All Sorrow Dispelled with a Smile

In some darkened corner you sit alone,
crying and beating your fists at fate,
as if chained down in such a state,
unaware and relatively unknown.
Oh, the pain you don’t even try to bear;
The magical qualities are all gone,
and instead of waiting for the dawn
you’d rather waste away in despair.
The world is a wicked and weary place
and those with purest hearts are thrown down.
But take my freely offered embrace;
We’ll do everything to fight your frown.
Come right here and laugh with me a while;
all sorrow dispelled with a smile.

Comments & reviews · 3
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User avatar
Galerius
Review

Hi singdawg,

Your main problem dwells in the fact that you raise potentially interesting images and then cut them down in adolescence, before they have a chance to actually prove their significance. It's as if one birthed a child just to kill it as soon as it came out of the womb. It's tragic and should be avoided at all costs - a problem even more critical than not having good imagery in the first place.

singdawg wrote:In some darkened corner you sit alone,
crying and beating your fists at fate,


I'm not going to lie and say that this is an example of what I'm talking about. It's not, partly because the "sitting alone in a dark corner" is one of the staple foods of emo poetry, and as such is not helping out the reader's perspective of your work. Assuredly, it's impossible to rid a poem of all cliched images, but have some tact and don't start out your poem with one.

How does one beat fists at fate? I can't imagine that, and I'd bet money that you can't either. If you want to personify fate, fine; tie it in to some tangible object. But don't just leave the reader hanging like this.

as if chained down in such a state,
unaware and relatively unknown.
Oh, the pain you don’t even try to bear;
The magical qualities are all gone,
and instead of waiting for the dawn
you’d rather waste away in despair.
The world is a wicked and weary place
and those with purest hearts are thrown down.
But take my freely offered embrace;
We’ll do everything to fight your frown.
Come right here and laugh with me a while;
all sorrow dispelled with a smile.


"waiting for the dawn"

"purest hearts are thrown down"

"come right here and laugh"

I can see those images going somewhere. Unfortunately, you apparently can't, because you do absolutely nothing with them. Start by introducing a setting, any setting. Right now, these words are floating in the void of empty space and suffocating to death. Draw up a world and a background for whatever you're talking about, and the reader will at least have a surface on which to stand before even attempting to understand your work.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

User avatar
Button
Review
Button wrote a review · Thu Aug 26, 2010 2:50 pm

Hi there :)

So.. some of the phrasing seemed kind of out of place.. You'd have this nice tone going and BAM, it would be different. Now, changing tone is a technique, and can be used really well.. but I don't think it was intentional. It wasn't for anything specific.. it happened several times, and just for a line or two. I'd also be careful of forcing rhymes.. it wasn't too bad or anything in this, but it was getting there.

Overall though.. nice piece, especially towards the beginning. Great use of emotion, and nice word choice. c:

-Coral-

User avatar
Shearwater
Review

Hiya Singdawg, Pink here :)

So, I really liked this poem. There were some nice rhymes and the flow was nice. But I do think there were some parts that had a weird pitch and maybe you forced a couple words to rhyme but overall it's still good. I mean, I'm really not a poet so if I don't make any sense, just ignore me.

The world is a wicked and weary place
and those with purest hearts are thrown down.
But take my freely offered embrace;

This was my favorite part. I agree with your quote and that most of the time, those with pure hearts are thrown down.
Overall, this is a sweet poem and you had some good points. I liked it :)

~Pink



/I think, today,/ he thought back, /the important fact is that I don't/ need /to be better than him. He can just be a person. And I... I can just be one too./
— Adolin (Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson)