Deceptive Romance

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A painful blossom it steals your heart.
Binds you in illusion.

Its fragrance sweet, as though a rose,
Betrayal of the promise given.

Alluring, your soul is taken,
But passions left ignored.

Thorns scratch, blood weeps,
Precious hope burned to ashes.
Last edited by Matthews on Sat Jan 29, 2011 4:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.




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Hi Lydia! (I take it that's your name.) Welcome to YWS. It's a pleasure to have you here. Now, I don't know much about poetry, so bare with me here. I'm not totally incompetent though, so lets see how this goes.

My first impression of this is that it is a nice, but safe and rather unoriginal poem. I like your word usage; it's very flowery, which matches the poem well. It just feels like I have read it before. It needs more imagination pumped into it. Right now it is safe and clean, but you can make it "wow!" and sparkle-y. Allow me to comment on your poem, now.

A painful blossom it captures you;
binds you in illusion.
Nice intro, but add a comma in between blossom and it, so it is grammatically correct.


Fragrance sweet as an enchanted promise. "enchanted promise seems cliche and a little forced here. Try using a different simile. It's up to you.

Thorns scratch; blood weeps.
Hope is burned to ashes. You sure use a lot of semicolons. Using too many can make the poem monotonous to read. Don't be afraid of the comma!

Alluring on it consumes your soul;
passions left ignored. Nice, but what passions? Maybe another word choice here?

Red as though a rose; "Red as though a rose" can be rephrased to "As red as a rose". It will sound better that way. I think you could try a more original simile though.
heat blazes in contempt.

Spurned once more in depths of agony;
thoughts a jumble are. <--I have mixed feelings about this line. Did you intend to make that sentence jumbled up? If you did, that is a really cool idea, just make it so it's more obvious that the thoughts are jumbled up and it just isn't a grammatical error. Something like "jumbled are thoughts my", or something.

Brambles choke; a dream fades. Nice metaphor! :D

Pricked in shame and silence. Meh, I think this isn't the tone you want to go for. I have the feeling this poem is about someone, an addict, maybe, who has lost his or her way in the world. If she is being mocked, you didn't mention it earlier, which gives this an abrupt feel that seems like it has nothing to do with the rest of the poem. Does that make sense? :P


OVERALL: Very nicely done, Lydia. I liked this. The metaphors were quite nice. It's just that, originality wise, its not impressive. You can work on that by making your similes more creative, or maybe tweaking the feel of the poem. But technically, I loved this. In my opinion, your semicolon use was a bit heavy, even if this poem followed a particular pattern. You may want to ease up on that.

Keep it up, Lydia. Don't stop writing, please.

Esther
It's writing prompt week on my blog a very random pickle!:
http://veryrandompickle.blogspot.com/




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I agree with Esther on the originality aspect. Don't be afraid to branch out and try new things; experimentation will lead you to things you might have never otherwise encountered.

Fragrance sweet as an enchanted promise.

Try reading this line aloud. Did you stumble? I know I did. I suggest deleting the "an" as "an enchanted" does not flow well. Better yet, getting a bit more creative with the syntax is another option. I suggest "Fragrance, sweet enchanted promise."

Alluring on it consumes your soul;

"Alluring" is misused in this line. While a thesaurus provides many options, it is always best to check that the usage and meaning of the word you plan to use by consulting a dictionary.

thoughts a jumble are.

Personally, I prefer "a-jumble", though I can see why you have a space instead.

Overall, I noticed that you have punctuation at the end of every line. Why? It is unnecessary and breaks up the flow of the poem, especially since you've overused/abused semicolons. Poetry generally follows the same conventions of punctuation as regular prose; you should be able to rewrite your poem as prose and still be able to read it smoothly. Punctuation has a huge impact upon poetry, and having punctuation that seems off will throw your poem off to your reader.

I suggest you punctuate your poetry a bit more conventionally and stay away from semicolons until you know how to properly use them.

Good luck with writing.
Secretly a Kyllorac, sometimes a Murtle.
There are no chickens in Hyrule.
Princessence: A LMS Project
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The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening