TO MY LOVE

To My Love

You are my passion, my love
So hold me very tight
You are the one sent from above
To help me through this cursed night

You are my soul, my love
So don’t ever let me go
My fears you get rid of
And this you need to know

I will be there for you
until the very end
You are not just my lover
You are my best friend

You are everything, my love
My sun on a cloudy day
My love you have all of
I hope you never go away.

please comment!

A. The Title: Please do not put your title in all caps. If it's a good title, it'll catch the reader's eye without resorting to such amateur tricks. Also, caps-lock is the online version of screaming--and you really don't want to scare off your readers, now, do you?

B. The Poem: Stanza by stanza analysis, woot!

1. Punctuation--Where is it? You have a total of three commas and one period in a sixteen-line poem. Impressive. And frightening. Punctuation is your friend! Your best friend, in fact, as a poet. Words are important--but it's easy to get the hang of choosing the right words. Punctuation dictates how readers view the words, which ones are emphasized, where they pause and where they go on and on and on just building up steam until finally... you release the tension. By leaving all punctuation out of your poem, you've effectively sapped it of all emotion. This is as dry as toast--and not even particularly good toast.

2. Cliches--"Sent from above," "My fears you get rid of," "I will be there for you/until the very end," "my sun on a cloudy day." What's wrong with these? They're all cliches. I have--and I'm sure you have--seen them in a thousand and one places, even in different languages sometimes. If that's the case, then unless you have a very original way of expressing the cliche, or it's used in a self-effacing or self-aware way, it should be avoided.

Lessons so far? Punctuation is good; cliches are bad.

3. Rhyming--Please please PLEASE do not rhyme unless it naturally flows. This is painfully forced; there are places you've had to contort the syntax just to get it to fit, and even then it adds nothing. Why inflict this on your reader?

4. Originality--All right, I've been a little harsh. If I have, though, it's because I can see that while you're still a novice at poetry, you've got a solid grasp of language and flow. Flow--that's one of the key things. You get flow down, and pay attention to the other elements, everything else will follow.

What you need now is something original, something vivid, something tangible and concrete that you can sink your teeth into. For now, eschew poetry about things as intangible as emotions; go for the tactile. Choose something, an object, and write a poem about it. A friend of mine, for a college English course, wrote a poem about an orange cup and it ended up being an ode to a failed one-night stand; he won an award and $300. So start with the solid, then move to the nebulous.

Keep writing. Looking forward to watching your progression. =)

Fand

I was so ready to critique this until I scrolled down and discovered that Fand said everything I wanted to say.

Read over her advice on originality. This poem could apply to any person in any loving relationship right now. Some people would say, "Ooh, that's good. It's so easy to relate to, so broad in its scope that it can apply to anyone."

But they miss the point. The idea is that all readers should be able to connect to and understand poetry; that part is true. But it should not be broad in the sense that things are so loosely described and abstract that everyone can connect.

I can say, "I love you," and someone who reads the statement will know what I'm talking about. But will he/she really care unless I say something more? Probably not. If I were writing a poem about someone I love, I would include specifics:

Why does your speaker love this person?
What is so special about "my love"?
How does this person make the speaker feel?

And one rule: The answers to these questions cannot include Hallmark card or American-Idol-winner cliches. You've got to say it in a way that no one else can say it while still describing an emotion everyone can connect to...if that makes any sense.

Good luck!
-Colleen

thx for the critiques, guys!
for fand, the title was not meant to be "screaming". I just wrote it because I always title my poems/songs in capslock.
but anyways, thx for the critiques, I will have a rewrite on soon!

TheForgottenAuthor wrote:thx for the critiques, guys!
for fand, the title was not meant to be "screaming". I just wrote it because I always title my poems/songs in capslock.
but anyways, thx for the critiques, I will have a rewrite on soon!

A piece of general advice:
Caps lock tends to scare people away. The subject line of your poem is all you have to promote it to a potential critiquer or at least reader. Caps tend to come off as desperate and childish. If you want to set the title apart from the poem, bold is much easier on the eyes.

I look forward to your edit.

-Colleen

P. S. And type out "thanks" in the future. This is a writing forum, so respect the English language!