My Shadows

My shadows surround me at night
Filling my head with thoughts.

Thoughts of violence, destruction, and death
Fill my mind
As my shaodws surround me.

I try to push away my shadows,
But they still find me
Day after day.

Until one day,
I think about ending my shadows
That's when I see my light.

First off i love it! but it is a little bit choppy. The first line kind of goes together but you could say the same thing but say it in a more flowing way. I love the truth in its words. Its one of those things that is how someone feels when their alone, and never tells anyone about. All in all its very well written,its almost there. Just change some of the words make it flow a little more and it will great!

Hey Forgotenlover! Isha here to review.

First of all, you do have conflict, which is good. However, conflict seems to be the only thing you have going for you here. There's a premise, I suppose, but there's nothing backing it up. No meat, no foundation, not to mention that the idea of shadows (in this concept) is very cliched.

Before I get into that, however, I would like to talk about structure and word choice. The poem is very short, only a few stanzas that consist of a couple lines each. The lines themselves are choppy, and the flow could use some work. Don't get me wrong, you can have a short poem, it's just that it needs to be done right. For starters, you're going to want to choose your words and your lines wisely, as you want to portray your message as best you can in a minimal amount of words. This means that your lines should consist of new, original imagery that comes from you (the poem should express something heart-felt, it shouldn't consist of lines that are over-used and not your own), imagery that is dripping with emotion. At the same time here, you don't want to make it overly angsty or melodramatic. There's a balance, and I'm assigning you the task of finding out just what that balance is. *salutes*

Now, as for your word-choice itself-- I've already mentioned that the use of 'shadows' is cliche, but aside from that-- the rest of the poem is just plain bland. Simple words can be use easily, but they need to be less drawl-like and more poem-like. I am not by any means telling you to grab a thesaurus and lead theough it until you find the most complicated, fascinating synonym that there is for every word. That would make it seem forced and unnatural. However, synonyms themselves are good. Also, there was a lot of repeating words in this poem. Granted, words like 'day' were only used twice, but because this poem is so short, the use of the same word so close together is unattractive and it takes away from the quality of the poem.

You have a skeleton that needs a base and something to hold the reader's interest. You need to make the poem your own-- give the bald bird some plumage and some heart, yes?

Now, onto the other stuff:

It seems that new poets always seem to go for is 'darkness' and 'shadows' and 'fighting the shadows' as means of depicting a struggle or something evil. Granted, darkness and shadows are something that are gloomy and fear-invoking, but there are much more original advances that could be used. Don't go hunt one down-- make it up. That's what imagination and creativity are for! Challenge yourself to think of something that's more yourself rather than every other poet who uses cliches that's out there, and still have the poem convey the same meaning.

You have such a cryptic story going here. You hint to some sort of struggle, and then there's a solution of sorts, but you never tell us what that is. God, a friend, love, suicide, self-harm? Is it an actual solution or is it just an escape? And what is the levity and the weight of this problem exactly? There's a lot that you lack, and that could be summed up with a few words. Just remember to show us, not tell us, and leave some room for speculation.

There's a base here, so try adding to it.

Keep writing,
~~Ish.

Hey there, lover, and welcome to YWS!

I’m going to guess that this is the first piece you’ve posted here, so I want to take a minute and just have a chat about it!

So the goal of poetry is to say very much with very little—that means that redundancy and backtracking puts us in an awkward place with poetry because it uses up our space and makes things less worthwhile for the reader. So let’s take your first two stanzas and look at them kind of technically.

My shadows surround me at night
filling my head with thoughts.

Thoughts of violence, destruction, and death
fill my mind
as my shadows surround me.

Do you see how the two stanzas pretty much repeat one another? What I would do with this is actually remove the first stanza—you won’t be losing anything at all if you do, and it leaves stanza two with more detail to take over. And suddenly, you have a solid image without redundancy.

Now you’ve set up these dark thoughts and images at night, and in stanza three, you’re trying to push them away, to fight them. So you’ve got a good symbol of depression going on here. It’s really not anything new, but clichés are clichés for a reason!

My real disappointment comes in the last stanza when the girl simply decides to end her shadows—which either means being happy or committing suicide—and sees her light. You placed ‘my light’ in italics, so it’s something important, but I don’t think you’ve given quiiiite enough grounding to make the emphasis work! What is the light? Why is it important?

You have a very solid base here for something that can become great, and I hope you continue working on this piece to make it even better.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments, and I hope you’re loving YWS so far!

-Lumi

For a quick poem it really sums up what many people fear on a day to day basis and I'm glad that you didn't make this poem a long one to get the message across