Death's Sunset

Whispered behind closed doors,
silenced as soon as the conversation
comes into the light.
But night will still descend
and the Dark Angel will come
bearing her gift of eternal peace.

The sun sets but you ignore it.
Turning on light after light
to keep the darkness at bay.
But the artificial light only shows
the darkness creeping around his eyes
and between the wrinkles in his flesh.

Purple and navy streak the sky.
Night is almost upon us.
The remaining pools of light flicker,
casting darker shadows on his face.
You bring in more light, trying to
put off the inevitable.
I can see the sun has almost set.

Night has fallen.

Is, lead, come, can, say, come, have, is, descends, line, wait, join, is, say, can, predict, say, open, look.

What do those words have in common? They are you action words that you used. Now, compare that to the action words in Eggs:

Break, hate, break, run, spill, ooze, strain, hate, lay, made, eat, tell, get, is, hate, gag, cry, is, give, go, hate, know, say, hate, hate, grow, spill do, is, repeat, found, stand, hold, hit, dissolve, don’t, say, hoard, wait, face, fight, fight, pick up, sing, break, cover.


Compare and contrast. Look at the amount of verbs that she uses compared to you, and look at the types of words she uses. Also, she only uses “is” twice, compared to your three times, and she doesn’t start out that way. Notice how vivid the words are.

Conflict can be created using your word choice. You’re dealing with an encounter with Death. This is big. Use vivid verbs to describe what you’re talking about.

Sign, way, dark angel, gift, call, answer, night, stars, soul, argument, ears, nobody, act, God, eyes, signs, death, you.

These are the nouns you used.

For “Eggs”:

Morning, egg, floor, eggs, insides, father, cock, henhouse, plate, table, bite, day, time, school, eggs, Freud, rooster, things, myself, egg, secret, body, secret, world, way, eggs, oval, myself, bed, belt, face, yolk, we, table, father, battles, eggs, ovals, room, spell, shells, faces.

Compare and contrast. Look at the amount of nouns she uses and how specific they are, especially in context. Look at how she further describes these words within the poem.



Every sign is there <-- you’re starting out passively.

leading the way <-- get to the point quicker.

for the Dark Angel <-- Who? Introduce.

to come with her gift <-- You don't say what this gift is. Describe.



What can I say

when the call comes? <-- More description needed on how this call comes.

The only answer I have, <-- Too many useless words that have no conflict inside of them. Is there any emotional weight to the response to her call? Is there any other drama?

heartless as it may be,

is "it finally happened?" <-- This shows us that there is no real concern for the call, thus, there is no conflict. So really, it looks like these stanzas are unnecessary.



Night descends as <-- It looks like you're starting a new poem.

the stars line up,

waiting for another

soul to join them. <-- You should say what stars represent. It's the cool thing to do, especially since stars can mean such different things, depending on the writer. In FREAK:

The freak felt her throat tighten. “I suppose so,” she muttered.

“He doesn’t want to lose you either.”

Tears burned the freak’s eyes and she wiped them away helplessly. “We’ll be separated, I know,” she said, shuddering. “We’ll both lose each other. But I am a freak and he isn’t. He doesn’t deserve to die, not yet.”

Sadie thought about this, her eyes drifting upward. The sky twinkled with a hundred thousand stars. She smiled and laughed, reaching for the freak’s hand.

“Beth, look up there. Do you see all those little dots? They are lovers, dancing around the sky. They loved each other so much that, even when they died, they hung on to each other tightly, their souls burning so brightly with love that they floated up into the sky. And now they will be forever dancing, their love holding them together in the same place for eternity.”

“That sounds pretty,” the freak murmured, her eyes on the horizon where the treetops met the sky. Sadie only laughed and squeezed her hand tightly.

“But don’t you see?” she whispered. “He’ll never be gone from you. Not really. The song and dance will just change, that’s all.”

And both their faces turned towards the sky.

That's part of a novel. That's not poetry. And it's my work, so I am inherently biased in favor of it. But I want you to know that you HAVE to set up a scene, and the best way to do this is to set up conflict, which means you have to show off the imagery so that you can make the reader see what you want them to see and you have to make them know what sort of sacrifice there is and what the stars mean to that sacrifice or how they symbolize it. If you set up a scene correctly, there will be emotional weight inherent to it and it will feel like you're being punched in the gut... in a good way.



Your argument is <-- WHAT argument? If there is any conflict, you should tell us what it is.

useless to my ears. <-- Why is it useless???

