If they would, would you?

If they jumped on a broken bridge, would you jump too?
If they broke up a great marriage, would you help too?

If they began to break my heart, would you break it too?
Or did you just do that cause you can?
Or because I don't matter to you?

If they were to kill a small cute kitten, would you help too?
If they were to lock up a girl that was smitten, would you too?

If they were to make me sad, would you too?
Or did you just do that cause you can?
Or because you knew you wouldn't feel bad?

Okay!

So, hi! I just had a few quick comments. This was alright; it's certainly not awful by any standards. However, I still think that there is so, so much more that you can do with this. Poetry is something that is easy to write, but it is hard to write well. I still struggle with it myself, and I've been writing it for almost two years now?

Here, you have a good idea, but it doesn't flow or have much rhythm, and we also don't really get a sense of an image. We just have the narrator speaking to a 'you' about various situations. First, focus on what you want to say, what you want the overall message of this poem to be. I can kind of get a sense of it, but it's hard to grasp. Then create your analogies/situations for the narrator to tell 'you' about, and it will make more sense.

Once you've got that, try to focus on an image to bring the reader into your poem and make them fully appreciate/savor it. Where are these characters? What do they look like? I would try to go into detail into some of the specific memories they have shared. Maybe, instead of saying, "If they jumped on a broken bridge, would you jump too?" describe the bridge. Is it over a street, a lake? I would also go into more depth about who 'they' is! It may not seem like much, but it's things like that which make your poem memorable.

Once you focus on your images, your rhythm will be easy but you still have to pay attention to it. I write free-verse because it's the easiest to do for me, but it can also be easier to slip up and make things seem like stanzas of prose. When you're finished, I would read the poem aloud then ask yourself how it felt. Was it clunky, or was it easy to read from beginning to end?

Finally, I just wanted to refer you to this board, which is full of helpful tips and articles about different aspects of writing poetry. If you find, that, for whatever reason, a poem isn't working out for you, learn from the experience, and move on. One of the best things that helps you get better is practice.

Hope this helps you; feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions.

~ Elinor

Okay, so I'm going to agree with Elinor Brynn a lot here. This poem was definitely not bad, but that doesn't mean that it can't be improved. The problem was that it lacked the mpphhh!!! that a subject like this needs (mmphhhh!...well, that's a helpful adjective O_o). Basically it just didn't have the power to really make it convincing. That's the problem with asking so many questions. Another thing Elinor Brynn already pointed out is that this also leaves imagery a little empty. It's important that we can really view the world you're in...and yes, poetry like stories has its own form of a world...and share the vision you have. It ended with "too" constantly and I thought that was also a little distracting. But you know what? There's definitely potential. Just keep building on your writing, and you'll get there.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver

Hi there. I'm Lavvi and here to review.

So, to me, this just felt like a bunch of questions divided into pairs/groups and posted as poetry. It felt like a survey and I need to answer them. Poetry should also have other things than questions. It bores the reader because they know, line after line, it's technically the same thing over and over again.

We also need to build on imagery. Because it's just questions at the moment, there's little for the audience to truly visualize.

Yours,
Lavvi

Alright, I feel as though you've put a bit too much questions in your poem, a few is good, but a whole poem shouldn't just be about queations. It shoud have emotion and story behind it. Your poem have that, I just feel as though they are hiding beneath the questions and also, it's currently it's somewhat vague and a little bit hard to grasp. However, I think you can fix that by stating your emotions and the events in plain words, rather than hiding them behind the questions.
Now, onto something else, the second stanza was brilliant, even though it was alll made up of questions. I guess that's because I can feel yor emotions behind it.
So, what I'm trying to say is, give the poem a story and don't use to much questions. If you do that, the poem willl be indefinitely enchanted and better. Keep up the good work!

Hello there,

In theory this kind of writing could work but basically this is just a bunch of questions and not really a poem. Still I did like it but I still think there is a long way to go. I liked the first set of lines but then after that the poem lost it's flow and the lines were all just grouped together in a random order which was really not good for the end result of this.Another thing, this is really short I think a few more lines would have maybe added a bit more poet ism into this. Generally I did like this though and I do think it has a lot of potential.

From CuteJackRussell