Hello Joy ! How are you doing today? I’m Charlie and I’m reviewing on behalf of "a very Wodehouse challenge" . Part of my challenge involves making a “magazine” featuring manly men items. I’ve selected your poem to fictionally feature because it’s in the men’s genre. Thanks for sharing with us!


Title/General Thoughts/Subject Matter: I love the idea behind this poem, so I just had to read it. Sometimes observing people doing things like this can just bring a whole world to life in poetry format, and I can see you've done that here. I also like the title because it describes the exact subject matter of the poem. I think it's interesting to watch people play chess sometimes because some people are so good at thinking ahead while they're playing.


What Worked: My favorite part of this poem was the imagery and descriptions you used. I felt like I was there with you watching these men play chess. I also thought your vocabulary for this was excellent. You managed to use interesting and unique words without it feeling unnatural. Sometimes the language reads like a thesaurus spilled into the poem, but this poem didn't give me that inclination at all.

My favorite part was the beginning of the last stanza:

Checkmate, only two syllables,
yet powerful enough
to postpone the morning news.

I thought that was a great way of describing the situation. I love how the game leads up to this climax in the final stanza.


Technical Issues/Suggestions: I have nothing major to add here in the way of suggestions, but I did think some of the line breaks were a bit iffy. For example, the last two lines of the first stanza, I almost naturally broke up in my head. I know there aren't any major rules when it comes to line breaks, just something I noticed while reading.


Final Thoughts: Overall, I think this item is perfect for my fictional men's magazine article. Thanks again for sharing your poem with us!


Best wishes,





My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .