my snowflake

I see you in the air,
like a snowflake so fair.
delicate to the touch,
I love you very much.
Nothing can make me say,
that I promise I will stay.
And you can't sway
my love but you may.
Love me with all your heart,
and you can start
to help my days.
to help me out of this maze
that is my mind
and show me that your kind
and deep down inside
i am still alive

I would drop the rhyme. It dteracts from the overall metaphor, which is, by the way, very good. I am really impressed. Ha! If you check out my failures, you'll see what I mean.

Hi, photoboothx<3 -


Unfortunately, the discerning reader is not going to reach far beyond, 'Nothing can make me say, / that I promise I will stay.' It's not just bad --- but a very bad kind of bad. Cliched, sentimental, earnest... all of that.

I suggest you find some poets you like. You will surely find a lot of them are my favourites and other users' favourites as well -- Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes, perhaps? In my opinion, these would be a good place to begin your poetry studies. You will of course have to start reading others eventually, and start reading with a much more keen eye than you ever have read before. I imagine that this can be demanding when you're also reading and working for school, but it's too easily telling when a poet hasn't read or internalized enough good poetry. And at that level, critiquing doesn't do a helluva lot of good.

photobooth, all we have here to give is our honesty, and my honest opinion is that this isn't work I would even bother to edit. I wonder then, if this is the right place for you right now. You see, the poems you have posted seem so 'beginners-ish' after multiple suggestions for improvement that if you continue posting at this level, you will continually get slammed, and that might not be helpful right now to the poet you could become. For a beginner, this could actually be more destructive than helpful. It would behoove you to really take this advice to heart: don't continue posting work at this level--it really doesn't do anything for us or for you, and the users who tell you otherwise are not really reading and considering what you have posted--when you are capable of sitting down with a good collection of poems and figuring out for yourself what this whole mess of "Poetry" really is.

Others might be along to recommend good books to start with. On my part, I just say read those two poets again and again. Ask yourself what is it you like about them. How do they surprise you? Dissect it. What is it that the words are doing? How do they do what they do? I think there are just a bunch of basics you might need to cover, and maybe in an environment more encouraging than this poetry workshop--might I suggest the Writing Tips, Writing Activities, etc. sections? Those are all very good places for you to read about poetry and its form and structure, as well as develop an ear and an eye for what we look for when we seriously study a piece.


Take care,
Brad

I agree. There's poets and poems for whatever you're interested in - it's a world that will just keep expanding as you grow and learn. Emily Dickinson is, of course, the epitemy of poetic genius. Other greats include Wilfred Owen, Langston Hughes, Rudyard Kipling, Seamus Heaney and Dylan Thomas. My favorite anthology is called The Rattle Bag - I would highly recommend it. Some books that demonstrate how to analyze, dissect, and more thoroughly enjoy poetry are Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry and Sound and Sense. One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it knows few boundaries, and there are poems that are sympathetic to every mood or phase you will go through. If you're feeling depressed, read Sylvia Plath. If you're into witty rhymes, try Ogden Nash. Reading poetry is a delightful experience, and it honestly is the best way to improve your skills. Sorry to say it, but it's time to hit the books.

Ok, I'm gunna go through this bit by bit.

please please take time ot edit your work, it can only get better if you try hard at it.

What I liked:

"delicate to the touch"

"to help me out of this maze"

What I didn't like:

"Nothing can make me say,
that I promise I will stay. "

It doesn't make sense honey,

"and you can start
to help my days"

Read the poem out loud to yourself and see where it does and doesn't make sense.
This usually helps me.

And try to make your own imagery other than stuff thats been written beofre. Find a new word to relate a snowflake too rather than "delicate".
Something like, glistening with frost, or, A snowflake spiralling from the sky.

Try new things and experiment.

Hope this helps,

Lexy xxxx

First of all, I prefer it when each line has a capital letter. I know that's a small thing to pick up on, but I just think it looks better...

Also, I would suggest trying to write some poems that don't rhyme. The main problem here is that you seem to be concentrating so hard on making the rhyme scheme fit, that you're not working so well on the content.

Don't give up. Just try some more styles of poetry. They don't have to rhyme, and they usually sound better if they don't. See if you can make something with a rhythm, and a flow to it.

Good luck!

Kay