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Forest of Secrets

by Frinderman


Longing reunion to my love, my ears,

I taught you to see and you taught me to hear,

like the mockingbird’s songs, our fates entwined,

but the Forest now rejects me, choked by its vines.

~

The Forest leaves deteriorate but my memories of you never will.

It’s never enough that I could ever say,

you unlocked and occupied the chasm; my heart,

how could I describe it when I’d never felt this way?

~

But my sin runs deep and I reap what I sew,

I saw it coming but I was stubborn I suppose.

With our lives fine-drawn, our bond was measured,

our fate had been stretched out and your string severed. 

I failed to hear the warnings, you failed to see the signs,

my Angel returned home because I wouldn’t read between the lines.

~

My heart was no longer empty but void: black.

I didn’t feel til much later the gap: a crack.

The vines had strangled my heart; it shattered to pieces,

so I folded them up and ironed the creases.

~

Through the winding woods where paths become lost,

I’ll always remember where to find you, your Cross.

The Forest’s melody where your voice will stay,

hidden with time, a stone, your grave.

~

“Don’t say Goodbye,” the last thing she would say.

The first day and last you showed your tears,

the only day ever, I wished you weren’t here.

The Forest of Secrets where memories lay,

know your song will never die,

my love’s bittersweet lullaby.


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Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:35 pm
alliyah wrote a review...



Hello, this will be a short review.

My first impression with the piece is that I wish it was explained in greater detail why the place of the forest is so important to the narrator and their relationship with their lost love. Most of the stanzas focus on the relationship and the forest is not the main point of the poem, yet the poem is named after the forest. Also, I'm not sure that the secrets of the forest are clear from the poem. Were the lovers' romance a secret? Did they share secrets in the forest? Was that what the lullaby was referring to? The style of the poem and your word choice is lovely, I just feel the actual narrative of the poem is lacking. Also, I think the italics are distracting and don't really add; though I love that you drew attention to 'Goodbye', since it turned her statement into both a plea to stay and a farewell, which made the statement incredibly somber and poignant. It was my favorite part.

Overall, you've got some really good instincts when it comes to writing poems, but could edit it a bit for clarity. Also, a few of your line breaks could stand being looked at again.

~alliyah




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Wed Oct 12, 2016 7:55 am
Lightsong wrote a review...



Welcome to YWS! I'm here to review. :D

Alright, so the first thing I'm going to point out is the use of italicization. It is painfully too much here, and since the poetry in general is shorter than short story, it is more apparent. Poem does not need italicization; it is a tool that when is used right will produce awesome result, but it is a dangerous too. It needs to be used rarely so that no damage is done to your poem.

The rhyme scheme is inconsistent. This might be subjective, but I prefer rhymed poems to have uniform rhyme scheme. The first stanza alone shows the rhyme is not perfect, and it is A, a, B, b. The second stanza completely breaks the flow because of the rhyme scheme, which is C, D, c, d. It is all over the place. My suggestion is to stick with a scheme (either the first one or the second) so that the readability is smooth.

“Don’t say Goodbye,” the last thing she would say.
The first day and last you showed your tears,
the only day ever, I wished you weren’t here.
The Forest of Secrets where memories lay,
know your song will never die,
my love’s bittersweet lullaby.


I am pointing out this stanza in particular because of the use of bold letters, which is a no-no in the poetry world. Maybe you can use it as your style, but since its use is only here, it feels sudden and unnecessary. Not only they are bold, they are also italicized, and I have touched up why I think italicization should be used rarely. Lastly, it is the number of lines. We have six lines here while the rest of the stanzas have four, so again, it feels sudden and lengthy. Rhyme poem at its core is a structured poem, so you have to have a structure for all your stanzas.

And that is all! I apologize for not commenting the context of the poem, but I feel that criticizing the format of a structure poem is an equally important job to do. Keep improving! :D




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Fri Oct 07, 2016 2:03 am
Virgil wrote a review...



This is Kaos here for a review!

A small note before I actually start the poem is that it doesn't have stanzas and I'm kind of assuming that there was supposed to be stanzas but it got messed up by the Publishing Center's format. If you do shift+enter in between lines or with the line you want to do it'll be in normal format. If that's too vague to understand, the most common way is to put "~" in between stanzas to indicate where they start and end.

Longing reunion to my love, my ears,

I taught you to see and you taught me to hear,

like the mockingbird’s songs, our fates entwined,

but the Forest now rejects me, choked by its vines.


The rhyming in here feels forced as you're trying to make the poem rhyme with "ears" and hear" but "ear" is three letters of the word "hear" so it doesn't really work. I suggest taking out the rhyming in the poem and focus on some of the other things that could use help. If you take out the "my ears" part in the first line, it'll flow better.

The clarity of this first stanza is foggy because you're trying to stuff too much into it. Instead a stanza should be sort of a whole thought or image, but that isn't really here for me as it jumps around. The first line is talking about love and it feels generic and washed out compared to the second line, which would be better if the starting line wasn't so weak. We start off with talking about longing for love, then you use "my ears" still in the first line, which felt cheap to me. It was forced in there just so you would be able to do the second line it seems. Instead of doing this, I suggest setting the stanza up to where you can also talk about ears before the second line.

Describe this love more instead of just telling us about it and then moving on with the poem. I happen to say this a lot, but love poems always happen to be from anonymous and to anonymous, this means that we get no sense of character from the speaker or the person that the poem is addressed to. What makes up a lot of the poem when the topic is love, is, what is the love like? It isn't described here what it feels like to you or anything of that sort. Love is such a broad and washed out thing that you have to do more than just talking about love itself. Memories and experiences with the person give a great sense of what the love is like, the tiny quirks and the little things make it good.

