Misery loves company
And she is a guest tonight
Her vision is locked
to the other side of the table
A long wooden table it is
Polished and shining
The smell of food chokes the air
The candlesticks light the dark room
Misery smiles sadly
The girl smiles back the same
They speak of their sadness
Any other subject is taboo
repulsive
foreign
painful
But the girl sees something in Misery
Something in his sad blue eyes
The way he clutches his fists
The way his teeth bite his lip
She has seen it before
Before in a boy
She knocks down her chair as she stands to run
Misery screams at her
His voice high with
anger and pain
He goes after her into the darkness
The girl runs through the black forest
She must find the boy again
Must go back
Must go back to his
smile
his laugh
his warm embrace
Misery’s howling all around her
Through the darkness she continues
Her legs are fiery
Her hair stuck to her face
Tears and salt burn her soft lips
She hears the voice of the boy
She smiles, laughs uncontrollably
The girl runs to the voice and jumps
Into the arms of her savior
A cold hand touches her neck
Misery loves company
And she’s his guest tonight
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hey, River!
Euph here to review your poem. :3
I’ll start off by saying that the first two lines drew me in, and I feel in love with this poem.
The second stanza on the other hand.. Confused me, dragging my attention away from it.. The description of the table, al though well written and setting the scene, took away from the idea of the ~ between Misery and the girl.
Skip ahead to the third stanza, in which the two captivate my attention once again by talking with nothing but smiles and sighs, reassured my faith in this poem, and dragged me back in. I love the way you describe anything unrelated to their conversation about sadness as being taboo.
Also, a small critique:
In the beginning of the fourth stanza, you say:
“But the girl sees something in Misery Something in his sad blue eyes”
You might want to include a comma in between sad and blue.
As the poem continues on, you draw the reader in with the thought of a familiarness between Misery’s mannerisms and the girl’s memory of a boy. This is alluring, pulling the reader in further. As the girl takes off running, a shot of confusion ran through my mind, wondering what caused her to go into such an abrupt reaction.
As you begin saying how she must find him as Misery screams, it fills me with a joyous sense of rush and excitement, feeling as though the reader themselves are there, viewing the scene as you continue to describe her every action.
Overall, i absolutely loved the way you made the poem both eerie and thrilling, and would definitely love to continue reading your work. This has definitely become one of my favorite poems I have read on YWS, no offense to other poets on here.. I was blown away. :3 Anyway, keep up the great work, River!
I hoped this review helped you somewhat.
So this was really interesting. The personification of misery was subtle but perfectly executed, your imagry was beautiful (if a bit cliche'), and the overall the poem was eerie and stunning. The structure of this is possibly the best thing about it because isolating single lines and clumping others together emphasizes the important message to the reader. You should definitely take into account what Isha said. Well done though, I'm officially a fan!
Hey, River! Here as you so humbly requested I be.
And I'm just going to say that I was quite blown away by this poem. The first lines (the last lines are very similar; I may feel inclined to say that I liked what you did with the last two even more than the first one) were my favorites.
Your imagery was evoking, and it painted a gorgeous, if not very dark, relatively terrifying, picture. The emotion shone through in a way that grips the reader (or, at least, it really got to me), and that in itself makes for an amazing poem. Of course, there is always something that could be polished or refined.
Reading it through a second time, you can see spots where the imagery isn't as original as it could be. The emotion and the picture it paints makes up for it, but there are still a few spots where some sprucing up couldn't hurt (do keep in mind though that this is all opinion. It's your poem to do with as you see fit).
Here, for example:
Chokes. Chokes has become a rather dull (although yes, sometimes very necessary) verb in poetry. It's used a lot, and understandably so, since it's one of the most obvious ways to express what's happening. Of course, if you search hard enough, there are good replacements that haven't been used nearly as much.
The more I think about it, the more often [dark] forests are used for miserable, gloomy, scary hiding places. In stories and in poems, if a person's running, it's through a forest. Now, whereas this isn't something I'd necessarily change (because as I've said, I love the imagery and a forest is very suiting), it's worth pointing out. Plus, I'd love to see what you could do with revising that. The imagery of her swimming across a lake, running down a winding river, across a desert- I'm just curious to know how you'd incorporate that. But. Um. That isn't a request, just an, "it'd be a fun activity to try, if you're ever bored."
Spoiler
What I have to say about "howling" is very similar to what I said about "choking." Unless he's actually, literally howling, it's a bit overused. Same rules apply, same "it's your poem, your choice, you know what's best better than I do," applies.
But really, that's all I can think of. And I reiterate, I really was quite blown away reading this.
Excellent work. :3
Keep writing,
~Ish
Hi, TazmaniaGirl to review here!
Okay, so lets begin...
Posatives -
May I say, this is exellent!
You've really put your best effort into this, and it has shone through brightly.
It's a large amount of detail, and we always love to see this.
It's just a great poem!
Negatives -
Punctuation.
I can notice some erros somewhere, but, if you can proof read it, then maybe you can spot these.
Apart from that...
OVERALL -
GREAT POEM!!
Keep Writing!
~TazmaniaGirl xx
First of all; excellent poem! I absolutely loved the ominous tone in the opening lines, that continued and twisted into intrigue and mystery - it was superb. The atmosphere at the table was built up well, too, and I enjoyed the force of the 'chase scene', and the eventual return too. I can't fault you for the majority of this poem, it was simply great!
There are a few points that bothered me though, notably the pacing (to me) was an issue in some places. The pacing issue also stems from the scarce use of punctuation, which I'll guess was intentional, but it created some problems for me. For example:
"Her vision is locked
to the other side of the table
A long wooden table it is"
I read this line as ENDING on the second line, and BEGINNING a new sentence on the next line. The problem was as I read, I slowed down, and stumbled, which ruined the pacing of the poem as I tried to analyse what was happening. Now, after reading it twice, I see that the sentence does, in fact, end on the second line there and begin on the next one, with a subsequent change in topic - from her periphery to focus on the 'distance' between the two, symbolised by the table.
Other pacing issues I had was the line: "She knocks down her chair as she stands to run", now I read that line with a lot of speed, as the action gains momentum, but a simple change from 'as she stands' to 'standing' would have helped in my mind's eye. The 'as she stands' slowed the pace down, in a place where I think it should have been sped up!
But, being critical on your pacing, there are times when you absolutely got it spot-on.
"Any other subject is taboo
repulsive
foreign
painful"
That example, in partcular, which, to me contrasts with this line:
"Must go back to his
smile
his laugh
his warm embrace"
Both were excellent, in their pacing. Slowing the poem down, just the right amount to add force to the word appropriately. However, your mastering of pace was also evident in how you sped it up as well:
"The way he clutches his fists
The way his teeth bite his lip"
Again, it fitted perfectly into the poem and sped it up in JUST the right time at JUST the right speed.
All in all, I LOVED the poem, and the problems noted above with concern to the punctuation and pacing, could entirely have been problems that only I encountered. On the other hand, I did find them very irksome, and they created a few weak moments in an otherwise (to me) flawless poem.
[Sorry if I seemed harsh here, it's just everytime I re-read a review it makes me seem like a [insert appropriate swear here], in my mind anyways.]