You say,

"Nobody can predict

an act of God!" <-- what act of God?



I say,

"Open your eyes

and look at the signs <-- Signs is really vague noun, so to make it less vague you have to describe the signs of death vividly.

of death around you." <-- I like this stanza, but it makes no sense within the context of the poem.

Completely and totally rewritten. (The title has changed too. Heh)

Thank you Snoink!

Hi Rosey! June here!

I agree. This is a nice piece of work you have here. =D

Whispered behind closed doors,

silenced as soon as the conversation

comes into the light.

But night will still descend

and the Dark Angel will come

bearing her gift of eternal peace

• I don't like the enjambment [running over of one idea from line to the next]; it seems unnatural, and as if you placed it there just to make this a poem. The idea doesn't seem to be suited to this poem-- the language is beautifully simplistic, but having it in lines like this is taking away from it.

• You start the second sentence here with "but". This generates confusion, because what are you saying 'but' to? But is a connecting word (my mind just blanked on the right word. Conjunction?) and here you have nothing to connect. Eliminating it will make this part cleaner and still achieve a decent meaning, dear.

The sun sets but you ignore it.

Turning on light after light

to keep the darkness at bay.

But the artificial light only shows

the darkness creeping around his eyes

and between the wrinkles in his flesh.

• A lot of times, when I review poetry I stress the importance of not changing the tone of voice as you write. If you start in third person [ei: the dark angel is coming] then you should stick to that voice as you go, rather than switching to second person [ei: You are coming].

Now, your change here is arguable. I can understand it, and even though it's subtle, it sticks out.

• But, again. You have to use But to connect something, otherwise it just sounds worthless.

• And, who is he? You do not clue us in, but suddenly, there is a he.

Purple and navy streak the sky.

Night is almost upon us.

The remaining pools of light flicker,

casing darker shadows on his face.

You bring in more light, trying to

put off the inevitable.

I can see the sun has almost set.

• I also don't like the usage of navy. I understand that it is used in terms of navy blue, but think of the most common meaning of a word as you use it, dear. When I first read this, I was wondering how a naval base could be in the sky.

• And now we have first person. These different persons make the poem sound disorganized.

"He's gone through this before."

And gotten frailer each time.

"Bouncing back is not a problem."

When you're twenty-something.

"A couple of hospital visits is nothing to worry about."

Not when you've been in Critical Care each time.

• To start, I don't think this stanza does justice to this poem! First, I don't like the usage of dialogue. It's too much a change in this poem, Rosaic-- the italics aren't doing much either.

I think it's the lack of substance. All of these stanzas building up to this are just giving us the idea of death, but nothing more. What are the other things that come with death? I assume there would be some feeling of something close to anxiety and insecurity.

To me, this poem kind of sounds like... the character's just like, "Oh, what the hey, death. Come on."

• And, this is a too obvious wording. I understand that you've carried a beautiful simple style throughout, but as we come to the end, it's like, "Dude. I've been in the hospital, I'll recover." and the other thing is all, "No you won't!".



Basically, it has a sinister feel at the beginning, and at the end it's just, Omg, death!

• And, and, and! It doesn't feel like it has an ending. I feel like it's missing something substantial. Like, I'm expecting him to die, and I'm left hanging with the image of a dead [man?] that's frail and weak on his death bed. I want more!


Not sure if that was any help? I'm genuinely a wreck right now. >.>

June

Thanks June!

Ugh, those last two stanzas. They come from an early draft of that poem. I liked them enough that I wanted to put them in. I guess it doesn't fit that well.

As for the persons, they're supposed to represent the three characters in the poem. Third person is the one dieing, second person is the one ignoring the death, and first person was the one seeing the death. Since I need three characters and I didn't want to name them, I used different persons. Maybe it would be better if I used third person for the dieing and the ignorer, and first for the one who sees death?

Any advice on this would be appreciated.

~Rosey

Wow... I shouldn't have seen bits of the other reviews. (First poetry review for me)

I have always felt that poetry is a very personal thing and that makes it incredibly difficult to review. I'll just give my little two-cents worth and tell you how I feel about it.

Whispered behind closed doors,

silenced as soon as the conversation

comes into the light.

But night will still descend

and the Dark Angel will come

bearing her gift of eternal peace

I think this is a good introductory piece to a poem, and sets the mood quite well. However, the lack of rhythm in it is slightly disturbing.

The sun sets but you ignore it.

Turning on light after light

to keep the darkness at bay.

