Published September 12, 2011
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,535 Literary Works • 673,404 Reviews
Hello! Here as requested!
I don't see this as a novel piece, so I'm going to critique it as a poem. Whichever it is, I hope my review will prove useful!
You've definitely got an idea here. There's a message that sure comes through -- a helpless, begging kind of message -- but the way it's presented doesn't quite live up to what it could be.
First off, the poor grammar doesn't do this piece any good. In fact, it hinders it. It holds the poem back from any sort of potential 'cause it's very distracting. It could very well indicate the hastiness in the speaker's words, but there's no art, no relation or tie, between the grammar and the message. It's all around clumsy and annoying.
That aside, another thing I always look for is a tie between the title and the poem. Besides the last line just plainly stating the title, there's no correlation between the two. The title's never used as a metaphor nor is there any faint indication of a dark path. It's just miserable emotion/complaining which has nothing to do with the title, which is more deep and sincere/poetic.
Only one more point I'm going to make, and that's to emphasize the "miserable emotion/complaining" bit I just said. There's nothing in this poem that satisfies me as the reader. In the end, I'm just annoyed that the speaker has to complain without giving us some sort of story or moral to hang on to. You had a nice dove mention and tied that up with healing, so bravo on that. But it doesn't do anything to the poem as a whole besides give it a pretty color (or, er, not color?).
Overall, this needs work! Make sure you know what you're writing about. The trick is to get the reader to understand it about as well as you, the writer, understand it.
Keep writing!
Jabber, the One and Only!
You're very odd. I've read most of your work, and I still don't understand your style
I've read this piece four times. Maybe to try and find a secret meaning... Anyway, I find this placement of your words very intriguing. Keep it up 'cus I said so. :b
And do u meen 2 type bad gramer? lol
~GMAmuffin~
So, this isn't bad. It just needs some substance. You don't give us anything! No meat. I want to know what you're feeling. Why you're feeling it. It's okay to make your reader guess, but not if they have to guess the whole poem! Also, you say this is part of a novel. How is this a story? this has no introduction into a novel. At least, not that I could find. It felt very vague. Not like the beginning of a novel. Anyway, I hope I wasn't harsh. Keep writing and reading poetry. And I'm sure you can improve this if you like it enough to take the time to go through and work on it some more.
Hey, here for a review!
Um, so first off, I'm wondering if this needs to be in poetry? The format seems to fit with that, not to mention the fact that most novels are going to have much more detail and character introduction, etc. So let me know if you need this moved to a different forum.
Now...for the review...
I like the idea behind this piece. It's something everyone can easily relate to, and you have some good descriptions that hit the way we feel head-on. I think I know what you were trying to symbolize with the Dove, and I like it, as well as the subtlety with which you brought up the matter. So, good job on the content! Now I'm going to move on to the mechanics of your writing.
This bothers me. The use of a double negative ("don't" and "no") actually implies the positive (remember in math? A negative outside of a negative number becomes positive) -- in this case, it means that the narrator does see the light. Now, it seems to be acceptable using double negatives in songs, but in story and poetry writing, it's frowned upon as bad grammar. So I'd scrap this and change it to either "I don't see the light" or "I see no light."
This was confusing. I got the impression that the pain left the narrator, and is now coming back even after the Dove healed him. In which case, wouldn't the pain be creeping back in?
The parts in quotation marks confused me as well, like this:
When I see something in quotes that isn't dialogue, I assume it's meant facetiously, like those air quotes people use to negatively emphasize something that really doesn't make sense/isn't going to happen. This was the case with the part here. I'm not sure why it needs to be in quotation marks, and it breaks up the flow of the narrative.
One last thing I'd like to say is that you should consider not capitalizing each letter in every line. Starting each line with a capital is fine, but when you capitalize throughout the entire line, it makes it harder for the reader to track the words. It's been determined that all lowercase is the easiest to read, then all caps; the hardest was when both lowercase and uppercase letters were interspersed together. There's no consistency, and humans do love consistency. So, basically, try capitalizing only the first letter of every line.
Well, that's all I've got to say. Please let me know if you've got any questions, and also if this piece needs to be moved to a different forum. Keep on writing! =)
Cheers!
~Hawk