My Poem

Hi Splintered Thorn,

A great amount of poetic sophistication can save this. It seems to me that you've hit the problem on the head when you say we're all trapped in your "personal hell;" this isn't anything more than a few random musings taped together by rhyme. The skeletal system of a poem is imagery. The muscle system is metaphor, and the skin is harmony. You are lacking the bare framework required of you as a poet. There is not even a constellation of events (e.g., my little brother died in a car wreck, then my twice-removed great uncle had a baby, and now my cat hates me) to hold our attention. It is just the expression of an emotion in its most direct manner. Consider: the "kittens running free" with the "gods" of the sea ends at the second semicolon. It does not even tie in with the rest of the piece in a perceptible way.

Good luck with this (you'll need it),
Brad

Its sorta dark. But it has a good rhythm. Keep up the good work!!!

this wasn't really bad at all, and, like areida said, bob pretty much covered it all. the whole starting with "little kitten running free" sort of makes me shiver, but whatever you'd like. good rhyming.

I think bob covered it pretty well (he's just cool like that).

I thought it was interesting, but maybe a bit rushed. I'm no poet myself, but the thing that I love about poetry is the way it just slips off the tongue when it's well-written; how the words and images all flow together in a way prose just can't pull off. So maybe instead of making it rhyme, you could focus more on making the images real, making it all come to life.

Nice work overall, though.

nice flow and good emotion in the poem

Not bad. It could use some revision. Focus your idea a little more and maybe give it a little more feeling. Rhyming words like free and sea are not bad. The trick is not to make it discreet, but rather to choose the best words for the job rather than just because they rhyme. However, in this case, I don't think that they were the right words.

Interesting, interesting.

Firstly, the rhyme; you've not done too badly, I think - there are parts where it seems a little forced and like you've struggled to fit the poem around a rhyming word ("free/sea") but there are others where you've used the discreet half-rhyme type ("mind/wine") and that's much better; progression to those shows a good maturity with the technique. I'd be pushing you to try for about half normal rhyme, and half discreet rhymes; makes everything so much more flowy and it doesn't grate on the ear

Your rhythm isn't so good; basically, since all your lines are just single units seperated by semi-colons, they're all different lengths. What that does is make it an awkward read - very choppy and stop-start. If I were you, I'd be reading it out loud and making those line lengths fit together better, so that they come naturally off your tongue.

I personally don't like your choice of topic: I think it's an overused area that too many people tend to write about. That said, however, this impressed me much, much more than your average bog-standard poem of the genre - you left out words like "razor" and "soul" and "darkness" that pop up way too much, and your general vocabulary seemed better than a lot of people. So, good work: you suceeded in grudgingly make me throw away the stereotype for today

Finally, just to clear up the typos - I think by "a rye" you meant "awry" and also "easy" should most likely be "ease" to sound correct.

Anyway, that's all for now; hope to see you around later.

Thank you.

wow wicked poem and use of rhyme