Hey, Cam. I’m Ty. Let’s talk about poetry.
First of all, you’ve acknowledged that this subject-matter is overdone. I accept that and agree with you, but most subjects are overdone, and in that train of thought, I say that you don’t bother analyzing the particulars of what you write poetry about, but rather how you write it. Now, this is a short piece that has very little wiggle room because you have a parameter of AABBCCDDEEFF rhyme. Again, this is okay, but as far as nurturing your skill in poetry goes, I’m going to diverge from your written limits and talk about potential vs. delivery.
There is major beauty in poetry on a subject-matter like self-harm; that’s not to say that it should be romanticized or praised, but rather that it can be very emotive if you pull it off the right way. As this piece stands right now, it falls short of making me care about the narrator. Your parameter of rhyme is very shackling, and I want to see what you could pull off were you to remove the rhyme scheme. See, when you free yourself from limits—when you enter free-verse poetry—there is so much more room for a beautiful narrative, for the exposure of images and lyrics that make the reader feel.
That said, there’s no real narration here—simply the four-second thought stream that comes with the narrator’s self-harm. But if you were to explore what drove her here in the first place, the thoughts that burn and pull her down, you would have more of a connection with your reader.
Even if we were to leave the rhyme scheme in place on this piece, you waste several lines just to meet the scheme:
to pull myself back
Knowing there is never a lack
…
So much to gain
…
And I finally begin
And it’s simply sad because the tiny length of this piece gives NO room for you to waste lines. You essentially waste ¼ of your entire poem, and that’s a shame. And that’s typically the shame of parameters in general. Consider them Poetry: Challenge Mode. More often than not, beginners in poetry start with rhyming and meter, and it gives us poor execution. I say that if you want to develop as a poet of emotive merit, you begin with free-verse.
Aside from my dislike of parameters, you have an issue with the phrasing of most of the poem: it’s written ¾ in participles. That’s the –ing deal, if you didn’t know. Participles are on the edge of not being verbs and close to the line where we begin with adjectives, but since they’re so close to both parties, they simply make for a boring voice. It’s not until you reach “I let the metal sink in” that we have any proper active voice. That said, I’d certainly love to see the remainder of the poem reshaped to fit active voice so that your narrator has more power over what she’s doing, and you don’t, instead, give us gripping > feeling > falling > wanting > begging > knowing. It’s boring and passive. A whole frick-ton of telling, and very, very little showing.
Hit me up and we’ll discuss potential free-verse together.
Lumi
Points: 1626
Reviews: 745
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