Young Writers Society

Hey...I'm new here. But I thought I'd give this a try and see what people thought. I think this might count as dramatic poetry but...ummm. Anyway here it is:

Urge

A little voice in the back of your head
It’s loud or soft
It’s the devil or the angel
It can help you or destroy you
It can push you into the dark when you’re going to the light
You think its over but its still there
It’s an addiction to something you tell yourself you don’t want to do
It’s an Urge

Frankly as soon as you said it was loud or soft I could easily picture the yin and yang of the enitre thing. Bland in my opinion. Of course I do like some of the words you chose, such as Addition. It wa a bit short but that was great... I'm sorry but I couldn't bear to read anymore after the It can help or destroy you. Of course, I"m only being nice compared to others ie... the olders...

Hello, what a day for me... Whoa(phases out)... Well, it was okay. However, I want to hear you make impacts but I can only hear you trying to force the impacts with the words too much, in another words, you had wrong choices of words. Keep trying... I guess...

Oh wow...BR was right...she was being nice. Frankly honey, this does jack for people. You're using hackneyed, cliche, yin and yang analogies that everyone uses all the time when they can't think of anything else, you use short lines, then throw some long ones just to screw with what little poetic form you had, and frankly, the ending sucked. 'It's an urge." wow, powerful...NOT! Sorry, but this gets a negative three on the sparky scale.

By the way, I guess I'm one of the 'olders' even if I don't feel that old. But I don't mince words, and I'm not here to boost your ego. Feel like you accomplished something when you pop out a piece I can't critique. Then we'll talk.

Oh, and feel free to tear my stuff apart as well! I ENJOY it.

Okay, I'm not one of the older ones, but this was horrible. You told us what an urge wa ,it didn't flow like a poem, it was full of cliches and bad metaphors and didnt spark any emotion, Please. Onto the actual poem.

Urge

Boring title.

A little voice in the back of your head
It’s loud or soft
It’s the devil or the angel

Dont start out like that... It's not powerful, its boring, its not a sentence... It does nothing.

It can help you or destroy you
It can push you into the dark when you’re going to the light

This is not poetry. Its a bunch of lines with bad sentence structure that does not make any images, does not spark any emotion and does nothing for you.

You think its over but its still there
It’s an addiction to something you tell yourself you don’t want to do
It’s an Urge

Those first two lines I just quoted were horrible. "You think its over but its still there." What kind of poetry is that? I know, you're just describing what you think an urge is. Poetry needs to reach out to your readers, spark emotions, paint pictures. The skills you demonstrated here did none of that. Sorry. And that is not an ending. You just described an urge. Keep us guessing, yes, but dont be so blunt about it at the end, please.

Now, dont think I'm mean. Or do-- I don't care. I thrive on criticsm, it is the basis of my writing and I enjoy it when people tear apart my writing. Learn to take it or dont ask for it. Keep writing, you will get better. I promise.

Wow. That was depressing. You're right.

Now, stop describing emotions. We know what emotions are, thank you. You need to strive for imagery in your poetry, to begin with. Then you need to progress into metaphors, then allusions, then abstraction. Once in abstraction, you pro(re)gress into literal abstractions and then you become an either abstractionist ("I am going to unexpress myself!") or a literalist ("Blood is on the concrete / Now talking is just a waste of breath / And living is just a waste of death").

That's the general scheme of a poet's developmental stages, in my opinion. Of course, you could be the exception.

But for your next poem that you submit, do not describe an emotion. It's a bad technique that is only effective when you have mastered poetic lyricism, which you, obviously, haven't. So don't do it. Try to throw in some imagery in the next poem, build a plot, do something. Just don't list things. Poems are not lists; lists can be poetic, sure, but they're not the poem.

I have to say that I didn't like this either. I'll let my crit speak for itself...

Urge

A little voice in the back of your head (This does not suck me in. You need to start this poem with something that makes me interested in the poem. Wording it differently might do it, but those words are so commonly used, they warded me off)

It’s loud or soft ('loud' and 'soft' are very dull words. Why is the volume important? explain)

It’s the devil or the angel (again, very common words. And again, explain)

It can help you or destroy you (very common worsd. You need to find a thesaurus and make this more powerful. And again, please explain. For instance, "It can help you find your way in life or push you into darkness". That isn't that great either, but it is an example)

It can push you into the dark when you’re going to the light (This needs to be reworded. It's too dull. Perhaps "It can pull you into the darkness while you strive to enter the light")

You think its over but its still there (You think what's over? Explain. Do you mean 'you think it has left'? You really need to find some better poetic descriptions and schemes. Like Incandescence said, you need allusions, abstractions and metaphors. This has more of the feeling of an essay... just stating things. You need to make it colorful and interesting to be a poem)

It’s an addiction to something you tell yourself you don’t want to do (again, just a sentence stating a fact. Be more creative and use less common words.)

It’s an Urge (This would be good if the rest of the poem built up to it, but since the poem did not build up to this, it seems meaningless)


This is a decent start to something, but needs serious work. I suggest you find a thesaurus and agree with about all of the suggestions above. Keep working on this and could be good.
Keep writing

You told us EVERYTHING in this poem and left nothing implied. It doesn't pull our emotions into the poem, it merely tries to tell us what emotion is in a "black and white" sort of way. It doesn't work very well.

I know that everyone here has been beating this poem up, and I really don't want to add too much to it. So I should probably stop now, but I really wanted to encourage you to keep trying. Everyone starts out with something like this, and then they slowly learn what they need to put in and what flows and what sounds right to the read and such. Keep working at it.