Children of the Sea

Well, please keep in mind that I wrote this particular poem when I was quite a few years younger. But still, feedback would be great. My family has read it, but I cannot be sure that their feedback is just out of obligation and in hopes to not hurt my feelings. Anyways, here it is, Children of the Sea:

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A man,
But always an animal at heart,
Visiting the shores,
But always so far from home.

Home,
Where the water roams over his body,
in a lover's caress.
Where he can lose himself to oblivion
in the vast, inky darkness that has no end.

As the kelp flow,
Helpless,
In the green starkness.

The sea.
Where all his troubles
Have no choice
But to flee.

Home,
The place where you belong,
Holding the people
Whom you haven't seen for long.

A man,
But always an animal at heart,

Going home.
The part of his
Soul that will always be pulled,
By the sea's
Seductive
Lull.

First off, I think this was basically good - and I love the title, which is why I clicked on this in the first place. "Children of the Sea" - just beautiful.

Mostly what bugged me was all the sentence fragments. Yes, this is a poem, so of course you'll have line breaks. But like this:

A man.
But always an animal at heart.
Visiting the shores,
But always so far from home.

The first stanza is entirely made up of sentence fragments, and you keep it up through the whole poem. Now, in my opinion, it's fine to have sentence fragments - like this stanza,

As the kelp flow,/Helpless,/In the green starkness.

That, I think, is fine, because at least it's just one fragment that contains an entire idea. But the first stanza is like...one fragment broken up into three fragments, if you see what I mean. Technically, of course, "A man, but always an animal at heart" is a fragment, as is "a man, but always an animal at heart, visiting the shores, but always so far from home." Yes, that whole thing is a fragment, and that's okay. But you keep breaking up fragments into fragments, and that bugs me. It seems to make the whole thing flow less.

Other than that, the only thing I think that needs work is this stanza:

Home,
The place where you belong,
Holding the people
Whom you haven't seen for long.

This whole time, you've been taking about a man, "him," "he," "his" - but now you suddenly start using "you." If you're going to use "you," "you" needs to be present throughout the poem. Up until this point, the reader gets lost in the imagery and the man's yearning for his home, but the sudden "you" kind of breaks us out of it.

But other than those two things - both of which are easy to fix - I think this is a beautiful poem. Good job!

~Blue

I really enjoyed this poem, it really captured the home calling, really caught the instinctive pull to a home base or where ever you came from.

Hey! This is a really nice poem, I have to say, and I believe that your family were not just obliged to say they liked it because I agree with them!

Home,
Where the water
Roams over his body,
in a lover's caress.
Where he can lose himself to oblivion
in the vast, inky darkness
that has no end.

This is my favorite stanza because in the first stanza I didn't exactly get the idea that the poem had anything to do with the title, but it did! So great job for that! Yes, and I agree, I like the title!

Keep 'em coming!

Wow, beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Its an amazing piece of poetry and the imagery is just gorgeously fitted with the title. I felt like I was truly part of it, like I was an observer.
Also I loved how the structure was fitted with the poem, it kept it flowing.
I especially liked:

As the kelp flow,
Helpless,
In the green starkness.

Beautiful.
I can't wait to read more.
Well done!

I really enjoyed this, especially the dreamy sort of quality to the writing. Your words have a nice flow to them, which could be improved, I think, with a little rearrangement. Play with it a bit, change the line breaking around -- there are some places where the short lines have a nice impact, but there are some places where it just seems unnecessarily choppy.

The sea.
Where all his troubles
Have no choice
But to flee.

This stanza was absolutely gorgeous, definitely my favorite part of the poem. Here, specifically, is where I would start to pay closer attention to line breaks and verse breaks. This verse immediately stands out from the rest; it's shorter, more concise, but still written with a soft touch. That's what you want -- you have four lines that really pull the reader in, so allow them to take center stage. I would suggest looking at the stanzas that come after this one; they're also short, but they don't have the same impact. I might find a way to put them together in order to maintain the emphasis on the shorter verses that really pack a punch. When you have so many short stanzas, the ones that are really great can get lost.

That's really the biggest criticism I have, and it's relatively suggestive. Great job!

The sea.
Where all his troubles
Have no choice
But to flee.

This is my favorite part.

Very nice poem!! Well written with great description. The only thing that could improve it would be a bit of emotion... Yep...

Great job

Keep writing,
Alzora