Hope

I am hope.
I am free to be what you wish,
You may mold me and shape me,
and do what you please.
I have been disregarded, ignored, and shut out.
When people think I have left them for good,
I'm still there.
Waiting for the right time.
The right moment.
To come back into your life.
It may take a moment.
It may take an eternity.
But I always come back at the right time.
You are grateful for me then,
But will you always be?
One helpful move, and then you forget about me.
Until another hardship comes along,
I'm on the sidelines.
So here's your task.
The goal you should strive for.
Try to always keep me close.
It will help you, and others, and who knows?
You may have more of me than you realized.

Whoo!! Bandit's first post on YWS! Celebrate! Okay, so I'm not the best at reviewing poetry, but I really liked this. It was suprisingly good, after you said you weren't good at writing at all. I'm sure many other people on this site will give plenty of honest constructive criticism (because that's what the website is for), but for now, I'll start out the reviews by saying this was awesome! I kept imagining an invisible person following people around, always there, even if they don't realize it. It was a bit sad, because the Hope person looked lonely.
Keep writing!
-Dai

Heya Bandit, I'm Gsp, and I'm going to be your reviewer today.

My first advice would be to split this up into separate stanzas. Maybe. I'm not very good with poetry, so I could be wrong, (in fact I probably am wrong), but that's my advice. Don't feel any need to follow it though.

I didn't see anything in particular to change, but it doesn't seem to flow like most poems do. It's probably just me, but... yeah. That's really all I have to say. I like the poem overall; it's great. Keep up the good work!

~Gsp.

Hi there! First off, I have to tell you that since my name is Hope I felt the strong urge to review this.
I really liked the message of this poem and the raw emotion that is expressed. The only thing I can suggest is the same thing that the person before me posted. I believe separate stanzas would make this piece a lot stronger and easier to read. Overall this is a great piece. Good job!
-Hope

Kafka here.

First of all, I'm glad you took a shot at describing a complex emotion. I'm not saying I think you particularly succeeded at the task (I'll expand a bit more on that further on, as you said you wanted constructive criticism), but at least you attempted to. That's a start. But, to actually get somewhere with that momentum, you'll need a bit more than this. It's refreshing, I suppose, to say the least. See, the majority of people on YWS tend to write poems about two things:

Love.

Hopelessness.

But what these people don't understand is that there's so much more than this. Not to say that poems with themes such as these can't possibly be good ones. Quite the contrary. It's the poems that are cliched to the marrow of their linguistic bones that I can't stand. So, what I'm getting at is that you at least managed to break the trend. Hope is a more interesting subject matter to explore, simply because it is more of a process than it is a monochrome emotion. But, as soon as one moves past this poem's theme, one finds that this is nothing but a deflated smiley face balloon.

Many people are under the impression that raw, unedited emotional poetry is somehow "good." The problem with this belief is that, though raw emotion may carry with it a bit of sentimental weight, if you look past the variations in the wording, the whole thing is incredibly straightforward. On the surface, a poem may look powerful. But, if you look more closely, analyze the space where the heart of the poem is supposed to be, you find only a big, empty hole. This is not only true of this poem, but of many poems that fail to be original.

I sincerely hope this helped in some way. Before you go and start yelling at me, take a deep breath, reread this, and look at how this will help your poem. You asked for constructive criticism, and I gave it. Keep writing.

-Kafka

I liked this! I usually have a really hard time understanding poems, but I felt like I got this one ^_^ That's a huge compliment to you, you made the message clear x) It probably comes from the way you wrote it, which was in simple, easy sentences. I felt like it all flowed very smoothly

But I always come back at the right time.

This was the only line I didn't particularly feel. It sounds like you're saying that hope always returns to you, in the nick of time, but this is not really true. In desperate times, I find hope slipping away, not returning to me when the goings get tough x) But that's just how I work.

Great poem! I hope some of this was helpful and not just rambling x)
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