow reviewers, I'm not an expert on poetry. I don't think I'm confident enough to say that I know exactly what I'm talking about. This review is mostly gonna be riffing on what I think works and doesn't work for this entry personally, so take my words with a hefty palmful of salt.

Regarding Pasco's point on wondering whether this poem wants to tell a story or not, I'm inclined to believe that this poem is attempting to tell a story, it's just that the story it's trying to tell doesn't really have all that much to say. Keep in mind, I don't think I've fully dissected the story here to stand by my statement, though from what little I could gather, I'm rather indifferent as to what this poem is attempting to build towards.

The big highlight of this particular entry is, of course, the language. It's verbose and flowery, which to me gives the whole poem a sense of grandeur and wonder. I've had some Ozymandias vibes coming out from it, so I think the eclectic choice of words is rather well done. However, I'm not sure how I feel about the implementation of it. I'm thinking it's because what little bit of story I could extract out of the poem doesn't seem to warrant the awe and amazement that the language is suggesting. I think in a more conventional, Earth-like setting, such wonder can be warranted, but because I'm considering that this is all happening in the world of Equestria, everything that I believe is happening in the poem just feels rather commonplace.

I don't mind the gimmick all that much, mostly because the last two lines of the purple-colored (green if in dark mode) poem seemed to be suggesting the invisible poem in advance. I'm not entirely sure what that brings to the table other than the fact that some thought and care was put into this, however.

Definitely interested to hear your thought processes behind this entry, Author. Thanks for writing!