ode to an alienated lover

This is really good, and you use some great vocabulary words in there. They make it more... poetic... but it also sometimes confuses the reader. Another thing I noticed is that you sometimes started the lines uppercase and sometimes you started it lowercase. Did you do this on purpose? Other then that, it was a fantastic poem; full of feeling! Keep up the good work!

I love reading this poem it was beautiful. Keep writings

hmm. i like it. but i don't understand it, not really. maybe it's just my comprehension skills (or lack thereof), but i can't figure out what it's telling me, other than the obvious. was this girl dating a man quite a bit older than her, and that's why she was naive and he "shaking with hunger"? (creeeeppyyy, lol).
was there some underlying message i just didn't catch?

Hi iQuippie,

This piece suffers from a sliding hill upon which it clings desperately with dirty nails, trying to ascend liquid mud that once used to make up the composition of a proud dirt-brick fortress. That is to say, it decomposes from something lyrical and possibly beautiful to a tedious description of your woes.

iQuippie wrote:When we were young, we fell in love,
I, an outcast, and you, wildfire.
In the midst of summer's hot, breathy silence,
I let you get closer than anyone had ever been.
You held my hands
and kissed my whitish skin
while I stumbled farther into your wake.

I was still naive when you began to pace the floors,
I, just a child, and you, an urbane, trapped soul
grasping at the promise of something larger.
You patiently awaited my return each night,
while silently shaking with hunger.

This is a microcosm of the problem. The first stanza is good enough; the wildfire terminology works well with the hot and breathy, summer, etc. The last part of that stanza starts to decline, however, when you immediately leap into the telling and not showing of the material. "I let you get closer than anyone had ever been" is an unfortunate example.

The second stanza reminds the reader of an animal, which I expect you wanted it to. However, you need to investigate deeper into your own analogy, connect it to the warmth and lazy, foggy heat of summer that you described above. A panther in the autumn sun, growling as it lounges on the leafy branch of a resurrected tree. A lizard, snapping at the spiders scuttling around it on a baked rocky platform as it eyes the jackrabbit. Something that will show the reader that you know what you're talking about and aren't afraid to elaborate.

In the heat of mid-August, reality dawned,
I, bathed in innocence, and you, bearing the weight of my ignorance.
In a foolish attempt to comfort myself, I liberated our secret lives,
Proclaiming my love to the world.
You struck me, screaming goodbyes.

I see you, sometimes, at the beckon call of others,
They, fools in paradise, and you, nothing but an abusive lover.
I try not to smirk,
knowing you're still mine at the end of each arduous day.

More of the same, except that this time you abandon all pretense of poetry in the third stanza with the "proclaiming my love to the world" nonsense. How? How does it happen? Why is it such a shattering moment that the reader should care? Show us. Make us feel it, press it against our beating flesh, try to grab at the blood within. The same applies to the fourth stanza, which admittedly was better than the third, although that's not saying much. The reader isn't stupid. He can understand that this person is an "abusive lover" without you plastering it so bluntly.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Hey Quippie!

First of all, the poem's text is hideously small. I can barely read it. I don't know if this is your attention (maybe you don't want me to read it?) but if you do want people to read it, the regular size is generally the best way to go.

For this poem, you give out all these metaphors, but you never really use any of them, which is really sad... it's like you're throwing it away because you don't need them anymore. How are you an outcast? How is he wildfire? It's those sorts of things that you want to use more in poetry, not less!

Also, the abusive lover... how is he abusive? It looked like all he did was break up with her. That's hardly abusive. Break ups can be terrible, of course, and cause a whole lot of bitterness, but that doesn't mean they're abusive. So, if you want to use this image, then describe what you mean by it!

See you around!

I definately like this poem,
''When we were young, we fell in love,I, an outcast, and you, wildfire.In the midst of summer's hot, breathy silence,I let you get closer than anyone had ever been''.
That intro is beautiful, the language isnt hard but it isnt simple either.
You've painted a lovely picture,
Keep up the writing,

My god... this is fantastic.
I am in love

My god... this is fantastic.
I am in love

Interesting poem. Actually reminds me of someone else's summer love. It actually matched emotion for emotion pretty well. Except, their's ended happily and is still going on, I think. So you've done a good job with making this poem easy to relate to for the readers. Even though I haven't experienced either half of the poem quite the way you're describing it, I can still imagine it clearly in my head what it must be like.

Proclaiming my love to the world.
You struck me, screaming goodbyes.

