"The paper burns..."

"The paper burns, but the words fly away." -Akiba Ben Joseph

Like a white pidgeon it flutters
down, unsuspecting, to his hands.
A sigh it utters,
hanging open like a snowy feather,
words painted thereon.
In all the rush and fervor he mutters,
but an instant to read the line
from what he dragged out of the gutters.

Its fellows bombard his shoulders,
arms, upturned face, and body.
The line he read in wonder
blazed in his mind, stamped there
with fiery steel.
With the tinderbox he blunders,
finally striking a lucky blow.
Outside it thunders.

He's set it successfully now.
The white pidgeon alights,
screeching betrayal, and with a bow
respectful of its splendor,
he leavces.
Red blossoms appear and flow
over everything, a rippling, creackling, tide.
He stands aloof and watches what he started glow

and vanish.

Great quote!

The line break is awkward in line one. Unless you're trying to achieve some sense of rythm or ryhme I haven't picked up on, leave "down" on the first line.

"words painted thereon." Thereon is an odd word choice. I feel like it doesn't fit with the sense of the poem. I would say, "words painted on wing." Or something along those lines.

Okay, now I noticed the rhyme, but it's my opinion that it doesn't work well with this poem. It's not in any particular format that I recognize so I would ditch the rhyming and replace some of the more awkward words with some better fits, and fix line breakes like mentioned before.

"The ine he read in wonder[s]s[/s]" No 's.'

"He's set it successfully now." When I read "he's" I generally think of it as the contraction for "he is," but that wouldn't make sense here unless you mean it to be "he has." I would suggest just writing out "he has" to avoid confusion.

"screeching betrayal..." Pidgeons screech? Haha! I though they more sort of cooed... but whatever! It's poetic. ^_^

"he leav[s]c[/s]es." Just a typo, should be "leaves."

Nice! I really liked the feel of this. Very poetic and you have great imagery. It could use some working on to make it better, but god start! I would really like to see this edited! Keep writing Adna!

~Yoyo

Unfortunately, I couldn't access your link from the chatroom, so I'm just going to assume that your most recent poem is the one you wanted me to review.

Anyway, you have some good stuff here. Your rhyming scheme is unique and reminds of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven for some reason. I thought your blending of imagery and rhythm was admirable.

However, I don't think it did much for the poem. This was a classic approach to a new idea; something very hard to accompish. While I feel you did well writing this with a rhyming quality, I fell that you could have done better, for one by leaving out the A-B-A-C-D-A-E-A line format. For the most part, you manage to keep up a steady flow, but something about the way you structured this diminished the meaning of the poem itself. Think about wiping out the rhyming and instead using a bit more vocabulary. I like to see unexpected words used when I read a poem.

If you plan on retaining the rhyming scheme, I noticed a problem with your second verse. It doesn't follow the same pattern set up by the first and third verse. Instead of A-B-A-C-D-A-E-A, you slipped into A-B-C-D-E-C-F-C. It kind of screws up the flow entirely. If you meant to have this pattern change, more power to you, but it doesn't work.

from what he dragged out of the gutters.

The meter is off here. Consider: from what he dragged from the gutters.

Anyway, a good effort. Keep writing poetry, though. You're good at it.

-Kylan

I can *tell* that this poem in pretty awesome, seeing as how you're always so... professional-ish. But I sort of didn't understand some of it. Like, it rhymed and such which was a nice attempt but I didn't really understand what was going on in the poem.

"In all the rush and fervor he mutters,"

Who is talking here? The boy or the pigeon? And is that who the main subject of the poem is?

From what I've read over.. the boy lights the pigeon on fire... isn't that nice of him? And for now let us get off the subject of the poem and get onto the vocabulary use and word choice. 9 out of freaking' ten. Keep at poetry! As I've told you, I AM dense so therefore I usually can't understand (why, that's like the 4th time I've used "understand") what some poems are about... so yes. But great job all in all! Great job! Keep writing, you're really good!!

Ahh yes I got the typo, thats the only one I think.


Overall I enjoyed the fact that you made a poem from a quote, a nice idea.


It's clear from this that your vocabulary is quite excellent
'The line he read in wonder
blazed in his mind, stamped there
with fiery steel. '

I loved this line, beautiful.


I agree with Yoah, while the words are perfect, the ryhtm is somewhat off, but saying that you've doen a better job than myself so congratualtions.