What The Hand's Have To Say

Bravo! This was a really great poem. It flowed, rhymed, and painted a picture. Loved it.
Overall:
*creative
*good topic choice
*unique style
*detail was good

I enjoyed it. The i liked the standerd 1 2,1 2 3 4,3 4 pattern and the way it flowed.

They can show your youth,

Or tell your old age.

Your hands tell the truth

Like book is to page.

wow this is really great, I think the ending was pretty great too, I don't really have anything to comment beside that I really liked it, maybe you could expand this? Maybe, just a thought. This as actually very good. But then again that's my opinion. anyways good luck, and keep writing.

-Max

Hello!

I don't have much time to write this- but I really wanted to leave a comment to let you know I read it and enjoyed it. And it's always a treat to check your reviews and see a nice green sentence, isn't it? XD

Anyway- I like the specificity of the subject. It's a very hard thing to do, in the sense that you have to extend and maintain the metaphor and concept for a whole poem, but you clearly pulled it off. I just have enough time to tell you my favourite line:

They can show your youth,

Or tell your old age.

Your hands tell the truth

Like book is to page.

Wiseman -

For the most part, this was a pleasant poem. It has a good message expressed using calm and soothing language. It wasn't phenomenal, but it does deserve a pat on the back.

Rhyming poetry is difficult to pull off. And while you did a fair job here, there are some verses that give off a second-grade-intro-to-poetry vibe (verse four, for instance). I wouldn't worry too much about this, seeing as I feel this way about most rhyming poetry. Mother Goose is wooden, plain and simple. Petrified wood, even. It takes a very skilled poet to make a rhyming poem work in their favor. Someone like Robert Frost, who is a widely published 19th-20th century wordsmith.

[A Line-by-Line look at things]

The insignia engraved from birth's demands
You'll look, and forever stare.

Your hands; Life's paper
The lines; Quill's ink
These lines forever taper
In the paper clink.

Each finger, a pathway
And each to it's own.
Each having it's own say,
Only you can condone.

They can show your youth,
Or tell your [s]old [/s]age.
Your hands tell the truth
Like book is to page.

This is a nice little piece of writing. I always find poems about specific things a bit silly-- they always remind me about this poem I wrote about my pencilcase when I was really young. I think poetry should be about many things at once, about yourself, and the way you feel, and the world that sorrounds you, things like that. Writing a poem about a pencilcase, or just one woman, or the lines in our hands seems little, when you start to consider all the things you can do with poetry. It's not like I'm saying every poem that isn't about the cosmos and the universe and life is bad, I'm just saying that it doesn't seem that terribly important.

That being said, I liked this.

There's some unnecessary "ands" here and there, but most of the time, it sounds good, you can sing the words, sounds groovy. As far as I'm concerned, a poem doesn't need to rhyme, but it does have to have a certain harmony. Each word should make the other one work, there should be no awkward sentences, there should be no slowing down when you read it. It should just flow. Yours does, a bit.

Here:

"Look at the lines on your hands

You'll see a story there,

The insignia engraved from birth's demands

You'll look, and forever stare."

See how it breaks the rhythm? The thing works much better without it, get rid of it. Say the words out loud before you write them down. You'll see what works and what doesn't.

"Each finger, a pathway

And each to it's own.

Each having it's own say,

Only you can condone."

Again, the "and" stands out, but "each to it's own" doesn't work much either. I'd suggest you change it to "to each, it's own". That sounds better, and it's more mysterious sounding, like something out of the Bible or a medieval poem.

I really can't say much about poems. I don't write them. I mean, sometimes I do, but most of the ones I write are just projectile vomiting, not much good. By the time I'm done, I have no idea how to make them better, worse, or how I managed to write them. I do know if I like something or not, though, and this thingy is something I like. It didn't blow my mind, but we're not aiming to do that here, are we? It's not like you spent a lot of time doing this, did you? But for what it is, I enjoyed it, and it's good. You got the talent, now use it for something more. Write poems that are not about one thing, but about many things, things that matter.

This poem is one of the best poems I had read.And it had a great and mysterious meaning inside every verse, just how a poem should be.

I really like it.

Good luck.

It's nice with its elegant imageries, but I think it's a little too simple. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, simple things are nice sometimes.

Look at the lines on your hands
You'll see a story there,
The insignia engraved from birth's demands
You'll look, and forever stare.

Your hands; Life's paper
The lines; Quills ink I think you forgot an apostrophe after 'quill'
These lines forever taper
In the paper clink.

Each finger, a pathway
And each to it's own.
Each Having it's own say, I don't really understand why 'having' is capitalized, so I guess you could change that
Only you can condone.

They can show your youth,
Or tell your old age. I don't know, 'old' seems to break the flow there.
Your hands tell the truth
Like book is to page.As mentioned above, it should be the other way around.

This is good. There's not really much more I can say about this, other than it shows that you have a lot of ability and that if you cultivate it you can write some really good stuff.

Me likey! Me likey alot! A few suggestions though, which can be found in red:

wisemann210 wrote:Look at the lines on your hands
You'll see a story there,
The insignia engraved from birth's demands
You'll look, but forever stare.
I agree with pegasi, 'but' doesn't sound good here. Try 'and'.

Your hands, Life's paper
The lines, Quills ink
These lines forever taper
In the paper clink.
Another thing pegasi already pointed out, semi-colons are better for those first two lines.

Each finger, a pathway
And each to it's own.
Each Having it's own say,
Only you can condone.
My favorite stanza!

They can show your youth,
Or tell your old age.
Your hands tell the truth
Like book is to page.
I started to like this ending, until I read the last line. It doesn't seem fitting, and I don't think it's a very analogy. But then again, it could be me not getting it, so you may disregard if you like. Although I do think you should take that into consideration.

pegasi_quill wrote:2) Although your imagery is very good, you could expand in it more at times. it's a very short, concise poem. I think that by making it a bit longer, going into a bit more detail with the imagery, you could make it even better than it already is.

wisemann210 wrote:Look at the lines on your hands
You'll see a story there,
The insignia engraved from birth's demands
You'll look, but forever stare. I'm not sure you need the "but" here, it seems rather misfitting if you ask me. Reconsider that move.

Your hands, Life's paper
The lines, Quills ink Instead of these commas in the middle fo these two lines, try semi-colons
These lines forever taper
In the paper clink.

Each finger, a pathway
And each to it's own.
Each Having it's own say,
Only you can condone.

They can show your youth,
Or tell your old age.
Your hands tell the truth
Like book is to page. not sure I fully understand this last line... I like the way it sounds, but the order of the words seems a bit strange.