Sweet darkness has clothed Her,
veiled Her in shadow,
and forsaken the light,
draping Her hair in velvet.
She sings of seduction
from deep within the night.
The shimmering raven feather
or pale moonlight
can neither testify
nor compare in strange beauty
to the gentle, savage
glimmer of Her eye.
As the touch of a moth wing
may quicken the air,
She may breathe
whispers of things
thrilling and unknown,
to the likes of you and me.
Or She may lay
in tranquil silent sleep
in the silk bed of evening light:
not ravaged by age
nor by the ragged years,
but awaiting the deepening of the night.
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Dear ladcat13 ,
I want you to know from the start that I like your poem. From the first two lines , I liked it and almost subconsciously overlooked its flaws. As the other reviewers pointed out , there are indeed some cliches in there. Personally , I intensely despise cliches but that's why I liked this poem so much. Although it had its cliches , it managed to intrigue me. How ? Well it was more the image that was painted using those cliches , in a way that they work well together. I'm not sure what was your goal , but for me the image of a woman is painted in this poem. A woman mysterious and possibly malevolent but one that intrigues you , one that draws you to the darkness -a darkness you described quite well- despite your knowing that this choice of yours , to follow this woman into the darkness , may not end well for you. Or...you might have meant something completely different ! Either way , I liked what I got from this poem.
However , as I said I almost overlooked its flaws. But they're there. The other reviewers are not wrong. This time the use of certain cliches may have worked out for the poem -they're cliches for a reason !- but this won't happen every time. As someone else suggested , I too suggest reading more poetry of the type , not to draw more cliches but exactly to see what is commonly used and to avoid it in a way that will make your poem even better. Other than that , as previously stated , I liked it !
Thank you for the feedback! This isn't my first dip into poetry but it is my first attempt at something of this type and tone. I'll be sure to look for these things in the future.
Well attempts at new things are what help us find out where we're good at so I'd say you're on the right track !
Alrighty then. Poems, not my favored medium of anything, but yours is of good quality, for what it is. It had a bit too much of the ridiculous dramatics and (perceived) attempts at deepness so common in poetry for me to truly enjoy it, but it was good for what it is.
Another review wrote about cliches, which I think is a bit cliched. Cliches are what they are, and even attempting to make a poem sound all pretty and mysterious is a cliche, it's unavoidable. So I would consider it a non-issue. The cliches cause some light eye rolling, but it's not really that big a deal.
I'm not even sure if that's a cliche, but it induced eyerolling. I'm not really someone who can read anything with such language and not eyeroll. I'm a poetry hater, what can I say. I bear you and your poem no malice however.
One problem I have, is understanding what the blazes this poem is supposed to be about. While I likely lack the mental faculties to understand any poetry, it's still unfortunate. I doubt
there is anything you could do to fix this, and of course, poets like it when their stuff makes zero sense, but sounds all deep and intelligent. Which is my main problem with poetry. But we aren't reviewing poetry, we're reviewing your poem.
This is the brunt of my misunderstanding. What's this poem about? The wind or something? Anyway. I don't have anymore helpful criticism. I enjoyed it as much as I could, and it's a decent mature poem.
Hello ladcat13,
I like this poem because it is beautiful, and useless without pretense. But the problem I have with it is that most of the expressions are cliche, not original. The basic idea, that is the image you evoked, is cliche. The title is cliche, deep night; and that is because you used it in the sense every other person uses it. If when you say 'veil in shadow' or 'evening light', you mean something different from their general meaning, it would not be a cliche.
I heard one advice for avoiding cliches, and that is reading widely to see what phrases have been overworked in literature.
Chekwube.
Although I would say that any piece of literature has its right to be admired in its own way, I think you must have come up with something that circulates along immersed and remarkable themes. There are a lot of current issues of which you could extricate better ideas from like the nearing presidential elections and the candidates brawling each other over it or you could be as deep as abstractly sketching your opinions about pop culture and plastic surgeries and all.