Ice

Allo.

I found this to be like three different poems you attempted to mash together, which made it a bit difficult to understand the poem. You also attempted a cross between free verse and rhyming/structured poetry, which murdered flow and made me pay more attention to structure than the content.

First, the technical bits. Watch that you don't accidentally make rhyming couplets (last stanza, "book/look") and make sure each line has a good flow. A line like "Slowly sends fragments of frozen water/ flying." nearly has alliteration in multiple locations, yet it's the only line that has so many words that begin with the same letter in the whole piece. It's also broken up in a weird spot, with an emphasis on "flying" that leaves readers hanging there, wondering about a continuation. The thought hasn't been completed, which just makes an awkward pause.

Poetry is beautiful because it flows. The words carry you along so you can, at the very least, appreciate the wordsmithing that goes into a piece of poetry even if you don't understand the content. Therefore, being really careful what words you use and in what order is critical to writing good poetry. Pay close attention to how a piece reads; read it out loud, after a few hours of letting it sit, and take each little part of the poem to see how it fits together. Analyze every word and linebreak placement you use to make sure it is the best one for that situation.

Your punctuation could also use some brushing up on. You have a few places it's good (She smiles. Sculpts./ And still her blood boils.) but the majority of the poem could use a look at. I'm glad you haven't fallen into the trap of "every line needs a comma or period at the end", but you need to keep in mind each piece of punctuation is a break, either in ideas or in reading. Your couplet, in particular, suffers badly because each line ends with a period. It seems like one interconnected idea, and a linebreak would've sufficed for emphasis.

Next, your content.

First you begin with what seems like a woman making an ice sculpture without distraction, then go onto the subject being a personified storm (with lines like "Animals nest in her home./ Frozen blue solid backbone; a sign/ that her hands are still snowing with the last/lost flakes./ She sculpts the ice to calm." she doesn't seem to have any human qualities there) and finally somebody trying to calm down.

It's just a tad jarring to read through, because each stanza makes us think she's something completely different without any strand of coherency throughout.

It doesn't help you change formats for each "part" of the poem. The first two stanzas are choppy, followed by a couplet that is supposed to act like a transition but is very disconnected from the poem, then the fourth smooths out significantly, while the fifth doesn't have a noticeably choppy rhythm at all.

Work on connecting your ideas and figuring out what poem you actually want to write. I've had it happen a few times that a poem runs away from me as I'm writing, and I end up in a totally different place than what I thought I'd end up with. The result is picking which parts I like and either rewriting the poem so they all play nicely together, or writing different poems for each part if they're strong enough.

And watch that your imagery remains consistent. You begin with a simple yet concrete image that relies heavily on repetition, then move onto rather graphic, abstract images with the second stanza, and continue getting more abstract and etheric from there, until we settle back down on a solid image in the last two lines (which I actually like). While it's hard to hammer out a single poetic style, try to keep internal consistency to avoid the very noticeable disconnect between stanzas.

Overall:

1- Work on your flow and rhythm, keeping it consistent and smooth to read. Poetry is the most exact form of writing, because you have so few words to show an idea; use every word, its place in the poem, and linebreak to your advantage.

2- Make sure your poem has some sort of content consistency. Either cut out all the ideas that break focus from what you want to do, or hit "blend" and turn this into a poem that weaves all three ideas throughout.

3- Just make it consistent.

Hope this helps, and happy editing.

~Rosey

I love how you used the fire and ice concept, this is a very nice piece of poetry, keep up the good work.