Published August 12, 2007
In the shadows
Where the hollow heart thrives
Bereft of all sorts
It's beat stutters
Pausing a mantra of a thousand voices
One persists to thrive inside the near dead sanctuary of love
Raising spirits and trampling pain
Then with reality's harsh blow
Vertigo takes it's course throughout the soul
And vanquishes all hope for survival
Leaving nothing, but a hollow in the heart of the damned
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I agree with Fand about the punctuation. You don't need an apostrophe in "its" as 'it's" means "it is".Honestly, this didn't feel all that fresh to me. Maybe try coming at it from a different angle. My favourite part was the first stanza, and I did enjoy the line;
"One persists to thrive inside the near dead sanctuary of love."
I'd put a hyphen between "near" and "dead". I liked the alliteration of "hollow heart", but I disliked the use of the word "one". It made it sound impersonal and vaguely pretentious to me.
I'd try the second stanza and isolated line again,as I felt that they weakend the beginning.Hope this helps.
Thank you, I like these harsh critiques you give. It makes me want to do better and such...I'm also starting to get nausiated by people who just tell you it's good whether it is or not.
Punctuation, boy! Where's the punctuation?
That'll be the lesson for this critique then, I suppose. Why is punctuation in poetry so important? It tells you how to read it! And, consequently (and more importantly), it gives you the emotion. Sure, the words give you a general tone--poems that use words like "sunshine" and "daisy" and "cotton candy" will obviously be happy, and "dismal," "anguish," and "darkness" are obviously not going to be found in a cheery poem. But what if you want to summon up a more complex, specific emotion without saying it? How do you express anxiety without saying "I'm/he's/she's/they're anxious?"
The answer: punctuation. Have you ever noticed that when someone's angry (but not yelling) they tend to speak in short clipped sentences? "Yes. No. Look, I don't care. Yeah. Whatever. I'll talk to you tomorrow." If they said, "Yes--I mean no--I mean--look, I don't care. Yeah, whatever... I'll talk to you tomorrow," it makes the speaker seem less angry and more confused and flustered. "Yes; no; I really don't care. Yeah, whatever, I'll talk to you tomorrow," comes across as weary and resigned. See how the punctuation affects it?
Now, on to this poem. You've taken a complete nosedive into cliche here--there's not a single image I haven't seen before, presented in a way I've seen before. Fix the punctuation, veer away from self-destruction a la cliche, and I'll come back and give this a better critique. As it is, I really can't bear to read it another time.