Hey Gina. Nice to see you're experimenting with the poem.

hm... I missed this on my first pass through your poem. These two lines don't seem to work too well with it...

a leap too big,
leading to her doom

You might want to explain what kind of "leap" she's taking... is it a symbolic one, or a physical one? and if it is a symbolic one, what is it symbolic of? (and, a leap too big hints that she took an extra leap, not that the leap was too big... you mght want to re-word that) Perhaps a little information on why she took the leap in the first place would work too...

(something like:

"haunted by her memories/
she strugles to escape/
blinded by fear/
she has leapt into the path/
leading to her doom"

yeah, a little too many lines by me there... that's just a thought of mine, perhaps too many words... I... I dunno... )

The flow has gotten smoother (I don't know how my suggestion on those two lines would work, though... ) as it is, but if you want to make it smoother you might want to remove a few redundant words here and there.

(For example:

killing her inside,
leaving behind,
her only memories of time ---> her can be taken out, and the line would still work.)

Keep working on it, it's coming along quite nicely.

Oh, one last thing...

Don't say you regret those poems... emotion is essential in poetry. Also, using your writing to vent things is out is very useful... look at some of my poems... "Thieves," for instance, is basically an all-out attack against my classmates.

Writing is a process: you get better with each poem. I started out too uptight, and all my poems had an ABAB rhyming shceme, with the same number of syllables on every rhyming line. Now, I'm much more relaxed... and even if I do like my new stuff better, I still have some old poems which I absolutely love. I like where you're going with your writing... you're very creative and have plenty of talent to spare. I have a feeling you'll put all those feelings in you and all that creativity to great use. Good luck with that poem, and with the rest of your work. Hope to see more new stuff soon. (I'm not done getting through your thread yet, but I'll get to it soon, I promise.)

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Nice dude! Let's keep this thread alive.

Ok, so your poem... first off, as a personal fan of FFVII, KICK. ASS. CHOICE. on the topic.

Now, onto the criticism...

I like the flow of the poem. It's consistent, and it's got a nice pace to it. There are a few spots here and there where the pace gets a little disrupted... For example:


Reign of hate and greed and fire
Hades looms above
Sephiroth the question asked
Is "do you have no love?"

The answer back is not for us
The mortals of the Earth
Who live in fear and pain and grief
From Birth until the dirt

both bolded lines are a bit too long... at least, that's what I thought. It happens again a few times in the poem... however, the solution is simple: don't over-use words like "and."

Instead of

The angel has no sympathy
And he won't hear your anguished cries

try

The angel has no sympathy,
And won't hear your anguished cries ---> (or remove the and leave he)

Also, some lines make little to no sense at all...(or, the don't really "belong" where they are... at least, that's what I thought) like these:

Upon your wings alight

Yet you demon I know you well

Sephiroth the question asked
Is "do you have no love?"

The answer back is not for us

Leader with an iron fist

From life and light To darkened night
On this last one... it's a bit long. So, my suggestion is to add a line break before "To" and/or change "darkened night" to something more parallel to "life and light" (death and night or something...)

On a positive note... You payed the proper respect to good ol' Sephi. You managed to capture the feeling you get when he stares at you... so cold, ruthless... so perfect. I absolutely LOVED the last two stanzas, I think it was a great way to end the poem.

So, the basic advice is: don't over use words like "and" and try to re-word some of your sentences... the content is good, but the choicew/order of words makes it confusing at times. I like your style, you depict the "feel" of a character rather than the feelings he produces and/or the character himself. Nicely done. I hope to see more soon.

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Okay this poem I wrote ages ago now, and while I'm happy with it as a whole I sometimes get the feeling that parts let it down. I just wondered what you guys thought!

With Three Words

With three words
I sold myself to slavery.
With three words
I paid for a life of pain.

Words were dull currency
that bought my bondage.
My emotional torment first
prize in a twisted competition.
Fate's sense of humour that
pushes each swelling
colours each bruise.
Destiny's twisted web my golden strand of hope.
My only hope.
Pulling me from drowning and losing
myself in self made sea.
Where serpent strangles, whispers,
Another voice that blames me.
The bars of my cell my own concoction
that I hope to dilute and lose.
Pull them down with these four walls
You helped me build.

With three words
this captive was set free.

I tried to give the poem a bit of a "bounce" effect (Like in the song one winged angel), thats why I used and alot. If I would have taken them out the bounce would have been thrown off. But thanx 4 the crit.