The Forest leaves deteriorate but my memories of you never will.

It’s never enough that I could ever say,

you unlocked and occupied the chasm; my heart,

how could I describe it when I’d never felt this way?


Here, the first line felt a little stronger with the fact that you used some imagery. Unfortunately, it was dropped instead of being continued for the stanza. Carry on the imagery instead of dropping it after a line. Describe the leaves decomposing and deteriorating, do they crumble? Do they get whisked away with the wind? I don't really get so far why you're capitalizing "forest" other than the fact that it builds up to near the ending of the poem.

In some of these lines I felt as if you used the semicolon a little wrongly as it is used to connect two independent clauses rather than kind of being used as a comma. The two independent clauses should also be somewhat similar in what they're discussing. It shouldn't be used just for it to look nice, use it for a reason, if it worsens the flow, then why would you use it? The purpose of them is to make things flow smoother.

But my sin runs deep and I reap what I sew,

I saw it coming but I was stubborn I suppose.

I failed to hear the warnings, you failed to see the signs,

my Angel returned home because I wouldn’t read between the lines.


It starts to talk more about things that are religious, which kind of popped out of nowhere. I didn't quite know why you decided to add it in, in a religious sense as this wasn't really here earlier in the poem. I'm also mentioning about the Cross line later in the poem.

The imagery feels kind of weak or bare in the poem as it doesn't really try and describe things in detail and instead goes on before the imagery has a chance to develop. There weren't any really strong metaphors or figurative language, which was disappointing for me.

The ending of the poem feels pretty generic in my opinion. It talks about a lot of broad topics which makes it hard to figure out what the poem is actually about, and doesn't really have a direction in the theme of the poem by the end of it. The rhyme, throughout the poem is forced and doesn't really /need/ to be here but if you insist on having it, I suggest a website called RhymeZone where you can check what rhymes and what doesn't for sure, because some of this stuff is an almost-rhyme. Another suggestion if you're going to rhyme is to put this into some sort of cleaner format so it isn't as all over the place.

I hope this helped and have a great day!




Frinderman says...


I greatly appreciate the criticism however there are a few points in your review that bothered me:

To clarify, I'm not very good at writing but the reason I enjoy poetry is that I see it as expressing thoughts and memories through piecing together a puzzle of words, which is why I always like to rhyme.

I thank you for the stanza advice, you were correct that it was changed with the format.

I am not the best with semicolons so I understand that mistake.

As far as description, love is not something that is easily described and when each word holds personal meaning, I understand my fault of appearing vague or dropping imagery. I admit I was too concerned not wanting to drag a poem on for too long that I should have been more descriptive.

When I capitalize "forest" that was because it was used as a metaphor, the poem treating it as a being.

As far as when you said religion popped out of nowhere, my use of the word "sin" and the phrase "I reap what I sew referred to mistakes and regrets and the outcome they created. A cross is not only used to mark a grave but it is also a symbol of atonement, in this case for the previously stated mistakes.

Beginning with the same stanza quoted above, this was intentionally meant to mark a shift in the mood of the poem.

I honestly am unsure of what you mean when you say there is no direction in theme and I would appreciate you elaborating on that because each stanza sticks to the same main idea/theme.

Once again I appreciate the criticism greatly, I just hope this clarifies a few things. I will likely expand on and edit this poem and possibly republish it later. Have a great day as well!



Virgil says...


I understand a little better now of what you meant.

The clarity of the poem is more what I was talking about with the theme and it felt a little broad to me. The other parts of the poem don't really hint to "The Forest of Secrets" any earlier on in the poem so I don't really know why that ended it off. At least, I didn't understand it.

I do now understand why "forest" was capitalized and have a better understanding with the lines with the cross and "reap what you sow" now that you've explained it.

I hope this helped clarify.

The semicolons were used in an iffy way with them only having a word or two after them, and it really should be more of a whole clause in my opinion rather than you just using it over and over in the same way with it only functioning to serve one word.



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Thu Oct 06, 2016 8:57 pm
PhoenixLaFay says...



I really like the style used in this poem. I have never seen that style before. The only thing I have to critique is that "But my sin runs deep and I reap what I SEW" could be changed to SOW ("sew" refers to stitching and "sow" refers to grain)




Frinderman says...


Thank you so much! I would like to say though that the use of the word "sew" was intentional. I am not great with explanation but I am an artist and this poem ties in with one of my paintings, which stitches are used as a metaphor. I greatly appreciate your opinion though!



PhoenixLaFay says...


I thought that was a possibility but I thought I should at least make sure. Happy poet-ing!



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Thu Oct 06, 2016 7:31 pm
LeutnantSchweinehund says...



Nothing short of a lovely creation!

If you're a relatively new writer like me, I can say with absolute certainty that you have quite some talent!

There is something about this poem that stands out from the rest around here. It's very unique. Perhaps not in setting, as it is a love poem (the most common type of poem, from my experience), but the way you wrote it boasts personal style.

Now, I realize that the poem speaks of a broken couple, but for some reason, I see it entirely differently. To me, it is the tale of a man, faithful to whichever deity he once served, though heartbroken by the realization that his beliefs were unfounded and ultimately false.

Can't critique much! I quite liked it overall! And that's coming from a very honest cynic!

Keep at it!




Frinderman says...


Thank you for the complement! This is the first poem I have written in two years so it's great hearing positive feedback. I decided to get back into writing thanks to a great friend of mine who also showed me this website. Truth be told I've never thought much of myself with writing but when I can express myself through it I get carried away...




I'm effortlessly ironic.
— Link Neal