Elegy of a Dead Man

[A/N: This is the updated version of my poem, "Ghost". If you want to view the old version, please PM me. I do hope this version is better. Please feel free to rip this to bits.]


Elegy of a Dead Man



I am but an illusion –

Without appearance; without shape,

Unseen, forgotten and frozen in time

Hidden within the night’s dark cape


I am but an illusion,

A wicked and dark silhouette

A faint shadowy semblance of fear;

Death’s macabre marionette


I am but a willful soul who

Defies the last bitter hour’s embrace;

A spectre of vibrant life once lost,

But no force on earth can efface.


Breath once had entered my crimson lungs,

Now my face is ashen and pale

Blood flows in shriveled veins no longer;

My body is stiff and stale


My chest conceals no thumping heart

For I am empty within,

My bones crackle and creak and snap

Beneath my withered skin



Here and gone at the same time,

As ever-present as dark-hour’s mist

For I exist no longer; I am but thin air,

Neither light nor shadow has gist



A sail without bearing, cluttered in confusion;

Ceaselessly wandering far and near

In this never ending darkness of despair,

Even the Devil’s voice becomes sweet to hear...

hi there nice poem, but on to the review:

I am for you an illusion –

Without appearance; without shape,

Unseen and forgotten and frozen in time

Hidden within the night’s dark cape

ok, the first thing I noticed about this stanza is that you have no rhythm. The third line, in particular. There are too many "ands" and this is upsetting your flow. But other than that, good work. I love the last line. Oh, one suggestion? take out the "for you" in line one to make it sound much better.

I am for you an illusion –

Neither light nor shadow has meaning

The back of my hands are pale;

My body is stiff and stale

I like this stanza. no nit picks well, ok, maybe one. Your rhyming has changed. In the stanza above, you have rhymed abcb. you know, the second line and the last one. In this part however, you have rhymed the last two lines, which, eh, doesn't quite work very well. You need to decide on your rhyming scheme and stick with it, no switching back and forth.

I am but an illusion,

Here and gone at the same time;

I send those who glimpse at me quivering

With fear, they run home shrieking

Alas, this has no rhyme at all when you have rhymed above! Also, you are rather lacking in imaginative ideas. show us, don't tell us. you should use your words to paint a picture in the reader's mind, perhaps compare yourself to something or someone. Just a thought.


ok, I would continue this, but my computer is messing up, so I'll have to come back later and finish but my ending note, for right now, is: nice poem. could be better and maybe should be condensed into something smaller. good job

I am but an illusion,

Here and gone at the same time;

I send those who glimpse at me quivering

With fear, they run home shrieking

First off your poetry doesn't have to rhyme, but when you do, try to keep a steady rhythym unless you mean to upset the reader and put them on edge. Its a technique commonly used. Let you style match your message. Grammar wasn't horribly bad and mostly you can spot the mistakes yourself. Keep it up, and if you need any reviews just Pm me. I'll be happy to help.

~Kaylyn

That was great. I loved your use of descriptive words.

Without dreams; without a heart
With no sense of cold and warmth,
Not able to speak; not able to smile...
I am everything hollow and vile

That was my favorite sequence. I love how you lead up to the final sentence "I am everything hollow and vile." I also really enjoyed this sequence...

I am for you an illusion –
Neither light nor shadow has meaning
The back of my hands are pale;
My body is stiff and stale

It was nice how you made "pale" and "stale" rhyme. It was also very appealing that you put the words "stiff and stale" next to eachother.

Overall, this poem flowed very nicely. You did a great job of getting your feeling across. You explained a ghost very well! Good job!

it seemed weird to me using stale to describe your body. but it was a nice poem. it was a bit bare feeling. didnt bring much out of me.

i like when you said 'the night's dark cape' nice description and imagery.
it had a nice use of vocabulary, so good job! i liked it well enough, but it still seems just okay.

Great poem. It was kinda confusing to me,but I was never really good at understanding poems.Really good use of vocabulary and your way of describing the ghost was excelent.

I really liked this!

It was rather depressing, obviously, but I still loved it. It was dramatic and it really made me think about what you were saying.

I'm not a very good critique so I wouldn't take my review to seriously! But even though that is true I will try to do the best I can to review you poem!

