Published April 9, 2011
we used to be friends.
then, for a bit, we used to go on without speaking.
for the next few years, we had such a brother/sister relationship.
we'd always tease each other, back and forth little tiffs.
a while... my best friend loved you.
i knew you loved me, but i would never say it out loud.
she still loves you, but now i love you too.
why?
you haven't changed.
i have.
i've been through loss and love and sadness.
but you're still the same mitch i've always known.
thank you for loving me, even if it's not how i love you.
but now... i'll try to control my overflowing curiosity.
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I'm going to have to agree with BehindtheMask on this one. This poem seems like you're just telling me your story in a nutshell. Yes, this is the Narrative Poetry forum, but a good narrative poem doesn't attempt to spit out everything that ever happened between you and another person in 30 seconds. You're putting years of history in a short poem, and it doesn't really work.
I would rewrite this, focusing on a specific moment. Perhaps when you first realized you loved him, or a moment of tension between you and your best friend over him. Use images to try to recreate that moment and the emotions involved. Make us feel what you felt in that moment, regardless of how you feel now.
I think this is a good idea for a poem (or several poems with this long history), but as it stands, it lacks substance. Dig in deeper and you could have a lovely poem on your hands. Keep writing!
Hi Gracie, I'm going to be completely honest.
This, here, is hardly a poem. Writing a few so-called "deep" words and making them in poem format does not make a poem. I feel entirely absent of emotion as I read this. You also obviously didn't put much work or thought into this- considering you didn't even capitalize your I's. It's also devoid of any constant rhythm or flow.My suggestion is to go through this time and time again and to THOROUGHLY edit it. But just so I feel like I'm doing more than complaining about how much I dislike this poem, I'll help you:
Corrections will be in RED.
We used to be friends.
Then, for a bit, we used to go on without speaking.
For the next few years, we had such a brother/sister relationship.
We'd always tease each other, back and forth little tiffs.
A while... my best friend loved you.
I knew you loved me, but I would never say it out loud.
She still loves you, but now I love you too.
Why?
You haven't changed.
I have.
I've been through loss and love and sadness.
But you're still the same mitch I've always known.
Thank you for loving me, even if it's not how I love you.
But now... I'll try to control my overflowing curiosity.
Okay, that's how the poem should look, given the words and punctuation you used. Now I'm going to go through it again and give you my recommendations on how to improve it;
Comments will be in RED.
Hope I managed to help you improve this poem. And hope I wasn't too harsh or come off as hostile.
~BTM
This line... came practically out of nowhere. There was no mention of curiosity earlier, so having a line devoted to curiosity and controlling it feels tacked on.
Try incorporation mentions of the narrator's curiosity earlier on. Perhaps she's curious about why he likes her. Perhaps she's curious about why he doesn't like her best friend. However you introduce the curiosity, you need to introduce it fairly early on in the poem, no later than the middle, for the last line to both make sense and feel like it fits the rest of the poem.
Another thing that might be a good idea is for you to include capitalization. Right now, I'm not seeing any clear reason as to why nothing is capitalized, especially since you've punctuated for the most part. Having consistent capitalization would help this poem look less amateurish. Otherwise, if you can show your readers a very good and strong reason why there is no capitalization, then show us.
It's nice, some capitilization, unless that was how you intended on writing it? It's really sweet and short, the flow of the stanzas were nice, maybe you could of used more vocbulary words? Just a suggestion, but the words you used were simple and fit the poem well. Great poem, really cute. Keep on writing. My favorite stanza/line was "you haven't changed. i have. i've been through loss and love and sadness. but you're still the same mitch i've always known." and "but now... i'll try to control my overflowing curiosity." nice, like it!
- Roxi