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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Hey there, WeWinWeLose,
For a ten-minute draft, this isn't at all bad. I like the message it gives, and the core of optimism it has. However, as is to be expected with ten-minute drafts, there are a few things that could be improved.
In particular, I think the thing to pay attention to here is the rhythm of the lines. For the most part, the "Remember..." lines have matching rhythms, and that works well for me - repetition, even if just of the pattern of syllables, is a good thing for tying a poem together. But I think a few of the other lines are a little off, and that jars me out slightly - for example, "When you find yourself shrinking" seems to have too many syllables, compared to "When sitting in a forest". I love the rhythm of the first two lines, incidentally.
I'm torn on the second half. On the one hand, I like that it's a change from the first half, and breaking away from the repetition theme. On the other, it seems to break away so much from the rhythm of the first that it doesn't quite gel. Perhaps it might be an idea to tie this back to the first half by keeping the rhythms the same, although you are losing the "Remember..." repetition.
Overall, I think it's really good, and I look forward to reading more of your work, if this is just a ten-minute draft!
Cadi x
Hey there, wewinwelose! I don’t think we’ve been introduced before but folks around here call me Lily!
So, I will say that you definitely want to spend more than 10 minutes on any draft of a poem because, well, it takes hard work and time to make a great poem.
Right now, you have a poem with a great theme but as far as the actual poem goes, you’re really letting repetition run the poem. You have a lovely image in the first two lines and the repetition of that line at the end of the poem has a lot of impact.
But the rest of the poem is rather repetitious and I think if you played on the idea of the poem, on the imagery that you have (because you have some lovely imagery in here, it’s just getting lost in the “whens” and “remembers”) then you would have a much better poem. After all, repetition is used to reinforce a theme or idea in most poems. You don’t have to use repetition throughout the whole poem but if you repeat the first line like you do at the end, you end up with a far more powerful piece, at least in my opinion.
That’s just my two cents of course but if you have any questions or anything, feel free to PM me.
Actually Emily Dickinson never spent more than 15 minutes on any one poem. Frost admitted to getting much too frustrated with any written work that took more than half an hour. Most masters do their best work in less than an hour. I put this poem up here for a review on a first draft about how to continue, not to criticize how long it took me. If you're going to tell me not to put a piece of work up until it's finished then you don't know the point of this site.