That seemed awkward and forced. As though it was there for the rhyme, or as though, in order to keep the syllable count consistent, you had to smoosh an idea to cram it into a smaller space. Might want to work on that.

Also... is this about a vampire? I'm drawing some parallels.

Not bad,

There are things I like about this -- such as the elegance in some of the words, the flow, the creativity-- and there are others that I don't like -- such as the common place metaphors and themes of love-poems that this carried.

The problem with love poems is that they almost all fall into the same pattern. You have more potential here than some of the others I've read in recent times, but you're not doing enough with it, dear. You need to make a strong effort to have this shine and stand forth.

As Snoink touched on, we need to know why you're calling him abusive, because this just strikes the chord of post-breakup verbal abuse from one to another, and it's strongly worthless because it dominates precious wordspace! You don't need to stay so much on this -- move on, and give us some fresh images about luuurve.

June

Hi, I'm Grin, stalker of the Narrative Poetry forum

Right. This is good. I liked it. But I do have my points of improvement, as always...

You've got no pattern. I'm seeing that a lot around here, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of Narrative conspiracy that I'm unaware of but I couldn't read it aloud with the comfort that I get when I read most published poems. Your verses and lines are different lengths, and your rhyme scheme is all over the place.

This should be rhyming. It often makes a poem much harder to write, but any rhyme scheme - even a simple ABABCDCD - would be good for what you've got. Your rhyming in the first verse is ABCDEDF which is a little confusing.

But - big 'but' on its way here - this could be good. You just need to tweak a little so that you have some sort of system, because at the moment, it's lines on a common subject, put together. But this will be good very soon, I'm sure of that.

Hope I helped
~Grin

I think cheesy found an accidental rhyme, because I certainly didn't see it.

iQuippie wrote:You struck me, screaming goodbyes.

I actually really liked this line; and as always, I'm out of tune with everyone else's feelings.
Oh, well. Besides that and the fluency problem mentioned above, I really liked this piece. Your hot setting was interesting, as were your last lines

iQuippie wrote:I try not to smirk,
knowing you're still mine at the end of each arduous day.

I really liked this piece. It had enough imagery and explanation for my taste, but... that's just me.
anyways, keep up the great work,
Empress

Hello.

I'm not really sure how I felt about the poem; I liked the delivery of the idea, but not so much the idea. It wasn't exactly a bad idea. It just wasn't something I'd normally choose to read. Overall: I'm leaning more toward I liked the poem.

However, as always, there are ways you can improve. This is what I think:

When we were young, we fell in love,
I, an outcast, and you, wildfire.
In the midst of summer's hot, breathy silence,
I let you get closer than anyone had ever been.
You held my hands
and kissed my whitish skin
while I stumbled farther into your wake.

I don't really like the adjective "whitish." It makes me think of a vampire (or, if this is a vampire poem, make it clear.) Really, nobody's skin (without either makeup or a pigment disorder) is whitish. There's always some undertone. So...either vampire or dead. But that's just me.

In the heat of mid-August, reality dawned,
I, bathed in innocence, and you, bearing the weight of my ignorance.
In a foolish attempt to comfort myself, I liberated our secret lives,
Proclaiming my love to the world.
You struck me, screaming goodbyes.

This seems to read more like prose than poetry to me. The second and third lines are really long, though they weren't in the first and second stanzas.

I see you, sometimes, at the beckon call of others,
They, fools in paradise, and you, nothing but an abusive lover.
I try not to smirk,
knowing you're still mine at the end of each arduous day.

I agree that "an abusive lover" should be shown rather than told. I didn't see anything that person did to make them seem abusive.

I, an outcast, and you, wildfire.
In the midst of summer's hot, breathy silence,

and

grasping at the promise of something larger.

I did really like the imagery in these lines. The rest should be as strong as that.

All in all, it was an interesting read. With some work, this can be awesome.

Your use of language in this comes across as very well written, and the poem was engaging to read. Best of all, it didn't have a quality of being trite, despite the story not being particularly unique.

I, an outcast, and you, wildfire.

This is an excellent line. The choice of "wildfire", though unusual, fits perfectly; it sets the stage for our perspective of the lover.
Overall, I was impressed with how you wrote the poem; towards the end, in the final stanza, things begin to teeter slightly. The use of "smirk" is rather distracting and rather weakens the poem than strengthens it.

As for the story line, the themes of abuse, innocence, and sensuality had an authentic feel. However, (and this is personal preference, of course) the story did not really appeal to me.

Thank you for sharing this with us.
–antimelrose