forever and for always

I thought my life was useless,
until you came.
My life had once been a dying fire,
but you kept the flame lit.
My life had been wandering,
lost in the dark,
until a single light brought me the right way.
it was you.
My life was falling,
until you showed me that i can fly.
And if my life starts to fade,
just the thought of you brings me back.
I didn't know how to live,
until you showed me that i can love.
I love you.
and should the tears fall,
and the rain begin to pour,
I will just hold you close,
and let you know that your mine.
Forever and for always.

This poem was good. unfortuently we can't alway's be nicy nice. First, stanzas may be usefull here. You don't have to break it up, but it's an idea. Here's my thought. I'm not perfect at doing this but you have two parts here. Or at least that's what I think.

I thought my life was useless,
until you came.
My life had once been a dying fire,
but you kept the flame lit.
My life had been wandering,
lost in the dark,
until a single light brought me the right way.
it was you.

My life was falling,
until you showed me that i can fly.
And if my life starts to fade,
just the thought of you brings me back.
I didn't know how to live,
until you showed me that i can love.
I love you.
and should the tears fall,
and the rain begin to pour,
I will just hold you close,
and let you know that your mine.
Forever and for always.

Like piepieman22 said, it would be less confusing with two or three stanzas. Other than that it was nice. I liked how it was hopeful instead of morbid and depressing like a lot of poems are. Not that there's anything wrong with that, poetry is a good way for the author to get their feelings out. It's just a nice change to hear something about the beautiful side of love every now and then.

Yeah, pace it out by using stanzas. You can clarify a lot by using good line breaks.
It is "nice" but I think it could be a lot more powerful if you added some personal images...I feel like I've read this a few times before. Try to steer clear of the flame, light, rain similes, they don't do much for originality.
Well I like where youre coming from but I do think this could use some work so good luck!

Awww... I suck at poetry but so I'm not even going to attempt to critique it. I'm just going to comment...


Awwww.

This was nice, and the enjambment worked well. Stanzas would be nice, but I also quite like it this way. I agree wuith Liz about the cliches; flames darkness, flight and rain are not overly original ways of describing the merits of love. I'd try another draft and try to use the images which you have to fish around a bit for instead of those which come to you easily, as those are the ones which are probably not at all unique.
However, I do acknowledge how hard it is to write something like you have just written here. I'm useless at love poetry in this sense (positive stuff, I guess you'd call it). I'm probably too much of a cynic. Lol. Anyway, well done, and good luck with the next draft.

Hmmm I'm not sure what I think of adding stanzas or not. I'm more concerned about the content.

Love poems, or any emotional poem, is really, really hard to write. You have to write it so that you don't look like a navel gazer, and so the reader feels. This article might help you: Emotional Poetry.

One of the larger problems with this poem is that you are doing a lot, a lot of telling, and almost no showing. People want to read a poem and be apart of it, feel something. That is very hard to do when you are telling them, and not showing them. The article will help you out, but here are some other tips I don't have in that article:

-try writing about an event, or a scene with you and your significant other that captures the moment.

-use imagery and the senses [sight, smell, taste, touch sound] to create a picture for the reader and make them feel.

Best of luck!

As always, I share Clau's view here.

I would say that if the title and last line of your poem are the lyrics of a Shania Twain song, you've gone the wrong way.

Try for something we haven't heard before. All of this stuff is awfully familiar, and I know why...because I've heard it said in Hallmark cards, country lyrics, and spilling out of the mouths of American Idol winners. This doesn't mean it's bad. It just means it's not unique. If you truly, truly want to reach a reader on a deeper level, you've got to say it in a way that hasn't been said before. Make it your own!

Keep at it.
-Colleen

I second (third?) Clau and cadmium. For a first attempt at free verse this works nicely and it's great to see a love poem that doesnt rhyme for a change. However, I would advise you to:

1. Look for more creative metaphors. As Clau said, those that come most easily are usually those which you should reject, because they're most likely to have been done before. Instead, try brainstorming what that person makes you feel, or things you associate with love, and then things you associate with those things, and so on, until you've really explored the concept thoroughly. Then think about what images and ideas best express what you're trying to say.

2. Cut down on the repetition. You've repeated the same approach several times throughout this poem and it really detracts from the impact. I think you should stop describing how bad your life was and how "you" improved it after the line "it was you". That's more than enough of that kind of thing, IMHO

3. Bring in a bit more imagery. One of the great things about free verse is that you're completely free to do as you like - in which case, you should let your imagination roam wild! Really get creative about a topic and see what happens. The most important thing is that you take your reader on a journey; through an event, an emotion, a thought, whatever. But you have to work to capture their imagination.

Overall, a nice try and an impressive first free verse poem. I'll look forward to reading some more of your work

Cheers,
~bubbles

I knew it was completely cliche but sometimes its good to bring back the classics right?

anyway, Imagery is usually my thing anyway. I will definitly take that into consideration...

darchoco wrote:I knew it was completely cliche but sometimes its good to bring back the classics right?

Ah, but when you want to bring back classic ideas, you must present them in a new way, no? People have been writing about love for as long as they've been able to write...but to write about love the same way another person did isn't really writing, it's just borrowing. It's cool to borrow, but you've still got to make it your own. Your images, words, expressions--all to express a universal, classic idea. That's what writers do.

It was very good, but too cliched. Where are the imagery? Where is the lyrical benefit? All I read was the too often used "I love you" that resonates in most lyrical average poems.

I think that the biggest problem with this is that there is no attempt to present anything other than what's on the surface. There's no concentration on word choice; there's not really any metaphore or imagery; so there's not too much that makes it a poem. Though I did like the title.

I do like this. To me though it's a lot of telling, even for a freeverse. You CAN add imagery into freeverse which would have done wonders for this poem. If imagery is your thing then you should add it here. I couldn't really get any feeling. Also you need to work on capitalization after periods. Other than that I liked it.

Keep it up!
~Rieda