1. When I Shall See Your Face

Hello, Here's two poems i wrote and i'm very much in need of your critique because it really helps a lot when writing. Any critique is welcomed.


1. When I Shall See Your Face

Those days
When, laying on my hands,
You sipped from
My golden gourds.

Then,
Your feet became strong
And out of my hands
You wandered from me.

And now,
You are so far away from me
Not even an emblem of you is left
Nor an image of your face.

But that day
When i shall see your face again,
My blessed heart shall be revived
And my mind restored.
For then
I'll know i have a son indeed.


11. My Friend

Oh!
How i stand before you
Watching the digger-men
Drop you into the earth.
On a thinking spree i go
And out of my mind's eye
I see ourselves.
When on the mountains we played
And the valleys were our
Hideandseek places.
We rolled on the sands
And laughed at the chirping of the birds.

In the waters of time we swarm,
picking and dropping
as we sailed through.
Now you go home to mother
With I alone behind.
I wish i could go with you
My friend,
But then,
Life goes on.

Capitalize those I's. If it was intentional, capitalize them. If it was unintentional, capitalize them. Always, always capitalize the letter 'I' when left by itself.

These are interesting poems; the first about a mother seeing her son slip away, and the second (I think) about a boy who is at the burial service for a dead friend. Both are very simple, and I like that a lot. However, I didn't feel any power behind the words. Rather, they seemed forced, and unfortunately I don't know how to fix that other than continuing to work on these poems.

Yet, I really did enjoy the second stanza of the poem "My Friend." The last four lines worked especially well, and I think the entire poem itself would be better with just the second stanza.

Overall, I liked these. They're simple without pretending to be something more, and there's something about how you refer to certain things (i.e., "golden gourds" and "digger-men") that lends these poems a certain charm.

Hey there PraiseJoe!

June here, and I'm going to review these poems for you.


1.

The first was very good. I mean really, really good. Like, Brilliant. At first, I was confused as I read it, but as I continued to read through it, everything became clearer. I love the way you led up to the end. You captured my interest at the first stanza, and sustained it through the poem. Great job with that. I have nothing negative to say about it and there's nothing to nitpick about here other than the "I"'s which Nate already pointed out. Great job.


2.


The second poem is great. I like it a lot; I can certainly tell that a lot of thought was put into this-- it shows. The first stanza does seem a bit forced, but the second stanza is great. It seems somewhat relaxed, and sweet. Great, great job here.

These were a good read. It's been a long time since I read poems like this.


I'd love to see more of your work.

xxJune