A Hell Within a Paradise

Come meet me where
the sun shines.
where we greet the new day.

One filled with so many possibilities.
The sun's rays extend to infinite.
No darkness is here.

Let your mind fade into light,
into bliss.
Greet god,
and everything beautiful.

But wonder what this place truly is.
Paradise or hell?

Is this place with no shadow,
as dark as night itself.

To a soul like mine it is
A destroyer of happiness,
a destroyer of peace.

A hell masked by a glowing light,
we are lost in its shroud.

It waits for peace,
then like a knife in the dark
it lurks near, then
stabs us in the back
Leaving only a bloody,
broken body here
in paradise.

Hi Dante!

Come meet me where
the shines.

All I can say here is HUH???

I have to say, this sounds a little sad and kind of ‘emo.’ Like your narrator is just moping and looking for someone to look at him and feel bad for him.

I mean, it’s a well put together poem, but I think you hav eto take a look at this from the eyes of your reader and ask yourself: “What will the reader think of this?”

I hope I could have been at least a little helpful.

~lilymoore

Hey there
Intriguing title!

dante93 wrote:Come meet me where
the sun shines.
where we greet the new day.

One filled with so many possibilities.
The sun's rays extend to infinite. infinity
No darkness is here.

Let your mind fade into light,
into bliss.
Greet god,
and everything beautiful. There's too many full stops!

1-Punctuation:
Definitely needs fixing up. Throughout you simple use far too many full stops (or "Periods") to end your lines. The result is that there is no rhythm or pace due to the variance in vocabulary and it just feels wrong, unnatural. You need to replace them with commas and semi-colons and only make your last line end with a full-stop!

2-Content:
I'm not sure what you're describing but despite your flowery choice in vocabulary it's not vivid and I'm being confused. It could be implicitly mysterious and wonderful but you're missing out on that factor because you're trying to be too vague. The rhetorical question "Is this paradise or is it hell?" doesn't work at all because we don't know what it is that you're comparing. It's too vague!

3-Structure:
I think once you've edited the punctuation and sorted content accordingly, this should develop itself but you've got to be wary. Vary line length for a reason. Make sure what you're doing is carrying a SOLID message and the RIGHT effect.

Hope this helps, & keep writing; it's a good start!
~Ben

Hi Dante!

Okay. I'm just going to say that I don't like this. Like Lily said, it comes off as a little emo and sad; almost self-centered, in a way. :/ And as Ben said, your punctuation and structure aren't very good.

As for the nitpicks (I'm ignoring the ones Ben put up, but he was definitely right):

Come meet me where
the shines. Take away this period. The next line continues as if it's part of the same sentence, and the period just screws it up.
where we greet the new day.

Also, you use 'where' twice in the same stanza. It's pretty redundant. Try replacing the second 'where' with "And we'll greet the new day."

One filled with so many possibilities.
The sun's rays extend to infinite.
No darkness is here.

You need to pull this stanza together and unify it into one solid idea. Right now there are three lines and three separate ideas, and I get the impression that you're just making this up as you go along.

Let your mind fade into light,
into bliss.
Greet god, 'God' should be capitalized. Whether you're religious or not, you've used the word 'God,' the singular, which is a proper noun.
and everything beautiful.

Again, here I get the impression that you're making this up as you go along. Also, you've talked way to much about 'greeting' things.

But wonder what this place truly is.Who wonders? Also, take away the period and replace it with a colon (:)
Paradise or hell?

Is this place with no shadow,
as dark as night itself.

Okay, what? This isn't even a real sentence. It's extremely so-so and vague. Please fix it.

To a soul like mine, broken by time. Comma here
Destroyed by the winds that whip my back and here
This place is like any other.

A hell masked by a glowing light
ready to engulf all we know. Not a great way to end the whole thing.

Idea:

No matter all the work this needs, I do think that you have a good idea here. It's cool to think of paradise/hell and the clash between the two. But in order to turn a good idea into a great poem, you need to understand how poetry works first. One way to do that is to show us what is happening versus telling us. Make us feel for the people or things involved. That doesn't mean that, in order to make us sympathize or empathize, you have to use words like, 'sad' and 'painful.' It means that you need to portray those emotions through other words. Metaphors.

Hope I could help!

You hated it. thank you. it is supposed to be sad. and its not emo. I don't get where you guys get that retarded idea from. There is no I am going to kill myself here. the idea is to confuse the reader. again a new style I try. As for the punctuation I will chang some, but not all.

By the way if you do not understand it, then you should read Dante's Inferno. You guys also need to read deeper. If you did not understand it, there is nothing I can do. But I revised it to suit me, and what I feel. I'm glad you read it though. I am sure someone understands what i am pushing forward here, besides just a paradise in a hell.

