Wild Roses

Roses growing wild, nature's garden,
woodlands surrounding them like a green frame
hiding the gem from the house beyond; flowers bursting forth,
held by stems covered in thorns like a porcupine.

A girl emerges between the trees, her steps cautious
as she walks to the roses, the soft blush
on her cheeks mirroring the petals under her nose.
She kneels in front of a flower and snaps the stem
between two thorns, her free hand cupping the blossom.
With her nails she strips the barbs, only the flower remaining.

Music drifts through the air from the house, entertaining her
while she waits for him to arrive. She sways to the rhythm, still feeling
his body against hers, his breath whispering for her to meet him
in the roses. He had wanted to be alone with her.

She cradles the flower in her hand, admiring the
now-flawless beauty of a rose without thorns.
She hoped his admiration would flourish
just as this rose once had.

Please forgive me, Rose - I haven't reviewed poetry in so long.

A girl emerges between the trees, her steps
cautious as she walks to the roses, her soft blush

I like this line, but the line break seems kind of jarring (between "her steps" and "cautious"). Otherwise you've had a nice and smooth, steady rhythm up until now.
Also, I think it would make more sense to say "the soft blush of her cheeks" rather than "her soft blush". But that's just opinion.

Music drifts through the air from the house beyond, entertaining her while she waits for him to arrive.

Aaand you lost me. What house? And what's with the sudden introduction of "him"? Your poem is already halfway done, so a sudden mention of a man kind of threw me off. I liked it up until this point - you used beautiful imagery to describe the wild roses, so naturally I thought it would be more of a nature-esque poem.
But love poems are alright too. Just weave the "love" aspect of the piece in a little earlier and subtler. (Well, you don't have to be incredibly subtle about it, if it is a romantic piece - just don't wait until you're almost finished with your poem to start talking about some girl's love interest.)

I also really liked your last line.

Like I said before: beautiful imagery, Rosey. Well done. The only thing I have to say is that it seems to me like you started this poem with a different idea, then changed your mind halfway through. Otherwise, it was a lovely read.


-Meg

Hey, I'm not going to nit pick, since I really can't so I'll just say a few things. I found this poem well written and very descriptive. I loved teh fact you didn't use any rhyming pattern very refreshing. To ofton here I see repetitive, hard stretched for rhymes, and this is a nice breath of air.

I also like how it tells a very short story in a beautiful new way. Who needs thousands of words to tell a tale? Certainly not you

Nice work!

~Kate~

G'day Rosey,

I'm a bit overly rusty at reviewing, so if I'm unclear in anything, feel free to send me a PM or post in my guestbook, and I'll do my best to elaborate.

The problem with this poem is that it's too tell-y. In my opinion, this reads very much like prose, meaning that the language is 'unpoetic' to say the least. You're giving us all of the story pieces by just stating them; there's very little 'exciting' words or such forth here. "Flowers bursting forth" can be exciting, dear, but the surrounding images aren't strong enough to carry a strong interest for the reader.

Along with this, remember to concentrate on your language [sentence order, coordination etc, etc.] and try to achieve the most common, most clear language style. For instance, cue your opening line...:

Roses growing wild, nature's garden,
woodlands surrounding them like a green frame

[In the first line] I'm not sure if the comma is replacing 'in' or what, but pay close attention to this sort of sentence-ordering; you pretty much have fragments here. These roses are growing wild, and what else? Nature's garden, what else? Are these woodlands surrounding the roses or the garden (because it looks like the second line is modifying the latter part of the first line)?

I also think that in some parts of this, you started drifting away from your focal point. From what I understand, your focus is these roses, and you [figuratively] dedicate a whole stanza to this girl. Don't do this! Stay with the roses, stay with the roses, because the roses, girl, and music, are all subject nouns, meaning that they are all strong enough to deserve their own poem. Use them all here, yes; but don't strictly separate them like this. Give them their moments of glory, yes, but isolating them won't help your poem, dear.

With that said, a lot of the stuff here is - to say the least- extra fluff. You can eliminate half of the telling bits in the poem and still have a good poem, see here:

A girl emerges between the trees, her steps cautious
as she walks to the roses, the soft blush
of her cheeks mirroring the petals under her nose.
She kneels in front of a flower and snaps the stem
between two thorns, her free hand cupping the blossom.
With her nails she strips the barbs, only the flower remaining.

(I'm not saying take all of the crossed out stuff out, instead, I think you should clip it down, and be quick and concise with those descriptions. They get boring fast, y'know?) The underlined part is okay; I don't especially like it, because in a way, it's tremendously boring, but in another way, it's interesting.

I must concur Meg; the part about her love interest did catch me by surprise. I, to say the least, was not expecting that at all.

You have some good bones here, with a bit of excess fat. You could stand to trim some of it down, and build a bit more on it in tying it together; for now, it's a little rough. The flower's symbolism is there, but it's not totally easy to catch, dear.

Good work, Rosey. Nice to see more of your poetry 'round here.


PM me, if you need anything. =]]

June

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Roses growing wild, nature's garden,
woodlands surrounding them like a green frame
hiding the gem from the world; flowers bursting forth,
held by stems covered in thorns like a porcupine.

A girl emerges between the trees, her steps cautious
as she walks to the roses, the soft blush
of her cheeks mirroring the petals under her nose.
She kneels in front of a flower and snaps the stem
between two thorns, her free hand cupping the blossom.
With her nails she strips the barbs, only the flower remaining.

Music drifts through the air from the house beyond, entertaining her
while she waits for him to arrive. She sways to the rhythm, still feeling
his body against hers, his breath whispering for her to meet him
in the roses. He had wanted to be alone with her.

She cradles the flower in her hand, admiring the
now-flawless beauty of a rose without thorns.
She hoped his admiration would flourish
just as this rose once had.

This whole thing is really great, I enjoyed your imagery and wording.
I would not change any of it and would not encourage you to add on either. It tells a short
story quite poetically, it's very well done.
The second stanza is the best,
continue.

Hey Rosey Posey! Here to review as always. So right off the bat, I’m going to say poetry isn’t my strongest as far as reviewing goes, but I’m gonna do what I can.

Okay, so I think the main problem hear is everything is too heavy. There are so many words that the near prose-like feel of the poem distracts from the fact that it is indeed a poem and it feels very weighted down. I’m pretty sure June was saying the same thing, but I agree that this is one of the most important things to consider.

And what’s this with a love interest all of a sudden. It seems very out of the blue and almost as if you’re trying to make the poem something that it isn’t. It began as this intimate encounter between girl and rose and turned into a wad of romantic huggabalooga…no offence.

Otherwise, I did like the general rhythm and flow of words that you used, now its just a matter of making that happen again but without so much weight. I hope I was at least a little helpful cause I know you were.

Which reminds me, thanks to you and the others’ help, I got the highest grade on my essay with a 97%. Thanks!

~lilymoore

WOW.
A brilliant poem! I have just started studying Romeo and Juliet, and this totally reminds me of it!

However, just one little thing to work on - punctuation. Make sure there is a comma/full stop at the end of each line, so your reader can breathe. I know there are other commas but it's still one of poetry's most basic rules.
Also, make sure you put a capital letter at the start of each line - if you're using Microsoft Word, this should be automatic. If not, make sure you add it on!

All in all, however, I loved it.
Keep writing!

Pgsgirl x

Good, really good
You really have whimsical writing down, and your very good at creating an atmosphere and world a reader can visit. really well done
Story wise it is kind of unclear t is and floating, the story does not go anywhere, it is a dead end.
beside that very well done

due to the moderators sharp crack whip, I came over and decided to make a reveiwing trip.

so what do we have here!?
OOH a Blank-Verse PO-EM!!!
I'm very fond of writing them!!!
the descriptions are normal and a little dim!!
however, I was enheartened by the romantic mention of "him"!!
if you had more stellar imagery or something...3
half of the PO-EM would seem like a "Much ado about Nothing"...

but,hey there's lots of grass to cut on the paper lawn..
do what true writers do and write on!!

in all honesty this is Drop-Dead poetry from dusk till dawn ( )

*snugs teh Rosey* This poem reads a lot like prose so it should probably be in the Narrative poetry section. You should also look at shortening some of your lines, you have quite a lot of unecessary words that could be replaced with visuals. Here's a few examples and some other comments:

Roses growing wild, nature's garden, [This is prose. In poetry it would more often be said as 'Wild roses pruned by nature's hand' because it says the same thing but is shorter and includes personification of nature.]
woodlands surrounding them like a green frame [An example for this line would then be something like, 'and viewed through green-framed glasses' if you wanted to be metaphorical or you could be more direct, 'and bordered by the green woodland'. What you're doing is presenting lines in passive voice but it feels slow when found in poetry. Instead of saying the hands were linked in a wide circle you should aim to say the wide circle of linking hands.]
hiding the gem from the house beyond; flowers bursting forth,
held by stems covered in thorns like a porcupine.

The only other issue I have with this is plot. There's not much of a story-line behind this poem. Pretty words and you just start to touch on emotion in places (show that more) but your only story is a girl goes out to wait for her dance partner by the roses. That wouldn't hold up as a novel and it doesn't make a poem either. You need to hint at some sort of conclusion at least. Maybe he doen't come. Maybe this is actually a memory but the poem twists and the reader discovers she is now standing there with the flower wilting in her hand and the sounds of the party have faded.

I hope this helps a little, feel free to pm me,

Heather xx