But the artificial light only shows

the darkness creeping around his eyes

and between the wrinkles in his flesh.

I think that if you address somebody in the poem, ie. "... you ignore it" then it should happen in the beginning, and not in the middle of the poem.

Purple and navy streak the sky.

Night is almost upon us.

The remaining pools of light flicker,

casing darker shadows on his face.

You bring in more light, trying to

put off the inevitable.

I can see the sun has almost set.

From this piece, it seems like there are 4 "characters" in this poem? The narrator (which is included with the "us" and "I"), the Dark Angel, "him" and "you", which was addressed earlier. This could be a little confusing, and I don't even have a decent suggestion on changing it.

"He's gone through this before."

And gotten frailer each time.

"Bouncing back is not a problem."

When you're twenty-something.

"A couple of hospital visits is nothing to worry about."

Not when you've been in Critical Care each time.

I don't particularly like the italics in this last stanza, it disrupts the poem a bit. The line "When you're twenty-something" threw me off a bit. I liked the image formed by the poem in the beginning, but the choice of words in that line just don't seem to go with the rest of the "setting".
There are no hints at when this poem is set, and with the type of language used, it gave me the impression that it wasn't modern.



Overall:

I liked the poem, a bit confusing with all the characters though. But I do like your style of poetry, you have a good command of the English language and I think through creating images with word it shows.



Any questions - Just PM me.

~ Terps ~

Thanks Trep!

So. Deleted the last couple of stanzas and replaced them with one line. Hope you like!

Could still use advice on the characters though.

~Rosey

I really like the description in this and the images it puts in my mind. However, who is "he"? He is only mentioned once, is he important? The second stanza is great and I can't help thinking that perhaps the whole poem is a metaphor for something else - the ending of something, something you don't want to end, or the beginning of something you don't want to happen. I'm thinking the end of a relationship. Or maybe I should take it at face value, but I just love interpreting things to find any hidden meaning. It's good that this poem could be interpreted in so many different ways, really. The last line also adds a sense of finality, not just to the poem, but to the day (or whatever the day stands for). Watch out for typo's, though! Great job.

i think this is really good but what is the point you are trying to get across?? i really like how this flows however in the second stanza the rythem is weak. and the first two lines don't make to much since. but i am curious, why did you call it deaths sunset?? i think that the last stanza is really really good. it flows well.

Hey, Rosey. My apologies for taking so long to get to this poem. >_< I hope that you still need some feedback, since I see you've already gotten several comments already.

The first thing I would suggest for this poem would be for you to take out the line breaks and write it as if it were prose, still using all the same words. There are places where the sentences don't make sense because you've forgotten to connect them to anything, because you got lost in the line breaks. Once you punctuate the lines properly in prose form, you can re-insert the line breaks and you'll have the same poem, only with better punctuation.

Anyways, after reading through this poem once, I have to say that it really doesn't give me a lasting effect at all. It seems as if you were really attempting to tell a story but felt forced into making it poetry, and I don't know if that was your intention or not, but that's how it comes off to me.

The concept that you have behind the poem is interesting, so I'm confused as to how it became so dull, but I'm going to give you a few suggestions and see if you can do anything with them.

-- First of all, the only line that stuck out to me in the whole poem was this one:

Turning on light after light

to keep the darkness at bay.

There are a couple things I liked about this line, the first of which was the imagery in it. Imagery is very important in poetry and is different from describing things. For example, you describe the wrinkles in the person's flesh, but that's not strong imagery -- all we get is a picture of wrinkles. Imagery can probably be reinforced by using similes or metaphors. You could describe wrinkles as deep lines etched into the skin, like a pen run over paper too many times. Something like that -- something spicy to make the poem interesting.

The second thing I enjoyed about this line was the repetition. Rather than saying 'turning on lights', you said 'light after light' which gives a feeling of desperation to the poem. It's a slight thing, because the meaning would be the same if you said 'lights' instead, but with the repetition, you add a different tone.

-- Second of all, there's no real message to the poem. If night has fallen, why not show that to us instead of explicitly stating it at the end? Describe the Dark Angel as descending rather than the night, and perhaps give her some kind of personality. A dark dress with pleats and ruffles that fall from her waist could be a helpful image to portray the way darkness tumbles down into the world.

I think you need to experiment more with imagery, similes, and metaphors for this poem to be really good! ^_^ But please PM me if you have any questions about any of my comments, or if you'd like me to review anything else of yours.

-Hannah-

i like this its very chilling to think about it in the way u write