You need to grow up. 'Nough said.

The idea of YWS is to help improve on ideas. Although you think it should generally be regarded as something very implicit and mysterious, clarity of meaning is still a very important stance to have in your poetry. All we're doing is giving you tips on how to get more readers.

Please be pleasant, take criticisms. You can ignore the comments all you like, but there's no use in getting worked up.

Hello there,

Wow. This poem really surprised me, because when I read the title I thought to myself that this could either be a fascinating piece, or one glance would lead to me having a religious opinion shoved down my throat. Now don't get me wrong, which I doubt you will because you didn't push an agenda, but there is- I believe - to be the fatal weakness of this piece. That's not to say that anything is wrong with your writing, but that it dances the border of no man's land. And you just have to let people be sensitive to that, because this is what you were motivated, moved, and felt was important enough to write about.

Summary: I think that this is a piece of decent writing, but it's only going to appeal to specific group of people.

Now, on to the critique:

- Great creative imagery, because you got your point across in a pretty original way. I even read your poem to my friend (to whom I was explaining what I was doing on the computer to) and they said that they could understand it. My friend is not a poetry person, they are a numbers person. And they got your poem. Quote: "Sounds like somebody got screwed by religion. But, hey, if I get it, you might be making it too easy on them."

That's a starter. Life is coming after me. Finish this tonight or tomorrow.
If anything comes across offensively to you, (covering my basis aka sensitive topic) then I am fully sorry, I am just here to do poetry.

Keep writing!
At your service,
Mandorelute

Hi Dante,

This poem was very interesting! I liked it and I enjoyed your use of imagery.

A nit-picky thing though:

[quote]Come meet me where the sun shines.This line didn't make much sense to me. Try re-wording it.

Ohter than that, I liked your poem!

Good work and keep writing,

RedRaven

Hey Dante!

So! This is the piece you were whining about!

The piece is not the worst piece I've ever read. Really. I've read some awful poems. Still, when I heard that this was based off of Dante's trilogy, I kind of did a double-take. To me, it doesn't really do Dante justice. It seems like it has been watered down and stripped to such an extent that it is pretty much unrecognizable from the original source. But even then, this poem demonstrates your lack of reading ability. Quite frankly, there is a very big difference between heaven and hell. Unless, of course, a lake of boiling blood or being frozen in ice or becoming a bush is comparable to the spheres of paradise... which frankly, I'm not convinced of at all by your poem. And I don't think any serious reader of Dante is going to see that connection at all.

So.

If you want to use Dante, use it a lot better. Look at some of the imagery and then look at the history behind it. Why did they keep on talking about Florence? Because of the HUGE sodomite arrests! Heck, there's even a layer of hell dedicated for sodomites. Is this a weird thing in the world today? Yes! So you can take one of the images that Dante uses and try to spin it your own way using a modern look.

But don't be vague. Vagueness is the death of poetry. Take a look at your poem:

Come meet me where
the sun shines.
where we greet the new day.

Ack, where do we even begin? First of all, you started with a hugely cliched image. And cliched pretty much means death in poetry. Or, to be more specific, wasted words. This stanza pretty much does nothing to either draw your reader in or to bring anything insightful. Except, of course, the idea that people greet the new day. Which is an image that has pretty much been extended to everything.

So basically? If you want to start with people meeting each other, then please! Be interesting about it! And don't use cliches... really. Cliches have no real place in poetry. Originality is your aim. If you need to write about an image that is over-used (like, you know, people gathered together in the sun and greeting the day) then make it your OWN. For goodness' sake, Coca Cola did a commercial that can pretty much be described using your poem. That's bad. That means you're unoriginal. And yeah, you might be referencing Dante, but honestly? That only means that you have to be even more original in your reference.

One filled with so many possibilities.
The sun's rays extend to infinite.
No darkness is here.

Full. Stop. Makes. Poem. Jerky. And. Unreadable. Plus, it destroys any sense of poetic rhythm. If you were talking about something jerky, then I can sympathize with you, but come on! You're talking about the sun's rays which continue infinitely! I don't know whether you are trying to have a contrast between the infinite part and the finite part (my guess is no, but you can use that excuse if you want) but really, try using complements with your poem. It'll help accentuate any point that you might possibly have... a good thing!

Okay. So you want a content critique, eh? Okay. The whole day being full with so many possibilities? Cliched. The sun's rays extending out? Cliched. No darkness here? Interesting image, if employed correctly... but it isn't. So. Um. Yeah. This verse is pretty much filled with so many cliches that it is pretty much just wasted words.

And I know. Sometimes, cliches can be good! But not one cliche after the other after the other... there's got to be an interesting image in there somehow. And, like I said, the whole idea that no darkness is there? That's interesting! But only if you describe it. You can't just say, "I'm going to tell everything and not show!" That's not how it works.

