Jigsaw

I have to agree with Persy, this poem was too concerned with rhyming instead of meaning or images and unlike Persy, I love poems that rhyme but every other element has to be there as well. The rhyme has to be an added bonus.

You have to build up to that level of writing though and this isn't a bad step in the right direction. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Find the four corners,
fill in the sides. <<< Add some description. What does a jigsaw in the early stage remind you of? Empty picture frames, a mirror without the glass. A window with a wall behind it?
Never disheartened
when pieces hide. <<<Okay no. I was a jigsaw maniac as a kid and if I'm honest, I probably still would be if I had the time for it. I used to put them together and cover my bedroom floor in them, pretending they were a carpet. To get to my point though, it always frustrated me when I couldn't find the piece I wanted. If you want to connect with your reader, you're going to have to help them understand your emotions as nine people out of ten will have been driven crazy searching for that last edge piece.

Working towards the centre
but progress is slow.
Trying to guess the full picture,
watching it grow. <<< We need more than this. Give us hints of what the picture is. If you want to be really fancy, make it a pictue of the persona and then it will reflect identity and finding oneself and give your poem those bigger themes you're aiming for, but give them some foundations to stand on. Which are the hardest parts? The eyes wuld be easy to do and the mouth but hair? Hair is usually pretty tricky, if it's long and has lots of curls and flicks and things.

The end is in sight,
one final slot to fill,
but the mystery piece
has vanished at will. <<< You rhythm here is off. The line above has an extra syllable and this one has one less. I'd suggest taking 'but' away from the previous line and adding a 'though' to the beginning of this one. Your lines are too short in this stanza though really. You should try to keep the rhythm consistent throughout. Maybe try the common metre next time, that's 8 syllables, then 6, then 8, then 6 with alternate rhymes.

We’ve been searching
everywhere, all around.
Maybe half the story is better.

Some things should never be found. I'm very meh about your ending at the moment because I don't like my jigsaws incomplete and you've not done enough work to make this about anything other than a jigsaw at the moment. I also don't like incomplete stories so your metaphor isn't helping you either.

My biggest piece of advice to you would be to forget rhyme for the moment and go back to basics. Add similes and metaphors, add colour and plosives, enjambement and alliteration. You need to be good at the other poetic techniques before you stat playing around too much with rhyme. I know because I've been there myself, I wrote nohing but rhyming poetry until I was 16/ 17 and then I tried some free verse and now when I write to a structure, my language is much more powerful because I'm not trying to work around the rhymes but with them. The worst thing you can do though is give up, so if you don't feel ready for free verse yet, continue doing things like these until you do, but be sure to break out of that mould eventually. Breaking moulds is the best part of poetry

Send me a PM if you've got any questions,

Heather xxx

Alrighty. So.

First off, I'm not a fan of rhyming schemes. Nor am I, to be frank, of this poem. This poem is all rhyming scheme, no poetry. You try to illustrate a meaning through an image, but the image is so poorly done and message is kind of tacked on at the very end of the piece that the entire poem is a bit of a disaster. In developing your rhyme scheme, you've compromised the poem. You keep short, crisp lines with nothing real to hold on to, nothing much to relate to, that are somewhat empty descriptions of a puzzle and well, that's about it.

If you want to introduce some reality into your poem, introduce some of yourself. Make it personal; if it's personal for you, it will help us relate to your work and make it personal for ourselves, as well. Think of a movie. What draws you in more: the story of a person's life, the problems that they encounter, the emotional depths that they reach while resolving whatever conflict the plot may present or the surface story of an inanimate object, no relatable experiences to be had, no personality? If you want to use the image that you have now, involve a person rather than just describing the process with no person involved. Also, try to "show", not "tell", as the infamous phrase goes.

Lastly, I don't even understand how you go to the point that you did. You didn't explain why half the story was better, but rather suggested that it MIGHT be for some reason (which isn't given) and then have a hard, inflexible point at the end that seems so detached from the rest of the poem I would personally take it out. If you want to communicate a message, then communicate your message through the imagery itself rather than just giving us a halfhearted image and then saying "THIS. THIS IS WHAT IT COMMUNICATES." That's too easy for the reader even when the two things DO relate well, which they don't in this poem.

Make your reader think, involve yourself in your writing, and try to communicate feelings and emotions instead of simply describing.