Stillborn_Heart: Oh, ok... didn't think about that. The "bounce" effect works on some poems, not all of them, as it's a hard effect to get. Still, you're on the right track. Just work on some the lines I mentioned and you're set.



OddOneOut: nice to see you joined us here. ok, so critics...

Excelent idea behind the poem. I tip my hat. It can be interpreted in so many ways, it's amazing. I read it serveral times, and got a different idea each time through. That's hard to see in poems. So good job on that.

Some lines didn't make much sense at all, probably because of the way you decided to break them.

My emotional torment first
prize in a twisted competition.

I can sort of get what you mean, but I'm not quite sure... you might want to re-word or change the way the verses are sperated. You also seem to have a bit of a punctuation problem. A few commas or semicolons here and there would work amazingly well.

Other than that, it's a good poem. I like the topic, and the way you described the feeling of being enslaved. Oh, the last thing... you could try adding an extra couple of verses (lines) to the last stanza, so that it'd mirror the first. Good job, and I hope to see more of your stuff soon.

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I know I posted this in my thread, but I want to get a more critical opinion of it. This style most truely represets my poetry, so comments on this would be the most helpful. PM or answer here, it doesn't matter.

Precious Innocence

Wrapped up in your arms tonight
Looking in your eyes
I realize I am happy
And I know the reason why

There's so many things
That we don't need to do
Won't set aside our innocence
To prove our love is true

Under a star-lit sky
We don't have much to say
But this love doesn't breed regrets
At the dawn of the coming day

We're somehow different, You and I
From the hurried rushing mass
They want to live without a care
And take love much too fast

Our kind is rare and hard to find
Pushed to the edge I fear
On the day our species died
I'm sure heaven shed a tear

-S.P.

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Above me^^ That poem, I was going to give criticism but man it was good. I sat here for 10 minutes trying to figure out what to say but I truly could not think of anything that wasnt right. Maybe a few commas. Nice job though


Heres one I just wrote. It really got to me...

Your eyes chill my soul when I look your way
So cold to your peers, they shutter with dismay,
I cant help but to remember every bruise you caused,
every muscle to flinch, and every bone to chill
I would shake with fear knowing you were out for a kill,
My mind shattered from that one lonesome night
The night you broke me, the night I lost all fight,
You still linger with me, even when Ive forgotten,
I would like to think your gone...but that will never happen.
My mind is numb, from your empty soul
Your the one that hurt me, all because I let you know I was alone
I curse your name...and still shutter at your sight,
Im far from normal...all from that one lonesome night,
That one lonesome night, you knocked on my door...
I let you in, and you got to my core.

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I know I've been to your thread too, but I can't remember if I've read this one or not. I still enjoy your style, you've a great way of writing very casually/naturally. However, you wanted a critical opinion, so I'll give you one, because I'm accommodating like that. :P

Again, I enjoy the flow of your poem a lot, but there's one outstanding problem that I noticed throughout, and it has to do with your wording. It's not entirely there composition-wise, because you switch your wording around. For example, sometimes you'll write just the main point, and get to what you really want to say, and other times you'll add extraneous words that sort of get in the way.

There is a way to use this sort of wording effectively, but I don't think that's what you're really aiming for in this piece. In the beginning you start out each line with action phrases, for example:

Wrapped in your arms tonight
Looking in your eyes
I realize I am happy
And I know... etc. etc.

This sort of writing is what makes your pieces so effective and relatable. They're simple and it makes them flow better. But toward the end you stray a bit from this clean style:

We don't have much to say
But this love doesn't breed regrets
At the dawn of the coming day... etc.

Reread this poem aloud to yourself and see if you don't get caught up around this section. Make sure you read it carefully, and not as it should sound in your head... pay attention to the way it looks on the page.

Here, especially the last two lines are far two wordy and lose your straightforward effectiveness that you started out with in the beginning. These lines just need cleaning up and editing. I'd suggest making them less wordy... try to eliminate the extra words and your "the"s... this could also be mended by splitting the lines.

For the second line I'd recommend changing doesn't to won't... you have too many syllables going on in those last two lines so you need to either cut things out or space it out more to maintain the consistency of the flow. I really don't want to give too many suggestions on what I think will sound right, because I know you have a unique writing style and it works very well for you.

The only other thing that bothered me while reading it is in your line: "Our kind is rare and hard to find" I get slightly mixed up in the rhyme within the line. Ugh that whole sentence rhymed. When you do things like this you risk sounding cheesy and commercial, not something you want to do. I would want to see you rework the words in that one to make it sound more genuine.

