Upon Somber Wings

by EmmVeePi

Published January 29, 2013

In Poetry

Oh dearest sweet death,

Take the day and take the night,

take all pain with my last breath.

With you I shant put up a fight.

I've put in my time and I've lived this sick joke

Upon a dark and windy sea I've stood.

On my hopes and my dreams do I daily choke.

I've kissed goodbye to all that is good

In this place or that I've searched for a life.

So let me go quick and let me go now

All that I want can be found with a knife.

I will not miss this world but I will miss thou.

Riding these somber wings I fly

Finally here: The day I die.

Comments & reviews · 5
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LittleCaroleen
Comment
LittleCaroleen commented Comment · Jan 30, 2013

I liked it. It had a nice rhythm to it. Kind of like a lullaby that you wouldn't sing to your children.

live1out2loud7 wrote a review Review · Jan 29, 2013

Hey EmmVeePi! You requested a review, so here it is. I thought that this was a very well written piece. It seems to have very nice rhythm to it. And I enjoy the rhyme scheme, although, at times it was apparent that you were struggling to make a rhyme, and sometimes loosing some of the meaning of behind the words.

Now, I truly apologize if I am wrong, however, it seems in some places that you are kind of trying for the stereotypical poem, such as so many amazing poets do. I would, however, encourage you to step out of the box. Don't try and make the lines confusing. State what you want to say in a more straight forward way. For example, on the fourth line, instead of saying "With you I shan't put up a fight" (the word shan't needs an apostrophe), try to simplify. Try to make a sentence that makes sense alone. Maybe say something like "I shan't, against you, put up a fight". Instead of mixing up the words in the line, and making it sound "poetic", actually just write a normal sentence that you would use in your normal every day speech, and it will make much more sense, and be easier to read, therefore making it sound even more wonderful.

As for the rhyming, I really do think that rhyming can add a wonderful rhythm to a poem. However, if it becomes to much of a struggle to the point where the words just don't quite fit, then it may not be worth it. Such as, on the line where you say "I will not miss this world, but I will miss thou".(you need to correct the punctuation) Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe thou is not being used completely correctly here. Something about it just sounds wrong in context. You don't have to stick to the same rhyme scheme, remember that. So try to look through some of the rhymes, and make sure they fit. I know that it is difficult, and you did an amazing job. Also, I love the little change in the last two lines.

Lastly, I am a big stickler for grammar, so I need to point out the many mistakes with punctuation. Maybe you were taking poetic license and just didn't want any punctuation in the middle of lines? I thought I'd point it out just in case though.

Overall, this is a great poem that could just use a few tweaks. I think the subject matter was handled delicately, and it is a truly beautiful poem

Great job, and keep on writing!

User avatar
Trident
Review
Trident wrote a review Review · Jan 29, 2013

Hi EmmVeePi, I'll just make a few observations here:

Death poetry

Death poetry is extremely difficult to get right. Why? Because it's done so often. So you really have to separate yourself from the crowd. I mean, Tennyson wrote In Memoriam A.H.H., which is 133 cantos, which is just ridiculously long. To truly capture the right tone, you need specifics, you need details. You need to care about the person before they die. And it gets even more difficult if the person is committing suicide.

Oh dearest sweet death,

Take the day and take the night,

take all pain with my last breath.

With you I shant put up a fight.


You have a good sort of mantra rhythm going here, but it doesn't offer any details whatsoever. It's more of a chant, which you can discuss the poetic merits of, but which I don't particularly believe to be that interesting. I believe that good poetry tends to make us see the world differently, and I don't really get anything in that sense in these early lines.

I've put in my time and I've lived this sick joke

Upon a dark and windy sea I've stood.

On my hopes and my dreams do I daily choke.

I've kissed goodbye to all that is good


Again with the lack of details and images. We have a dark and windy sea, but even that is a metaphysical non-image. You choke, which could be a powerful verb, but then it is on hopes and dreams, which we can't see. What are these hopes? What are these dreams? Paint us pictures of them and then we can relate to the narrator. Everything is so vague. I don't know anything about this narrator because they refuse to give us anything about them. Right now your poem could be about any random person, and you don't want that. You want it to be unique.

I will not miss this world but I will miss thou.

Riding these somber wings I fly

Finally here: The day I die.


And the death here, we don't have any inkling of what happened. I mean, you don't have to go into the minute details, like drool was coming out of the corner of the narrator's mouth or anything. But it is a shame that we don't even know any of the circumstances. We know about a knife, yes, but still it's vague.

A note on suicide in poetry

I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but suicide in poetry is what is considered stereotypical because many new authors tend to write such poetry. My suggestion is to go out and read some poetry that doesn't deal with this theme. Because there is poetry about EVERYTHING literally. So that makes it open to so many possibilities.

The truth is, when most people see a suicide poem, they raise their eyes. If you do want to continue with this poem, I highly suggest expanding and details, details, details.

You certainly have skill with rhyme schemes and verse, so I would urge you to continue to write.

Feel free to shoot me a message if you'd like.

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Sunshine
Review
Sunshine wrote a review Review · Jan 29, 2013

Hi there, Sunshine here to review today!

The words were very well-chosen, and flowed well together; the intial idea of the poem has been accomplished, and that's great. However, the format is distracting, and not nearly as complete and well-chosen as the poem's words itself.

The biggest thing was the commas- you capitialized words after them (not something to do) and put them in places a period would've done just as well in. An example from the passage;

"Oh dearest, sweet death,

take the day and take the night,

take all pain with my last breath."

I uncapitialized the t in 'take' and added a comma between dearest and sweet death. It gives the poem a little bit more flow, in my opinion; lets the reader concentrate a little bit more on the words, which is definitely something you need to capilitialize on with old-style of your poem. I don't think I've seen a poem on here use 'shant'!

With the usage of these old-timey words and themes, I think the flow could also be aided by using "I have' instead of 'I've'. I realize they had conjuctions back then, but the style your poem is written in, I think it would majorly help.

Kepp writing!

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cm57105
Comment
cm57105 commented Comment · Jan 29, 2013

Just a comment but I thought it was very good!



Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?
— Player (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard)