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137,428 Literary Works • 672,015 Reviews
Hi Phoenixbird101, my thoughts on your poem:
I suppose I have many of the same thoughts that Kafka has here. The poem really lacks the strong physical imagery that could help it.
I'm unsure what kind of metaphor you are trying to achieve here, but trust and hope showing up as light doesn't exactly make us picture something solid. It's this amorphous thing that is just out of reach.
This part has a solid image, the hand reaching out. The hesitation is an okay image too. These lines are super choppy though and it interrupts the flow terribly. You also have a half rhyme in the first and last lines which distracts the reader.
Some odd phrasing in this stanza and the next. Poetry has odd metaphors at time, but that doesn't mean you have to create one, especially when the metaphor is difficult to grasp. Abstract nouns are best to avoid.
I don't even really know where to begin with the ending. It's just not wrapping everything up tightly enough and it tries to sounds profound, but fails. Sometimes the circular thing just doesn't work, and I think that's the case here. Why does everything start over? It doesn't feel like a situation that is cyclical.
Please let me know if I can explain anything further.
The passive phrasing of lines one and two makes for a very weak beginning. Stronger would be "your trust/is like a bright light" or, even better, "your trust is a bright light." Not that the bright light analogy is especially powerful anyway. Everything could be, and is somewhere, compared to a bright light, since it's so vague and ubiquitous and doesn't require any real deep thinking. But it's overused, bland, and you could do much better. What is trust really like? Put some thought into it. Of course, changing the analogy would mean reworking this piece from the ground up, but it'd be for the better, fo sho.
The third line, again, could use some elaboration. How is trust filled with hope? This seems more like a filler line than anything: you couldn't think of anything else to say, so you just threw in this without thinking about it. You could do two things: you could get rid of this, as it contributes nothing to this piece, or you could go on to explain to the reader what "trust is a light filled with hope" actually means and why and how.
"So close in sight" in line four isn't descriptive at all. First, it doesn't make much sense (so close in sight? Think about it. Also, if something's close, isn't it a given that it's also in sight, especially if that something is a bright light?), second, "so" as an adverb here really doesn't give me any real idea of how close the bright light is. It's bland and nondescript.
Line two, first reaction: what? Hesitation is where? What does it mean?
Line four is inviting but, you guessed it, needs elaboration. What's wrong with you? Why are you doubting yourself? Questions you never really answer, so that line just hangs here purposelessly, despite its potential.
Another observation: questions directed at the reader should be avoided when possible, as they directly acknowledge an audience, which can cause your poem to veer dangerously far into the realm of disconnected third-person prose and that's never particularly effective.
You grab light? What does that look like? What's the point of a metaphor if it doesn't serve your purpose? After all, metaphors are supposed to make things clearer, not just confuse them. Also, what's the point of a metaphor if you have to go and remind me what it means at every turn? Why don't you just say "I grab this trust;" it'd make equally little sense, and it wastes less words.
Third line feels disconnected, rhythmically. "But never too much" is a far better choice, connecting it to the previous sentence and more economic with phrasing.
Now you're eating the light? What's next--are you going to ride the light, sit on the light? You're depending on impossible imagery! It's becoming clearer and clearer that a more accurate metaphor is needed.
Wait, no, you're not eating it, you're eating "off" it, whatever that means.
And what does the darkness represent? Darkness is the absence of light, so is it the absence of your subject's trust? That seems plausible, but why would you need to heal from it?
Lines three and four are again too disjointed and passive. Try "like my medicine/healing me from the dark."
What's with the half-ellipsis/comma in line one? What's that about? Also, "begun" ==>"began."
And why is the light gone? What happened to it? This stanza just came out of nowhere. I was only just getting into the poem (that is, more into it than at the beginning) when you dropped this on me. It's meaningless, inconclusive, unsatisfying, both on a metaphorical level and on a literal level.
I hope this helped.
-Kafka