Light

I know, poetry and me don't go well, Jon told me to, so I gave it a shot. Still wanting critiques, but don't be too mean- I know it's not great.

The sunshine breaking free
Of cloud cover
And the moon gleaming
On frosty ground.

That’s what you were.

The candle breaking up the shadows
Multiplying them
Into the hundred that
Weren’t so fierce as the few.

The lamplight to turn pages to.
The fire
crackling to itself
With yellow joy.

Your smile was
A hundred thousand gleaming
diamonds.

And your eyes glittered
with the life
Of a million faraway stars.

You were my torch in the forest.
My match in the dungeon.

Then darkness, unknowing
(though not uncaring)
enveloped you.

And I struck the flint
And lit the spark
And set it to the bonfire.
Without you.

Then, when you appeared once more,
With the eyes
and the smile and the face
Made of sunrays,

I suddenly realised

that I don’t need you to be my light.
Not anymore.

Because there’s a sun and moon and stars.
And a whole world of fire
and blue lightning.

And you’re still here,
Unchanged, still glowing,
Still lighting the world.

But not for me.

I don’t need your lamp
To shed tears over.
To blow out
With racking sobs and gnashing teeth.

I can sleep in the dark now
And not dream of you

And though I still like that smile
That laugh, those bottomless eyes.

I don’t need them to guide me.
I’ve made my own light.

Stella Thomas wrote:The sunshine breaking free I like this beginning. It brings the reader in.
Of cloud cover
And the moon gleaming
On frosty ground.

That’s what you were.

The candle breaking up the shadows I actually read this stanza three times before I figured it out what it meant, and that is actually a good thing. A poem should make you think, and once I figured this out, I loved it.
Multiplying them
Into the hundred that
Weren’t so fierce as the few.

The lamplight to turn pages to.
The fire
crackling to itself
With yellow joy.

Your smile was
A hundred thousand gleaming This sounds kind of awkward. Could you just say "a thousand gleaming?" It would flow better.
diamonds.

And your eyes glittered
with the life
Of a million faraway stars.

You were my torch in the forest,
My match in the dungeon.

Then darkness, unknowing
(though not uncaring) I don't really like the use of parenthesis here. It is unlike the rest of the poem, and seems out of place. I think you could use that line without them.
enveloped you.

And I struck the flint
And lit the spark
And set it to the bonfire.
Without you.

Then, when you appeared once more,
With the eyes
and the smile and the face
Made of sunrays,

I suddenly realized

that I don’t need you to be my light.
Not anymore.

Because there’s a sun and moon and stars,
And a whole world of fire
and blue lightning.

And you’re still here,
Unchanged, still glowing,
Still lighting the world.

But not for me.

I don’t need your lamp
To shed tears over,
To blow out
With racking sobs and gnashing teeth.

I can sleep in the dark now
And not dream of you.

And though I still like that smile,
That laugh, those bottomless eyes,

I don’t need them to guide me.
I’ve made my own light.

I don't know what you're talking about. I loved this poem. I edited a few punctuation errors in bold, and made a few comments, but really, this was great. Not a lot of people can pull of the variation of lines in each stanza like you did, or the perfectly flowing free verse. I didn't actually realize until the end that it was free verse, because it flowed so well. There were a few lines that were slightly off, but not so much that they need to be changed. Good idea, and great extended metaphor!

Stella Thomas wrote:The sunshine breaking free
Of cloud cover
And the moon gleaming
On frosty ground.

Might as well say this now: capitalizing the first letter of every line is not necessary and at worst, makes the poem look ugly and written by an amateur at the craft. It can be done well, but here it just seems like you took the automatic edits made by Microsoft Word and pasted it on YWS without thinking of why those letters were capitalized. There seems to be no underlying reason nor aesthetic weight to it, so make those letters all lower-case.

That’s what you were.

Is this poem going to be one about how much you were betrayed by this one guy and how badly it hurt and how you're moving on blah blah blah? Because I have the sinking feeling it is, and having a phrase like "you were so and so" bears a bad omen for the rest of the poem. Don't address people directly unless you've really clearly thought about it and considered that its going to make your poem sound like a pop song by Miranda Cosgrove.

The candle breaking up the shadows
Multiplying them
Into the hundred that
Weren’t so fierce as the few.

I was going to mention this in the first stanza but this is getting even worse as the piece progresses. Your breaks are random, something I would expect out of a first-time poet who thinks that making a new line randomly every few words does a good poem make. It doesn't. Your poem suffers from this, and if you can sincerely justify why you've made the line breaks as you have, its not showing in the poetry itself.

The lamplight to turn pages to.
The fire
crackling to itself
With yellow joy.

Your smile was
A hundred thousand gleaming
diamonds.

And your eyes glittered
with the life
Of a million faraway stars.

Is it possible to make metaphors any more blindingly obvious and sickeningly sappy as has been done here? The fire crackling to itself makes no sense; how can a fire crackle to "itself" instead of...what? It can't point the direction of its crackle, and even though I know that's a personification, you're stretching this beyond reason.

The diamond and star nonsense has been done before and I was thoroughly unimpressed by how you haven't added anything to the metaphors; you just stuck them in and left them there. Take those two stanzas out and come up with something original. No "your eyes were like blue pools of water" or "your hair was as soft as silk'. Original.

I'm not giving the rest of this a line-by-line critique. It suffers from the same mistakes I've pointed out above; most of the time you're cutting off your stanzas and lines at points that make no sense to the reader's eye, and other times you compare the person with objects and concepts that have been done to death before. If you really loved and cherished this piece, I would say something generic about working on it, editing it, and making it sparkle, etc. But because you apparently have just started writing poems and this wasn't that important a piece to you (I'm assuming based on your tone), throw it away and write something fresh. Even if its about mundane problems and issues in life, make it fresh by using metaphors only you've come up with and ways of showing your life to the reader so that s/he has to actually think about it.

Hope that helped.

Hi Stella! Thank you for offering me your work to review - I'm much grateful!
So, onto it!

The sunshine breaking free
Of cloud cover
And the moon gleaming
On frosty ground.

This is a good start. It sets the mood a bit.
Comma at the end of the first and second line. As Galerius has mentioned, you don't need to capitalize every first word of a line. I might even advise you not to, when the previous line ends with a comma.

The candle breaking up the shadows
Multiplying them
Into the hundred that
Weren’t so fierce as the few.

The line's break are a bit strange, here.

I suddenly realised


that I don’t need you to be my light.
Not anymore.

I don't think that huge gap is necessary.

And I struck the flint
And lit the spark
And set it to the bonfire.
Without you.

I assume you add 'and' for a more dramatic effect, but I would cut the first two out.

Well, I didn't had many nit-picks. the only thing I noticed was your punctuation. I'm a grammar freak.
Anyway, it was good. The end was very good. It wrapped everything up. I just think you could use a bit more imagery.

That's it, dear!
*Kat*

You are right. It's not the best peice of poetry in the world. But it's not the worst.

You can still picture and feel the emotion.

It could be worse.

Keep at it. You can get better. If you want.

I thought that it was good. But that's me, and I don't write much poetry. I'm a story kind of guy. But I thought it was well done, it flowed nice and had good descriptions and meaning.

Stella! I really liked this! (Although remember I know squat about poetry)
I loved the story behind it. She had someone she depended on, and whom she loved, but soon she begun to realise that she didn't need this person because she was strong enough to look after herself.
I can really relate to this, and wish I was as strong as she is at the end of the entire poem, able to be her own person and not need anyone to depend alot etc.

I can't say much about the structure since I might tell you something wrong. I think you do need to go through this with a fine toothed comb to find those one or two silly mistakes!

Awesome job!

xxMimz xx

I think the emotion of the poem conveys nicely. I like how you kept the theme of lighting going throughout the poem. I don't think the flow was quite right on some of the stanzas, mainly the first one.

The sunshine breaking free
Of cloud cover
And the moon gleaming
On frosty ground.

I think maybe some words should be rearranged or changed out. Besides that I think the poem good.