Your concepts and writing ability are exceptional for someone that has only recently started writing... I do hope that you develop this into a brilliant hobby, possibly even a career if you want. I'm sure you could do it. I loved your title too, btw... nice.

Oooh, very interesting and effective poem. Definitely chilled me to the bone, lol... I liked your choice of subject matter anyway, and you did well on some bits using repition... and your rhyme (while I often don't like it) works well here, I do enjoy it.

You have a few problems with contractions... particularly the "your"... it should really be "you're"... if you're ever unsure of which one to use, split up the contraction, and see which one makes more sense. Your is a possessive, while you're is really the contraction 'you are' and in all of your cases you were meaning to say "'You are' all these things." Replace 'your' with you are in the future and see if it makes more sense grammatically, if it does, use the contraction.

You had a few other technical errors... forgetting an apostrophe here and there... miscellaneous things that I won't worry about, because they aren't very detrimental to your poem in particular.

The first issue arises with your lines:

I can't help but to remember every bruise you caused,
every muscle to flinch, every bone to chill

It doesn't work. The reason why is you don't set up a preface for the line "every muscle to flinch, every bone to chill"... suppose I were to extract the phrase "every bruise you caused" and simply kept on reading. We'd be left with I can't help but to remember every muscle to flinch, every bone to chill. See why it doesn't make sense. Don't mind me, I just picked up the grammar of the English language well, so that sort of stuff just sticks out to me. What you need to do is set the beginning of that first line up for all the rest to follow. Quickly, I thought of:

I'm forced to remember how you caused every bruise,
every muscle to flinch, and every bone to chill

I dunno, the "and" is ambiguous... but that's the sort of think you should be looking for. That would sound much smoother. Even here, I'm not sure I like how the line is ending with the word bruise... you'd need to play with it.

I also don't like your use of "one lonesome night" throughout the poem. The words 'one' and 'lonesome' just don't go together smoothly and they won't roll off the tongue the way I imagine you meant them to. I can see where the idea came from, but it's not working in writing. You should either eliminate the 'one' or change the word 'lonesome'... they're too similar and sound awkward when put together like that. It doesn't add anything to the poem anyway.

Some of your lines are far too wordy. In these lines you just have too many syllables and it disrupts the flow of your words:

I would shake with fear knowing you were out for a kill,
---
Your* the one that hurt me, all because I let you know I was alone

In both of these lines you stray from your poetic form and become far too casual for the tone of the poem. When you get too wordy you'll find that your poem loses the impact you originally intended for it to have. I'll give the same advice to you as well about rereading this poem. Read it outloud... pause briefly at the end of every line, at every period, and at your ellipses (I'd suggest getting rid of some of those and replacing them with commas as well). See whether or not you get stuck up at these lines.

There's some difficulty with rewording your poem because it rhymes, but it's no big deal and can be done if you try. For the first line, it starts to lose it's effectiveness at "knowing you were out for a kill" you have to shorten this or find some other way of putting it, because it does not work.

In the second line, I'd suggest just doing something like, "You hurt me, because you knew I was alone" or "You hurt me when I told you I was alone" Or you could decide to split this up into two lines. You'd have to reconfigure your rhyme scheme, but it won't be hard... you could always make it simpler and combine two others or something. I do like the idea you were going for though... of the "you were the ONE to hurt me" and "all because I let you know I was alone"

I somehow get the feeling that by cutting out certain words it takes away from the original meaning. However, you want to avoid telling the reader what you mean verbatim... that's what it looks like is happening in these two places.

I like the idea of playing with the word "one" throughout the poem. Perhaps if you got rid of 'lonesome'... the night wasn't even so lonesome anyhow, then you could still use the word 'one' effectively and also litter it in odd places in the poem. That would be interesting. I hope that you consider revising this, because I like the idea... it's dark and all that good jazz.

End.

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This is something I think I need.

My personal thread is currently very lifeless, and I'm in need for some kind of comments, be them good or bad. Though I must admit, I feel a little nervous. There's a lot of excellent work here, and I'm wondering if I'll even compare.

At the moment, I'm reading over my works. I write song lyrics, for the record, a form of poetry, but not quite "poems." I haven't decided which I shall post. I've written 32 songs, but am still kind of new to the act. I've only been doing it for a few months.

As soon as I decide which one is worth being posted here, I will do so.

And if I had the time, I'd give some feedback myself, but I don't. X.x So, maybe I'll do that later, too.

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~Eagerly awaiting The Open Door. Sweet, sweet October 3rd...<3
~Arcane <3 Name of username, name of dog, name of band.