If I Could

Hey there!

I was intrigued by the title, and hence decided to give this piece a read. The ambiguity of 'If I Could' gives a lot of room for exploration! And hey, the genre was poetry, I like poetry. :p

Felt like giving it a review, so here goes! :3

The first line of your quatrain was successful in setting an image, and while not exactly compelling by itself, I personally thought was correctly fitting with the overall sombre (slow) tone of the poem.

You lead us on, in the next two consecutive lines, upping the anticipation quite well, before the final deliverance, which is profound in it's contradictory sentiment to the rest of your poem, and does evoke feelings within us which, well, I dare say, aren't exactly as super profound in strength and their terribleness as I expected, but they could be!

Like I said before, lots of potential for this, and it is my understanding that you do want to expand on your poem, and express further your emotions, making us understand better what exactly they are, so, well, some humble suggestions for your consideration below! :3

You started the poem with 'If I could'. The title of the poem itself is also 'If I could'. Perhaps these could be the repeating starting words of your following stanzas (a half-refrain of sorts)?
Moreover, each 'If I could' sentence could give different imagery, and each stanza concentrating on different facets of your emotion!

In very much the same way, perhaps 'I wouldn't do any of it with you' can repeat throughout as well. It could be a nice touch if after all of these repetitions of this last line you change the substance of the stanzas into:

"
But I used to want to
Sometimes still do
But the hurt you gave
It's more than I can ever again dare to take
"

^Would depend on which emotions, whether sadness or apathy, you are trying to create in your readers, of course! (and obviously, how you weave your poem is completely up to you, just a gist of how I may have twisted it :p)

I myself really dig having a slow paced tone, leading the reader on, before suddenly giving a powerful damning statement at the end. Whether you want to have a crushing ending at the very end of the poem, or repeating on every quatrain or the like of yours, would entirely be up to you and the effect you want to produce! :3


Lastly, IF you feel it desirable, you could implement ellipses where deemed fit, to contribute to creating a 'slow', deep effect, but some view this as cliche, so again, up to you! xD

So yeah, that's pretty much it! I really liked the piece personally - sometimes when stricken with sadness, (heart break?) we just sort of, become more silent, quite, while moping around or what not, and when you couple that sentiment with how you placed your final line here, the effect created is rather beautiful, as felt I, and there is truly much you can do with it!

Looking forward to more from you!
Best of luck!

Deep.

Really quick and succinct because it fits the size and potency of the piece.

So you have a single sentiment, and it doesn't pack much of a punch--not that it necessarily needs to, but it's just this singular longing that feels like a very weak reach-out to someone who isn't necessarily here, not necessarily gone. The image you chose--the white sand beach--is rather dry and desolate, though I understand how most folks connect walks on the beach with romance, so it makes sense--but to my particular position in the audience, it doesn't do much.

So one sentiment, one image. This can work in short poetry; it's about juxtaposition. I think the problem that keeps this piece from accomplishing its end goal are lines two and three. They're filler. Absolute filler, and need to be reforged. Line three is particularly toxic because you set up line four by saying "if I could share my life with anyone I know, I wouldn't unless it's you." And it's a sentiment that works psychologically, but syntactically and from an artistic perspective, it's weak and brittle in both potency and flow.

So I would take the piece into consideration about how you may better deliver your longing for this person. How far-reaching is your longing? What symbols could you evoke that bring bonus content into the short span of time you're given?

Because that's what poetry's all about, man. Taking as much thought and emotion you can muster, and condensing it into a pressurized gem: multi-faceted, invulnerable, harder-hitting than loose material. Take that into consideration.

If you want to talk about it in a pad or in PM, you know where to find me.

Ty xo

Howdy, Salt! Pomp here for a quick review~

I think the punchline for this poem works pretty effectively, because it's very blunt and ... unexpected. But it's also a harmless statement attached to a harmless poem. You read it once, the shock factor exists. You read it another time, and it doesn't really succeed in delivering the same amount of surprise/humour. I'm really ... not sure if it's meant to be serious? So I'm not exactly sure how to review this piece. Forgive me if I sound harsh at any point in my critique, okay?

I wasn't reeled in by the first line, honestly. It fails to impress and it struck me as pretty cliché. It's kind of ... bland, because these are things we've read and heard tons of times, and it'd be nice if we had an image to spark interest rather than an image that suggests a typical romantic setting, only to turn not-so-typical nearing the end. ''Or travel the world'' seems tagged on, like it doesn't belong there, and it's a very lacklustre line, because (even though the narrator obviously carries no feelings for this person), the thought itself, of travelling the world, is not passionate; it's morose.

The first time I read the piece, I saw the ending and was like, 'Wow, okay, how odd', but when I re-read it I realised that the narrator sounds plaintive and emotionless, and this does not strike the same ringing chord it's supposed to. It also makes the poem seem a bit incomplete, and I'm not sure what idea it's meant to be conveying.

The reader has a lot of questions: 'Why wouldn't the narrator travel the world with them?' 'Are these images even suggesting romance, or could they mean friendship?' 'Does the narrator hate this person? Why?' 'Isn't the fact that they're addressing this person technically sharing a certain aspect of their life with them?'--it's temporary, and you obviously don't mean 'sharing life' in a general sense as much as you mean marriage, but when I prod into the poem, I find a lot of questions and nothing being answered. There is nothing to guide my interpretations into a certain stream, and for that I'd suggest conveying what you mean to say with more solid force. Try pulling images of actual emotion out to lead the reader i circles, bring in that imagery and convince the reader of your thesis before delivering the anti of it with a resounding boom. Nothing is as irritating as reading a good poem with an unconventional ending: it makes things ten times better.

Overall, there's a lot you can do with this, Salt! Play with the idea, try re-writing it from different viewpoints or styles and see what you can make of this! Let me know ifwhen you edit, because I'd like to see you experiment with the idea~

Hope this helped. Keep writing! Keep up the great work!

Cheers~

~Pomp c:

Oooh, I really like this poem, although I think replacing some word choices such as "walk a white sand beach" would be better, I do like the simplicity and minimalism of this poem. It also sounds like something you'd say when you're angry or frustrated, so I like that.