To put it a little more gently…
because people need to accept it how it it or not comment at all,
…But what MW is saying is pretty much true on this subject. Excuse me for being blunt, but it seems like writers in this section seriously need to learn that it's not don't like, don't read. It's
can't take crit, don't post. After all, there's really no point in asking us for our opinions (which you do by default when you post on a medium where just anyone can reply) if you… kinda don't want our opinions. And I'm not just directing this statement towards you. Seems like there's a lot of kids in here who think this way, and it's unfortunate because poetry is actually a harder form of literature to master than prose thanks to the whole "not everything is
good art" concept, y'know what I mean?
Also, sort of doesn't make me feel all that happy to know that I'm getting blown off after spending some of my time that I could've spent doing something else offering up tips. I mean, I really don't mind if you'd like to politely disagree, but if you're saying you disagree because you think I need to accept your work as it is... that's not quite how the entire posting-on-a-forum thing works, sorry to say.
But yet still I am not going to change everything just of one person.
Two people by now. Unless you're counting Misheard Whisper and me as the same person, which would be weird and uncomfortable on R-rated levels. And illegal levels, considering he's underage while I'm not, but TMI.
But seriously, review time.
Honestly... I'll have to agree with MW about the content. Ignoring the typos and whatnot (because I really don't like to point those out in poetry unless they make your work unintelligible), it feels like a lot of the time, you relied on telling us instead of trying to evoke emotion through imagery. That is, instead of showing us images that would make us cringe (for example, painting a picture of a shadowy, cold room to make us feel the depths of darkness and loneliness and emptiness), you just come right out and tell us how we should feel. Like I said in an earlier review, a poem becomes more powerful if you present reaction descriptions – that is, descriptions that paint an image in our minds that causes us to feel one emotion or another – than it would if you just said, "Oh, there's so much darkness and ANGST here."
Setting this observation aside for now, this time your details feel a little more off (at the risk of being vague) because it seems like you can't really settle on a particular image. You start off with, if you don't mind me saying, a slightly trite image (comparing love to a battlefield full of destruction -- emblematic of the ways love can ravage the heart) but pepper in analogies of light (representing hope). While it could be an effective clash of images to represent the mix of emotions going on within your mind, you don't really follow through on your imagery and present to us something a little more concrete that we can picture. (That is to say, we can't really picture the darkness and the light. We're only told that it exists.) As a result, there feels like there's a disconnect between the painful, I'm-being-ripped-apart images and descriptions like "like a supernova in a moonray shore form," which seems to convey the idea that the subject is both the cause of the person's destruction
and the only symbol of their redemption. Like I said, it could work, but it feels like there's nothing in between them because you're pretty much busy focusing on one image or the other (through telling us that they're destructive images instead of letting us imagine them) instead of how they blend together.
Put it this way. In order for this poem to work, you'll probably want to make it feel like there shouldn't be any difference between the parts where she's the narrator's light half and the parts where she's the cause of all his agony. As in, the poem should smoothly transition from one to the other and back again before the reader realizes it's happening. In doing this, you'll need to show us images where the descriptions drift from one end of the spectrum to the other. The reason why I say "need" here is because if you don't, it ends up feeling choppy and disconnected. While a choppy feel might work with some other poem, in this one, the narrator is feeling torn and confused. That implies that he's not really weighing one side of his love against the other but instead struggling to tell the difference between the two. As in, he can't decide whether he should be terrified of his love or cling to her as if she's his savior.
Moreover, in describing these things, it's important
not to tell instead of show to, as I've told you earlier, evoke emotion in your readers. Like I said, we need to connect to your writing on an emotional level, and the best way to do that is if we can imagine the things you're describing and the voice you're using. To get a better idea of both, check out a lot of beat poetry, especially stuff by Gregory Corso. I'd highly recommend
this one, if only because you can really see how the narrator is using a particular voice that gets increasingly frantic as he continues to consider his options of marriage. Also notice how he never outright says, "Oh, marriage is full of DARKNESS AND DEPRESSION." This is a habit a lot of teen poets tend to pick up, and it's a habit you'll want to avoid getting into if at all possible because it's really difficult to take a poem seriously if it says that. Not to offend or imply that you're a stereotypical teen poet. It's just that I tend to see that a lot.
But in any case, yes. Gregory Corso relies on images and tone to convey his emotions, not only actually labeling what he's trying to portray. As a result, the reader actually comes to feel
something towards what he's saying. To contrast, in this poem, we see a lot of mentions of darkness and depression, so the only feeling we really get is the one where it feels like you're telling us how we should react to what you're saying.
Also, I'll have to agree with MW on a level. While I'm very lenient on punctuation when it comes to poetry (because I'm just as much of a fan of e.e. cummings as the next person), a true poet
does care about spelling and grammar. He just uses them to his advantage. Case in point: e.e. cummings. Never put or omitted a mark of punctuation he didn't mean to. If anything, poets actually have to be
more conscious of things like mechanics
because the slightest change in
anything could change the meaning of an entire line. Example in this case? It's hard to take the line about feuding seriously because it seems like you're trying to spell the word phonetically. As a result, the narrator ends up sounding like they're a young child or so far gone that love should really be the least of their worries. (That is, if the latter was true, then it's very likely the narrator would make Gregory Corso sound
sane.)
Moreover, there were some spots where it was just plain difficult to figure out what you meant, and before anyone accuses me of just not getting it because it's deep, it really has nothing to do with that. There's a difference between coming up with an unusual image (e.g., "werewolf bathtubs" and "forked clarinets") and coming up with an image that just doesn't really produce anything in our minds at all ("moonray shore form"). I mean, as unusual as the first two images I've just mentioned are, I can pretty much picture a furry bathtub or a clarinet with two bells. That's no problem. I just can't picture a shore form of a moonray, and with other spelling errors in this poem, I'm not even really sure if it's actually a typo that means "sure form."
In short, I'm sorry that I seem extraordinary blunt here, but honestly? I feel like your other poetry is better, especially your earliest stuff. This time around, it feels like you're really forcing the dark and depressing themes, and it's really hard to connect with what you're saying, in part because there's a lot of telling instead of showing, in part because it feels like there's a disconnect between images, and in part because your grammar/spelling got in the way of my understanding of the poem at key points. It's not outright horrible; I won't say that or even wish for you to think that. I know you've got potential because as I've just said, I've seen you do better. It's just that you've really got to focus on distilling your emotions into a more visceral form that we can clearly picture so we can get a snapshot of what goes on in your mind.
...Actually, there's a good tip right there. Whenever you write poetry, don't tell us how you feel. Describe to us what images are going through your head while you're feeling the way you do. This is, come to think of it, what most poets tend to do, and it's a really easy way of evoking the kinds of responses you want from a reader.
Tl;dr, eh. Images are conflicting in ways you didn't intend or just don't exist, so as a reader, I just don't really feel any emotional attachment to this poem. Also, typos can affect meaning. Final conclusion? Not terrible, but you can do better. But good luck with future poetry.
