Solitude & Company

Company and Solitude. A poem written by yourself, unfortunately I feel it doesn't really make an impact on the reader. It's simply not powerful and lacks a real essence.

I say this because of two reasons. The first is the point of the poem. A poem must convey a meaning and make a point. It must communicate something to the reader, but here it in unclear what you are trying to say, or what your subject is.
The second is your use of words in the attempt to convey this poem, including the lines you have chosen to use, and how much sense they make, and also the words you have chosen to centre your poem on.

Back to the former point, when I read this poem, I struggle to understand it's meaning. Here you have decided to use two contrasting words to base the two stanzas of your poem on. You put out the idea that solitude is bad, and company is good, but is that it? What else is there to it? There are no metaphors, no situations, no examples?
In general the language you have used is very basic. I feel that the use of repetition in this instance does not really have effectiveness, as it takes up 50% of the poem and becomes a chore to read. The lines between it are short and in general ineffective, carrying no meaning or conveying no feeling to the reader. To put it bluntly, they are basic.

And on top of being basic, they also don't really make sense. Lets take the first example.

Solitude, solitude,
left me alone.

I don't like this. I really don't. I wouldn't go as far to say it's wrong, because there are so many silly little elves out there ready to snap your neck at the utterance of that sentance, but I am going t go as far to say I think it's bad which is why I don't like it. Of course I won't leave you at that, but there is a strong reason why I think this.
The definition of the word solitude.
Solitude means alone, detached, far away. Solitude can't leave a person alone. Solitude within itself is the state of being alone. It doesn't even work as a metaphor because it just sounds weird. It just sounds like a silly statement. The being of solitude within itself is often connotative with a personal choice rather than something that is forced upon a person, so I feel that this word within itself is not the correct word you want to be using for this poem. Not only does this line really not make any sense, or carry any meaning at all (this line carries least meaning out of all of them in the entire poem), but the word 'Solitude' feels off in the entire context of the poem. It is not wrong, and you can very well use it, but it simply does not sit effectively and verges on the edge of contradiction in a way, as someone in solitude could just as easily move(physically or mentally) somewhere where they are not in solitude, as it is not really a 'forceful' word as I would like to put it.
In fact, everything that I have said can apply to all the lines in the solitude passage. How can solitude make you sick? How can it take your soul? How can it make you die. Of course loneliness and separation could make someone mentally sick, driven insane by their own state of solitude. But solitude within itself doesn't necessarily mean lonely or excluded.


Moving onto your stanza on company, I fail to see how this relates effectively. The only context I can imagine for this poem is two people and one was alone and then died, while the other had some company and survived. As a synopsis that doesn't sound particularly in depth. The use of 'her' and she suddenly throws the reader, and makes them slightly confused. We don;t know who she is, and why should we care about her? What is her relation to the narrator? Why should the narrator care about her? This can often be justified in a few words, sometimes even in a title, but your title adds nothing to the work as much as the words 'solitude' and 'company' add nothing.

The sentences here are too, basic, to the point of being grammatically awkward.

Company, company,
Left her real happy.

'Left her real happy' sounds like something a hill-billy would say, or ai don;t know. It just doesn't sound like smooth English, and it doesn't really have any impact of the reader. It doesn't have pretty words. It doesn't make the reader care since the reader doesn't know who she is so why should they care that she is happy?

Company, company,
Made me envy.

Grammatically this is saying that a magic fairy by the name of Company flew up to the narrator, waved the magic want and turned the narrator physically into the expression of 'envy'.
You can't make someone envy. You can make them envious, but not envy.

The use of rhyme overall turns it cheesy, but with the basic sentences already, it doesn't really do any damage.
I'm sorry I'm so blunt and critical, but that's just me. This poem seems so empty, so nothing. The repetition takes away. The sentences takes away. And I really don't think there was a feeling in mind when it was being written. I'm sure you write better than this, and briefly browsing through your other poems, it does seem that they are better than this one.

Very simple, very quick, very plain.

What I like to do with poems that have refrains like this is take out the refrain and look at the meat in between. Have you done this before?

Solitude, solitude:

left me alone.
Took my soul.
Made me sick.
Made me die real quick.

Company, company:

Left her real happy.
Made me envy.
Kept her alive.
Sang her sweet lullabies.

First you can notice that you didn't capitalize "left" the same way you did other lines. You can also see that "left her real happy" is longer than the other lines in similar places, so maybe you want to take out the word "real"?

Now, I'm wondering... if the speaker is dead, how can they envy the girl later? Haha. Maybe you want to change the last line from "made me die" to something else not quite so final? Like maybe "brought me down" or "scraped me raw" or something else hurtful? Or, maybe to mirror the first section instead of "made me envy", you might want to talk about what happiness gave her, since in the second lines of stanza one, you said solitude "took my soul".

Overall, this is pretty accessible, but only for a certain period of time. Later on, we try to stop feeling like we should care about what other people have -- I'm saying this because I wonder what you would write about company if you continued to have the poem be about the narrator. Maybe try it out and see where your writing takes you!

I hope these thoughts have been helpful to you!
PM me or reply to this review if you have any questions/comments.
Good luck and keep writing!

Hannah

Hello ^^ Seb here for a review.

I really like the contrasting nature between the first half and the second half, and I love the repetition in this piece. It keeps it focused, and it gives it a certain mood that I really like.

However, I think you could take the repetition a bit further and have the two halves mirror each other. I think the best way to do that would be to have each corresponding line start with the same word. You did this in a few places, actually.

I think my wording there is a little confusing, so I'll show you what I mean.

Solitude, solitude,

left me alone.

Company, company,

Left her real happy.

Line two in the first half begins with "left," and so does line two in the second half. I think it would give your poem an interesting effect if you did that with all of the lines. Or, instead of doing it with the first word of each line, you could do it with rhyming.

Overall the poem flowed fairly well, but there were a few places the rhythm seemed to get interrupted.

Solitude, solitude,

Made me die real quick.

The syllable count in the last line is way more than the rest of the poem, and it seems a little bit... chunky? I don't know if that's quite the word I'm looking for, but I hope you understand what I mean. Simply having it be "made me die" would sound better, but that messes with the rhyming scheme.

Company, company,

Made me envy.

In line four in the second stanza, you switch pronouns. In the rest of the stanza, you're referring to someone else; here, you start to refer to yourself. It makes it less uniform.

On to the good stuff now

Solitude, solitude,

Took my soul.

Solitude, solitude,

Made me sick.

I really like these lines. They're very powerful, and very well said. They clearly show how detrimental loneliness can be.

Company, company,

Kept her alive.

In contrast, this line from the second stanza shows how important company can be. These lines and the ones from the first stanza go well together.

I really enjoyed your poem ^^ I hope to read more work of yours in the future