Nelson Mandela: The man made of peace

Nelson Mandela

A man that wanted peace

A man that wanted rights

One idea misunderstood

Twenty - seven years to fight

Eighteen years on Robben Island

Eighteen years of no reason

All because one man's thoughts

Were considered to be a treason

Black and white should be treated equal

He said they could be the same

One man's dream was told out loud

Then Nelson Mandela was sentenced to shame.

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I just wanted some people to help me out on my poetry. We're starting a poetry unit in class, so I want to get used to poetry. Tell me what 'cha think!
PS: I'm no poet, so this is kinda one of my first tries at it.

I didn't want to be the first person to comment on this, but seeing as a I love Nelson Mandela I couldn't help myself. Unfortunately, I know very little about poetry. I love to read it, but I can't write it or critique it to save my life.

However, It seems to me that you rythm is a little whack.

Vandria wrote:Eighteen years of no reason

All because one man's thoughts

Were considered to be a treason

Black and white should be treated equal

He said they could be the same

One man's dream was told out loud

Then Nelson Mandela was sentenced to shame.

I love the last two lines, but words like "then, all, because, should, could, a " these are all words that really, say nothing. If you omit them this part would go
Eighteen years, without a reason.
One man's thoughts
Were considered treason
Black and White are equal
He said they were the same
One man's dream, told out loud
Nelson Mandela was sentenced to shame

But this is the blind leading the blind; I don't know if I've steered you completely wrong, or what. I would say for your first stab at poetry it's pretty decent; no one expects you to be great at anything your first time around.
So keep rhyming away.
*****The Universe******

Though I'm not a big fan of rhyme, this was well done.
Nelson Mandela is a hugely respectable man and I/m happy to see a poem about him.

My biggest problem is your formatting. The large spaces are annoying to read and cut up your poem. Just make it normal, or it's painful to read.

Black and white should be treated equal

He said they could be the same

One man's dream was told out loud

Then Nelson Mandela was sentenced to shame.

I don't like your ending. It's sort of rushed compared to the rest of the poem. Think through your ending a little more.

Otherwise good job!

Kamas

Okay...I liked this, I really did. Nelson Mandela is a great subject for a poem. The rhyming is fairly good, but, as Kamas said, the way you spaced the lines is annoying and the extra spaces should probably be omitted.

The only thing that really bothered me was this section:

"Eighteen years of no reason
All because one man's thoughts
Were considered to be a treason"

The rhythm of this bit would be much better if you took out the "a" before "treason."

I liked the way you just did away with all punctuation. I think that really helped the piece.

Keep trying at poetry. You could get really good at it!

~RedBird

Okay...

I liked this. It could use some work, and your rhythm is a little hard to get into. But there's a great idea behind it, and Nelson Mandela is one of the most appreciated figures we have.

But your ending, like Kamas said, is a little rushed. And you seem to be ending on the low note. Nelson Mandela is now free, and has achieved something. As you seem to be trying to glorify him, maybe you could point out what he's achieved? He's an important historical figure, and you seem to be making your reader pity him, rather than admire him.

Other than that, this was good. You could maybe go over it a few more times before posting, and have a friend proof-read it or something to that effect. The whole thing seems a little rushed, and it needed just a little more time to be very good.

Thanks for posting this. It may need some work, but that's what we're for. I hope this helped.
~Grin

I don't mind the extra spaces between the words, personally. It all depends on the feel you're trying to give your readers. I put a very very slight mental paus after each individual word because of the spaces, which did two things:

1. it seemed to make every word important. Think about it. If you're talking to someone, and the word you're about to say is important or key to the conversation, you put a pause before and after it. Just a re-emphasis.

2. It also made it a choppy read. Because-- I-- was-- stopping-- after-- each-- word-- it read a bit like that.

However, if that was what your were going for, then its fine. Because you're writing on a key figure, you might want to give each word a sense of importance. However, if you do that, you might want to make the words flow together a bit more. Assonance and Alliteration, yo. You can probably Wiki them if you don't know them already.

Luck!