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Young Writers Society



Traveler

by Rong


Traveler

Nehemiah Rong.
 
A journey begins,
Begun journey to sojourn,
Unaccomplished journey to traverse,
To the lands not visited.
 
The lands seen to recount,
Forlorn and cheerful stories,
Munificent gestures to appreciate,
Ugly incidents to remorse.
 
Roved round the globe.
To the destiny,
The traveler at last reached,
To that Sweet Home.


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1274 Reviews


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Sun Aug 26, 2012 6:59 pm
niteowl wrote a review...



Hello Rong and welcome to YWS! I have to say, I agree with a lot of commentary here. There's so much potential in writing about travel, with all the new sights, sounds, strange moments, etc. This seems to gloss over them and as a result, doesn't say anything interesting. To improve this, I would focus on a single moment in this journey. Show us what happened and how the traveler felt about it in a way that makes the reader feel something. I think you have potential if you change your focus to getting emotional reactions from the reader. Keep writing!




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Sun Aug 26, 2012 5:59 pm
Noelle wrote a review...



Hi there!

This poem was okay. I get what you're trying to say here, but I don't feel anything after reading this. I like the poems that can really draw emotions from me. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to smile. I don't get any of these feelings from this.

On with the review: I agree with Karzkin below me. You don't have to capitalize each line or put punctuation at the end of every line. I used to do this myself until someone pointed it out. The commas may be needed, but definitely not the capitalization. Think of it this way; would you capitalize a word in the middle of a sentence? The way a poem is written is in a number of sentences seperated into lines. For example, your first two lines say "A journey begins,/Begun journey to sojourn," If this was a sentence it would look like this: "A journey begins, Begun journey to sojourn". This doesn't work with the capitol letter so you should keep it lowercase. Understand?

Comments/Suggestion/Critiques:

A journey begins,
Begun journey to sojourn, I don't think you should use the words 'begun' and 'journey' here because you basically said the same thing in the first line. Try to vary the words you use.
Unaccomplished journey to traverse,
To the lands not visited.
Very interesting first stanza. I can see how this relates to the title of the poem.

The lands seen to recount,
Forlorn and cheerful stories,
Munificent gestures to appreciate,
Ugly incidents to remorse.
I don't know what to say about this stanza. It's kind of confusing. Especially the first line. Maybe instead you should say 'The lands he saw he would soon recount,' or something like that. I don't know, there's just something about how it's worded doesn't look right.

Roved round the globe.
To the destiny,
The traveler at last reached,
To that Sweet Home.[color=red]The first two words here aren't needed. You can make the line simpler and more effective by taking them out. 'Sweet Home' means so much. It's amazing how two words can be so effective. When readers see these words, they think of their own lives and their own homes. So then they compare his feelings of home to their feelings.

Overall this is a decent poem. If you add some imagery or maybe some of the traveler's feelings, it'll be much better.

I hope this wasn't a harsh review. Don't take it personally, this is just how I feel about it. At the end of the day, it's your poem, not mine. I hope to read more of your stuff!

Keep writing! :)
**Noelle**




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Sun Aug 26, 2012 5:27 pm
Karzkin wrote a review...



Welcome, friend. Prepare for a Killa Kritique.

First, (and this is just a style thing) there is no real need to capitalise the first word of each line or to put a comma at the end of each line. Both are outdated traditions, redundant in modern poetry. But like I said, it's just a style thing and not really important either way. Now for the good stuff.

I have to say, this poem seems rather... flat. There is no life to it. Yes, there is colour, but I'd rather see something in person then be shown a painting. There is a very important element missing, the heart of poetry. That, of course, is imagery. That is the difference between poetry and anything else; poetry not only contains but relies upon evocative language. You have a brief flash of a narrative, but that's about it. There is nothing to draw me in, nothing that made me say wow, nothing that really stood out to me. I bet tomorrow I won't be able to remember a single line from this piece. Give me life, give me sensation, give me description. I don't want you to tell me something, I want you to show me something. Take, for instance, Ezra Pound's 'In a station of the Metro':

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.

or William Carlos William's masterpiece 'The Red Wheelbarrow':
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

There isn't much to either of them on the surface. Just a series of simple images, but (most importantly) images that are linked to force the reader to make connections they otherwise wouldn't make. That is the job of the poet; make your reader see things that were right in front of them the whole time. Your poem here fails because it doesn't do that; it doesn't show me anything I haven't seen before.

Also, ditch the thesaurus. Use your own voice, your own vocab. It's much more genuine that way.

It's a start. Keep going.

Le K.




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Sun Aug 26, 2012 4:22 pm
Bobbywalker says...



I don't have time to review, but I just wanted to say that I liked it, and it looked nice :) Welcome to YWS!




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Sun Aug 26, 2012 4:03 pm
Rong wrote a review...







I like to create sympathy for my characters, then set the monsters loose.
— Stephen King