Public-domain archive
October Field
A working draft, rated honestly
The fence leans where the summer left it,
the grass gone brittle, gold and dry,
I walk the rows that we once planted
and watch the geese unzip the sky. …Excerpted — the same sample draft the Poem Checker examines, read here for score.
- Overall
- 7 / 10A strong amateur draft with a genuinely earned ending — held back by rhythmic drift and one repeated verb.
- Sub-scores
- Imagery8Emotion8Originality7Rhythm6Craft6
- What's working
- The verb choice at the close of stanza 1 ("unzip the sky") and the restraint of grieving through objects rather than statements. The poem trusts its reader — the rating rewards that.
- What to improve
- The meter loosens in stanza 2 just when the emotion tightens — the mismatch blunts the ending. And walks / walk repeats across lines 3 and 8; one of them should give.
- Verdict
- Revise twice, not ten times: fix the rhythm of lines 5 and 8 and this is an 8.
A representative rating. Scores are calibrated for amateur and student work — the canon isn't the yardstick. Paste your poem above for the same treatment.