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Hi there.
I admire what you're doing. Trying to evoke fear. But I wasn't afraid, reading this, and I have an idea why. It was the length. In my opinion, evoking fear in a reader is almost impossible, because fear is so personal and based on instinct. You can, however, evoke worry, anger and compassion. So poems of this sort should be either wickedly short or epic-length. For instance, let me take this opportunity to show off a haiku of mine of which I am so very proud:

Heart held on my sleeve,
I advance bravely into
A storm of arrows.

But I think there is enough if your poem for an epic. Really. One of those poems where you don't want it to be over because you've come to care about the characters, but that you want to read as quickly as possible because you NEED to find out how it ends. Like Alan Ginsburg's "Howl". Like, who is this brave knight? What is he going up against and why? What god is he alluding to in the end? I'd love to help you if you decide to lengthen the poem, so PM me, okay?
Toodles!

Hello there!

I like the idea and such. The image of the broken bones scattered everywhere was cool, and let's face it... monsters eating up people is a subject which is always cool! However, this is where I raised my eyebrows:

Behold!
I say with hand outstretched,
but truth be said
No need for this command there was
For all the simple men in this foray
Did moan and simper and clamor for revenge

This didn't seem right. And I think it goes down when you say, "but truth be said/no need for this command there was." If no command was necessary... why did you say it? In fact, why is he saying it? Here might be a good chance to have the narrator rally up his men and convince him to continue on. Simpering and clamoring for revenge... no offense... is terrible tactics. It would be much more useful to calm down his men from that sort of fear and then to build up the men again. Plus, he would be a much better leader.

Also, I don't like the title. Courage is more of the theme than fear.

Good luck with this poem!

It read like a brief passage from one of the epics of the bible.

that or one of the popular gorifying tales of the old knights.

There was a sence of dread in there, but it really all boiled down to what you really wanted to get forth, which was a kind of fear that is then replaced with heroism.

The heroism is what kind of ruined the fear.

This was a good peice, definately.
It just diddnt deliver the emotional blow that it could have, I mean de scriptions of death and weakness among men are all well and dandy, but really there was no expansion on it.

It was still a good work.

Nice poem.

Good imagery. Particularly like the line, "The slither of a belly on the moss" because of how clearly it conveys the image you are trying to describe. It also goes along with the feeling of the poem, adding to the tension.

I would suggest adding grammar, though. As it is, I got so frusterated trying to make sense of where one sentence ended and another began, I eventually just put in in MS word and removed all formatting. Once it was in non-poetry format, I went in and added commas and periods, then put the line breaks back in so I could read it.

Regarding method here... I'd agree with Snoink, save that if something is coming for them, something that they can't see, then it's probably not the best time for him to give a rousing speech. He's probably right to hush them up and bid them listen for it. At the same time, the way they are, they look like they'll perish anyway. So hmm.

If you are doing a re-write of something like an epic from the bible, then you can keep to it. You might want to make it more clear that that's what you're doing, though.

I don't know... can poetry have plot holes?

Hey, Nap!

A pretty scary poem here. Interesting.

Can marrows split open? Marrows are what's in the bone, so by the time it splits open, you know, you're looking at the marrow.

Classic language; I like it. Adds a nice touch to it, but where are you going with it, dear? Focus! It's like, you have an idea but you clutter the images and all a little too closely, and while it's a nice breath, we cannot exactly get a solid idea that's going on here. Take it a little slower, dear, and organize this out.

June

Hi there, I'm Grin, your friendly neighbourhood obsessive critiquer of Narrative for the week.

Well... wow. You have some excellent imagery here, and I'm slightly creeped out by this, which seens to be the point.

You seem to be using Yoda-speak a lot. Yoda-speak is my term for when grammatical order of words in a sentence is turned around. "Did I do this", as a statement rather than a question, is Yoda-speak. If this is deliberate, it needs to be throughout the poem. You're sort of switching between the two, and it's a little confusing. If it's set in the Middle Ages, it should be in Yoda-speak, but if it's in the last 100 years or so, you should go for the way we do it. Yoda has a sort of historical effect.

Besided that, you don't seem to have any real pattern. There's no rhyme scheme. Which is good, because for most people rhyme is a crippling effect and takes away from the poem. Rhyming would really destroy the effect of creepiness here. But in other ways, your lack of pattern has kind of ruined this. I tried reading it aloud and it just didn't feel quite right. You're nearly there, but it just needs a little tweaking in the length of your lines and the like.

But this is going to be great, I really liked it.

Hope I helped
~Grin

Hello, very creepy poem . But that's okay I like creepy.

A heap of broken bones lay there,
The caved in skulls, the marrows of the ribs split open.
The lair of unwholesome beasts unveiled
As did my knuckles whiten on my sword,
"Behold!"
I say should be said,with hand outstretched,
but truth be said it would sound better as told instead of said
No need for this command there was,
For all the simple men in this foray
Did moan and simper and clamor for revenge.
I bade them to be silent with a cry
For a disturbing sound pulsated in through? the fog.
The slither of a belly on the moss
Half covered by the murmurs of the bog.
The reeds I heard bow down and scrape the banks
As something or somethings crossed the ford.
"Hold firm," I said, "my friends we can't fall back.
Victory or death, in the full view of the lord."

Okay I added punctuation the way I read it and understood it. The strikes are there because it would flow better with out some of those extra words.
I hope this helps. It was good poem and like I said sorta creepy.

~peanut~

Hey there!

This was kind of scary, actually, so well done for that. However, I thought it would be quite nice if you evoked more images sometimes throughout your writing. I especially thought it would be better if, perhaps, you tried to make the audience feel a variety of emotions through this rather than just fear. For instance, you could play on suspense and tension when they all go quiet, and play of the feelings of doom, or even courage, at the end. See where I'm going? But it was nice, it was really nice.

~Amy

napalmerski wrote:A heap of broken bones lay there
The caved in skulls, the marrows of the ribs split open
The lair of unwholesome beasts unveiled
As did my knuckles whiten on my sword,
Behold!
I say with hand outstretched,
but truth be said
No need for this command there was
For all the simple men in this foray
Did moan and simper and clamor for revenge
I bade them to be silent with a cry
For a disturbing sound pulsated in the fog
The slither of a belly on the moss
Half covered by the murmurs of the bog
The reeds I heard bow down and scrape the banks
As something or somethings crossed the ford
Hold firm, I said, my friends we can't fall back
Victory or death, in the full view of the lord.

I'm awful at poetry so I'm not even going to attempt to critique this. Though, I must say, I find your genius very intriguing. You have a talent for describing things napalm, as I have said before. You could be 15, 25, 35, but you are a pretty talented writer none the less.

Here are my thoughts on the first part in bold. Initially, it almost sounds like it is supposed to be a complete phrase on it's own, with an abrupt closing that is. But then, you complete it with the nice use of "The slither of a belly on the moss". Good one.

"The reeds I heard bow down and scrape the banks" that line is the only one that I had any real issue with. It has mostly to do with the order of the words. Because, really, it sounds awkward to have, "I heard them bow". In a way, it seems like, "The guy I heard talk to his brother" instead of "I heard the guy talk to his brother." Either way, both of my examples were lame.

-As always, happy writing.