This poem was great in my opinion. It's full different feelings. It was truly gripping and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

It almost felt as if I was the main character of your poem and I absolutely love it when a poem or a story has that effect on me.

The first few lines of the poem was an excellent opener and you did do something that many other poets find hard to do by saying little but saying a lot. You should definitely be proud of that!

I didn't really understand the poem much but that is only because I'm not very good at reviewing and I get confused easily. The better the poem the more I seem to not understand it!

I'm not much of a criticiser so think of this as your compliment review!

Overall, I adored your poem!

I can't wait to read more!

Keep writing

Meg x-x

Hi, I really liked this poem though as the rhyming patterns are inconsistent it spoils the general flow and effective that you are trying to potray.

I am for you an illusion –
Without appearance; without shape,
Unseen and forgotten and frozen in time
Hidden within the night’s dark cape

Nice opening, good use of metaphors and abcb. This verse is fine left as it is .

I am for you an illusion –
Neither light nor shadow has meaning
The back of my hands are pale;
My body is stiff and stale


I am but an illusion,
Here and gone at the same time;
I send those who glimpse at me quivering
With fear, they run home shrieking


Without dreams; without a heart
With no sense of cold and warmth,
Not able to speak; not able to smile...
I am everything hollow and vile

These three verse just don't work for me. The description and launguage is fine, excellent even but its spolied by the change of rythum. When you read something you get into a natural sense of time, its why it helps to be consitent with this timing throughout your poems, otherwise it just throughs the reader off. Still, when analysing this I do get a really good sense of the feelings your trying to potray, its a little creepy :S

My chest conceals no thumping heart
For I am empty within,
My bones crackle and creak and snap
Beneath my withered skin


Even in the cluttered room of confusion,
Or in the never ending darkness of despair,
You can move as freely as you desire
For I exist no longer; I am but thin air...

Great, your back in time. No problems here.

I am... a ghost.

Its a good ending but I think if you left it at "I am but thin air" it would be better, leave room for speculation, that lasting curiousity.

Overall a nice poem, very good description but spoiled by the miss use of rhyumning.

sugarxsnow -


As a description of a ghost, this was mostly fine. (Though I'm not sure ghosts have bones.) As a poem, it could do with serious re-working. Staleness isn't only a property of the ghost.

I mentioned to someone else that it would be really helpful for them to think about what makes a poem different from a story -- a suggestion I'm going to give you as well. Now, I said above that this is primarily a descriptive piece; there is nothing wrong with that. What makes it so ineffectual, however, is that bland (and hence boring) repetition of statements: a poem that consists solely of "I am X, I am Y, I am Z," is not going to hold anyone's attention for very long.

What you might do instead is turn those descriptive statements into active one. Instead of telling us, "I am everything hollow and vile," you could try to describe that hollow- and vile-ness. That is, how could we, as readers, know s/he's hollow and vile if you didn't tell us? How could we decide that for ourselves?

Questions like that should be useful not only in future versions of this, if there are any, but also in your work more generally.


All the best,
Brad

@Incandescence

Yes, thank you.


I've edited the piece. I hope it's better now.

Goshdurn it, all your posts are so awe-inspiring, Sugar~


I'll star you. *stars* And I'll be back to review this as soon as I get my chores done. Blast it. If only I had more time. :/



Until next time,



KL.

Oh, I liked this! I just reviewed your other piece, so I figured I'd look at this one too!

You seem to like kind of dark subjects, don't you. But, what I love about your poem is that the dark subject, as it were, is really well written about. It's not all doom and gloom, y'know?

Again, you have a pretty faultless rhyme scheme. You pull this type of poetry off really well, which I absolutely love.

From what I've seen of the poem as it was before, I think you've made a definite improvement here. Well done!

~Amy

Thank you for the reviews... oh, it's the two of you again~!! I love you.


Now then...

@Black Rabbit - Goshdurn it too, KL. I hope you would hurry up. Not to sound pushy or anything, but you are ((bold italicize underline)) my [[MOST!]] favorite critique now.


@Aquamarine - Oh yus. Ahaha. I'm really glad you liked it~


Wow, no nitpicks yet, so far? I'll be glad if someone sabotaged this with all their might. That will be so fun to read.


All in all, I'm satisfied that someone took the liberty to read and review this piece.


Kate shall gives ya kookiessss layturrr~


~Sugar