So... basically? If you want to keep these stanzas, try making the imagery interesting. Dante was working from a geo-centric view. If you can describe the sun twirling around the Earth... that's an interesting idea! Do it! If you want to describe how the light is so fierce that even your shadow withers and dies, then do it! That's interesting! But holy crapola, don't just tell us cliches over and over again. That's pretty much the death of poetry.

Let's move on, shall we?

Let your mind fade into light,
into bliss.
Greet god,
and everything beautiful.

The reason why I don't like this verse is this pretty much contradicts everything in Dante. I mean, from Virgil to Beatrice, they never said, "Oh, let your mind fade away." Um... no. They kept on making Dante use his mind. There was too much to tell and too much to show. They kept challenging Dante over and over again to rethink himself. So. This stanza pretty much killed any association with Dante for me. I mean, the other stanzas were pretty much generic things so they didn't really matter. But this stanza pretty much says that you're supposed to turn off your mind... which is clearly NOT the case as evidenced by the Divine Comedy.

So. If you want to base this after Dante, you're going to need to reread the Divine Comedy. I think you missed a huge point.

But wonder what this place truly is.
Paradise or hell?

THANK GOD. CONFLICT, AT LAST.

I mean... really. You have cliched image after cliched image... and then, finally! Conflict! Mind you, it's in the form of an obnoxious question... that is, it's like, "Um... I've used up all the cliched imagery I had... maybe I can ask a question and make people think since they're obviously asleep now!" But. At least it's an attempt to conflict! Conflict in poetry is good. It means that there is something more to this poem then just cliches.

Is this place with no shadow,
as dark as night itself.

To a soul like mine it is
A destroyer of happiness,
a destroyer of peace.

Then... if you are a destroyer, you would either be stuck in a lake of boiling blood or trapped in ice. So again, your allusion seems really non-existent. Unless, perhaps God made a mistake and placed you in the wrong circle... oh yeah! In Dante's time, it's pretty much heretical to claim that God can make a mistake. So... yeah. Allusion-fail.

Are you starting to realize why nobody could understand that you were referencing Dante? XD

A hell masked by a glowing light,
we are lost in its shroud.

Which hell are you talking about? Or, if you're referring to paradise, which sphere?

It waits for peace,
then like a knife in the dark
it lurks near, then
stabs us in the back
Leaving only a bloody,
broken body here
in paradise.

Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm not convinced. This whole scenario seems largely contrived. If you were to describe the people in heaven as people whose faces deformed and would turn against you, then that might be cool. But... you didn't. Instead, you decided to use an ambiguous pronoun, "it," and claim that it lurks and stuff... and then it stabs...

In the meantime, the reader is wondering, "What is "it?" See, this is the most interesting stanza... mostly because something actually happens in it. But then you decided to be ambiguous. Yeah... you can assume that hell is "it." But that's not apparent. Plus, let's face it... imagining a place carry a knife in the dark (pssst... that's another cliche) be a riveting image? If I replaced the place "hell" with Grand Canyon, you could see that your image is properly ridiculous. The Grand Canyon stabbing you? Puh-leaze. That job primarily belongs to the cacti (and trust me when I say OUCH). You can, of course, personify the place... which it looks like you attempted to do. But you didn't do it really well. So you have this image which, instead of being neat, seems a little stupid. So cut out the ambiguity. It really hurts the poem and kills your message.

So.

1. Lose the cliches. They suck and kill your writing.

2. If you want to use an allusion, please read thoroughly before using it. If your chief complaint is that people don't understand that this is an allusion... well... there's a good reason for that. There is no part that really screams Dante.

3. Make it interesting. Use descriptions to your advantage. No more just saying stuff... describe it. Yeah, we can tell that you and religion don't get along. That's obvious. But so what? Make us care. I can say, "For me, heaven would be hell" and pretty much state your poem in six words. So. Why not just use those six words? Or is there something more? Describe it! Also, no more ambiguity... use pronouns sparingly.

Also, I want to make something clear: I do not hate this poem. It's not that good. Actually, I'm pretty much indifferent to it. The poem is boring. I just figured that I would give you that content critique that you seemed to want.

Good luck editing this.

First of all I said read the divine comedy. You would get a better understanding of what I was trying to say. I had no interest in fully using the divine comedy as a source. You people are stupid to think I am trying to imitate him. When I suggested reading it, I meant it would give a better understanding of my poem, not what his was like.


"I think that this is a piece of decent writing, but it's only going to appeal to specific group of people."
This is the best post on here.

If you don't appreciate the review, you don't need it. If you feel you want to improve your poetry, PM me and I'll send you the review.

Kamas

I don't need sarcasm on a review.

