painful break up

anger, hate, shame, lies.
all his loyalty he denies.
he looked at the ground instead of me,
HOW STUPID CAN ONE GUY REALLY BE! heaven forbid he even look in to my eyes when he gave me the shocking surprise
he claimed he wanted to be friends ,honestly i think this is where it dead ends.just yester day he held my hand,i love him so much i just cant understand.

originally written 11.8.06

Comments & reviews · 7
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casey_kent
Comment

Wow. This is a really strong poem. I can feel your anger. I hope you're okay.

User avatar
Cade
Review
Cade wrote a review · Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:09 pm

I don't quite have Leja's patience...my impression of this poem is that it's a rant with line breaks. And I don't see any evidence to the contrary. Come on, caps lock? Childish rhyme scheme? Classic teen angst poetry, which makes me sick to my stomach. I want to see depth in your poem; I want to see you create your speaker's emotions using words and images, not by yelling about it.

Why should your reader care? It's not enough to write a poem about an emotional subject; you should be giving your reader a reason to be reading it in the first place! If that's not going to happen, keep it in the journal.

User avatar
Leja
Review
Leja wrote a review · Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:53 pm

A few formatting things:

- A line of all capitals is really very unnecessary, especially when it is bold as well. The words should be strong enough in themselves, without having to rely solely on formatting to strengthen them. I'm not saying that formatting isn't a wonderful tool (because it is, when properly utilized), but it should be an accessory to the idea, rather than the meat of it.

- Not all poetry needs to rhyme. It's obvious that the line breaks exist where they do so that corresponding lines can rhyme properly. This is not the point of line breaks. Like formatting, rhyme should help your poem, not be the sole focus of it. It actually takes away, rather than adds to, what the rest of your poem is saying.

- Unless you have a good reason (a good reason does not include something along the lines of 'it looks cool' or 'you can do whatever you want in real art' ^_~), proper grammar and capitalisation are appreciated. That includes capitalising the word "I", putting proper spaces around punctuation, and using apostrophes in contractions. If you do have a good reason, I'd love to hear it. I'm always curious about the reasons different authors have for unconventional things like this! ^_^

One line in this poem really stood out for me, the line "he looked at the ground instead of me". That is such a wonderfully telling line because it allows us, as readers, to interpret the guy's emotions, rather than relying on the narrator to translate, which isn't as much fun to read.

The other part I especially like is "just yesterday he held my hand, i love him so much i just cant understand" because the concept of not understanding your own actions is interesting. It is something that hasn't been explored a million times before in poetry. Personally, I'd concentrate more on this concept rather than retelling how another boy broke up with another girl, which we've all heard a thousand times.

User avatar
Snoink
Review
Snoink wrote a review · Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:27 pm

anger, hate, shame, lies. <--- You might want to start off with something catchier than this. ;)
all his loyalty he denies. <--- If he's breaking up with her, then why would he even have loyalty to her? It's rather pointless, if you think about it...
he looked at the ground instead of me, <--- Yay! This is action that shows us that he feels guilty! Whenever you can, show actions instead of emotions. It'll be more powerful. :)
HOW STUPID CAN ONE GUY REALLY BE! heaven forbid he even look in to my eyes when he gave me the shocking surprise <--- Get rid of the caps. And maybe you can italicize this line?
he claimed he wanted to be friends ,honestly i think this is where it dead ends.just yester day he held my hand,i love him so much i just cant understand. <--- This part is just kind of rambly... you may want to focus your point and come up with a conclusion that shocks and intensifies what you said at first. :)

User avatar
Adnamarine
Review

Ouch. Where you paying any attention to basic grammar and punctuation when you wrote this? Sorry.

anger, hate, shame, lies.
all his loyalty he denies. The rhyming here is doing your poem no favors. It's horribly forced, and makes the line absolutely meaningless
he looked at the ground instead of me, I'm just guessing you wanted us to be a bit harsh with this. I'm sorry if I seem to be going overboard. This line is cliche, it's another forced rhyme with the next line, it's random in relation to the beginning...
HOW STUPID CAN ONE GUY REALLY BE! Ouch. Nix the all capitals and the bold, it's painful to read. And that line in general just strikes me as a childish rant, not exactly poetry-esque. And again, it does not relate with the other lines. This poem should expand off the beginning. What about anger, hate, shame, and lies? What do they have to do anything? Or were they just a bunch of strong words thrown in for good measure?
heaven forbid he even look in to my eyes Line Break!
when he gave me the shocking surprise Line Break! More forced rhyming
he claimed he wanted to be friends, Line break! So?
honestly i think this is where it dead ends.Line break! 'Where it dead ends'? More forced rhyming.
just yester day he held my hand,Line break! You really need to, before you post anything, make sure it has proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. We can't concentrate on critiquing the words if we're surrounded by 'yester day's and run-on sentences
i love him so much i just cant understand. Line break! You love him so much that you can't understand what? You need a lot of SDT in this (should don't tell) You're telling us everything, no descriptions, metaphors, imagery, or anything of the kind.

Once again, you must, before posting anything, make sure that you have proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. I can understand a slight mistake here or there that you missed when you were proofreading. That happens to everybody. But this was beyond ridiculous.
Sorry to be so very harsh.

So, here's a basic summary of everything:
Proofread before every post
Don't use all caps or bold in poetry
Don't force your rhyming, don't sacrifice sense and flow and other things, don't use lame wording, just to make something rhyme. You don't always have to rhyme in poetry, and it doesn't have to be every line when you do.
Show, don't tell.
Connect your lines, make sure they make sense together and you make a smooth transition from one idea to the next.
Make sure you put in all your line breaks at the proper place

This needs major revision. I can't really say whether it's worth saving until it gets some stuff done to it. I think the whole breakup theme is kind of overdone and cliche, but we'll see.

Good luck and keep writing!


*adna*

User avatar
Gadi.
Review
Gadi. wrote a review · Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:35 am

Oh no! How can he break up with you! I feel so...sad! I am so incredibly sorry!

To help: Dump this poem. It's madness. Or at least overhaul it and ReViSe It! Please!


anger, hate, shame, lies.

This really builds up a rhythm which you dismiss. Otherwise, pointless shopping list.

all his loyalty he denies.

A royal attempt at rhyme. Effortlessly disastrous.

he looked at the ground instead of me,

Lame excuse for rhyme, or...? <-----sorry about the cruelty over here, I just HAD to. I have all this cruelty in me for a moment and I have to unleash it. So excuse me if I am too cruel.

HOW STUPID CAN ONE GUY REALLY BE!


LINE BREAK + NO CAPITALS + TOO INSINCERE AND SLANGISH + LAME EXCUSE AT RHYME


heaven forbid he even look in to my eyes when he gave me the shocking surprise

Heaven Forbid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good rhyme, though. Everything else goes down the toilet.

etc. etc.

I would suggest:

Suzzane's Emotional Poetry Article.

Hope I helped! PM me if you wish to kill me or just if you need any more help.

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kinzygirl223
Review

Hmm.
I thought it was..okay.
I mean it was good but i thought it needed some revising.
Ummmm you can do a break in the line at different times because it seems a little rusty.
i still liked it.
It has potential.
:)



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