I doubt if I hadn't mentioned it you'd find another excuse to ax it down. Since I spent so long working on this review, it's only fair to myself that I post it. Have a review, even if you don't like it or not. There's a whole lot of advice in here that you may want to consider beneficial towards improving your writing. Oh, flag it all you'd like.

---

For those who don't know, Dante's inferno is about a soul seeing what sin really is (in a Christian context) and the three beasts in the story (the lion, the leopard and the she-wolf) represent the three types of sins.

So you want these people to read deeper? I've read Dante's Inferno and I honestly don't see any connection, but maybe it's too deep for me. I'd never understand right? Right.

Spoiler

If you're going to clamber at Dante's Inferno, why don't you do some research first? Wikipedia is a good place to start. Sparknotes is a good one too.

Let's look at this more detailed first:

Come meet me where
the sun shines.
where we greet the new day.

Oh fantastic way to start it. Just like every single other poem out there. It's great and completely original.
No seriously keep doing that.

If you look here you can get a vague idea of how cliche this opening is. And those are just lyrics! Make it yours, or you'll never get your feet off the ground, let alone this poem.

For example: Where does the sun shine? On a beach? Through the trees? On the highest peak of the highest mountain? No. If I remember correctly, he is walking through a place "where the sun is silent" or something of that sort. But that's your own poetic choice. If you start your poem off with a cliche that is just smothering itself, you're going to smother your poem.

One filled with so many possibilities.
The sun's rays extend to infinite.
No darkness is here.

Again, I fail to see the reference to Dante's Inferno. The guy is walking to hell with his head on backwards. Now that would be something really really interesting to talk about, build metaphors around etc. Instead you choose to talk about the sun, just like a lot of people. (I'm not going to pull out a link for you, just google sun poems you'll get a good 15, 000, 000 results in 2 seconds.)

The sun. It's. Just. Not. Interesting. Fullstop. If you pick the most common part of an inspiration to use, your poem is going to be common unless you do something fantastic with it. As, consider flowing your poem. It might work for you. Think of words and flow as dancers and music. When a dancer is out of sync with the music, it makes the entire dance look sloppy and, well… not great. If your words are “out of time” with the flow your poem skims, it looks like that sloppy dancer.

Or in your case, if the dancer freezes robotically every thirty seconds while performing a more classical piece, isn't that going to look odd.

Let your mind fade into light,
into bliss.
Greet god,
and everything beautiful.

Where. Is. The. Dante? I'm really debating to just copy/paste an excerpt in here. If you read this, I'm pretty sure you missed the entire message that is hammered through that entire piece. Where are the 9 rings? The Bolgias of the eighth ring? Where is Satan and Judas and all the others? Honestly, Dante's Inferno holds so much potential to an absolutely fantastic dark poem. But no. Life is Beewtifull. Instead of taking all of these things, and using it you're burying yourself even deeper in cliches.

But wonder what this place truly is.
Paradise or hell?

So now, we're going to ask the reader a blunt straightforward question. No metaphors that lead up to it? No metaphors to bury it a little bit and make it more thoughtful? You can't create a question that makes the reader thoughtful, with creating an abrupt stop? And you aren't using any metaphors that could be linked down to the rest of the poem. Right, because there aren't any of those in here.

Metaphors, similies, all those other poetic devices. They're your friends.

Is this place with no shadow,
as dark as night itself.

Last time I check, you can't see your shadow at night. But that may just be me.
I'm not going to waste anymore time explaining cliches to you. I've made it clear before.

To a soul like mine it is
A destroyer of happiness,
a destroyer of peace.

My good lord. Have you even read the Divine Comedy? I mean seriously. You are in Hell, there are people trapped in blocks of ice, people who must march and be whipped by demons for eternity, others with the soles of their feet burning forever as they're suck in a rock head first. There are people transformed into trees and eaten by Harpies, others drowning in a river of boiling blood.

I mean, all of this is amazing stuff. You could write an individual poem about each ring from the stuff you get.
But no, the darkness and the fact you can't see your is making you sad?

A hell masked by a glowing light,
we are lost in its shroud.

A glowing light of what?

It waits for peace,
then like a knife in the dark
it lurks near, then
stabs us in the back
Leaving only a bloody,
broken body here
in paradise.

So you were talking about heaven the entire time... what?
Read Dante's Inferno then you can edit this so it can have a vague resemblance to this story instead of a poem crammed to choking point with cliches and a uncertain beating around the bush about betrayal.

I hope this meets up with your high standards, and with the slightest hopes breaches the bar set by your absolutely fantastic PMed reviews. If I'm wrong, it's surely because I don't understand the deepness.

I'm sure someone as misunderstood and intelligent as you will understand the underlying sarcasm in this critique.

Kamas