A Day Worth Remembering

[=(^.^)=]

Childhood Memories

Please, feel free to critique and comment on my poems. I honestly don't know what I'm doing and would welcome any and all advice with open arms. I don't bite! :3

December

Spoiler:

Snow sparkles,
In the rising sun,
A diamond palace,
Touched by none.


Peaceful and quiet,
The wind whispers through.
The voice of good times
Calling anew.


To the curtains,
Little feet tiptoe.
Little eyes peek
Through the window.


A cry of joy
Is heard within,
Warm clothes pulled on,

With a great big grin.


Out the front door,
The little boy runs.
His mother in the doorway,
Watching her son.


She smiles as she watches
His carefree delight,
His absolute wonder
At everything in sight.


He played all day,
'Til he was chilly and blue,
His snow angels made
And his snowmen through.


He went back inside,
Changed out of his wet clothes
Went into the kitchen,
Where from two mugs steam arose.


He sips his cocoa,
Sitting in his mother's lap.
She reads him a story,
The cat in the hat.


His head begins to droop,
His eyes begin to close.
His mother kisses him softly
And up to his room they go.


She turns on his nightlight
And tucks him in,
But he's already out,
Peacefully dreaming.

 

[=(^.^)=]

The Butterfly Effect

Spoiler:

A butterfly flaps its delicate wings
Flower petals kissed by nature's soft breeze
A wind-chime slowly, melodically swings
A wind rustling through autumn leaves


The wind flows across the golden plains
Quietly whooshing over the land
Sweeping through the grassy lanes
Making its way to the warm coastal sand


Wind meets ocean with a roar
The powerful surf welcoming its pair
Into the skies the growing wind soars
Spiraling along columns of rising air.


As the wind rises, it's chilled to its soul
It slows and it turns and begins to fall
Hurtling towards the ocean below
Responding to the ocean's call


It rockets downward, unchained fury
Heated again by the ocean's rage
Lashing out, sword of the sea
Mighty waves crashing, refusing to be caged


Unstoppable storm of endless power
Triumphantly, freely, the wind sings
Under its gaze, the bravest will cower
A hurricane born of a butterfly's wings.

​

 

[=(^.^)=]

Aah, still no critique or comments. I must really write terrible poetry ._.

Lack of Eloquence
​

Spoiler:

I sat down at my desk, got out a notebook and a pen,

Wanted to write you something beautiful, this is what I said:




Your breathtaking eyes stare into mine,

You take my hands in yours, fingers intertwined,

Those eyes shining like sunlight at dawn,

God, how I love you, how I miss you when you're gone.




I looked it over for a second, was it good enough for you?

No, you deserve the best, into the trash the verse was threw

So I tried again, hoping to make a masterpiece,

This is what I got, better than the first, at least.




Our souls were matched by fate,

Destined to be together,

Our love is truly great,

Our hearts light as feathers.




But no, this poem was worse! What was I going to do?

I needed to,I wanted to, I had to show my love for you!

So I picked up my pen once again, praying not to fail.

I slowly finished writing it, after much thinking to no avail.




It isn't a lot, and it isn't eloquent,

But I wrote the truth, in all its elegance.

This will always be how I feel, it's true.

That little truth? I love you.

*dedicated to Ally <3*
​

 

[JX Valentine]

Aah, still no critique or comments. I must really write terrible poetry ._.

Take a very close look around. You'll notice that in general, we sort of suck at the whole reviewing thing, and you're considered lucky if you get more than one or two reviews, even if you're an established writer. (Heck, for my own work, the only reason why I get reviews is because I have a handful of friends I pester constantly.)

Point is, it has nothing to do with your skill level and everything to do with this forum, so don't worry about it.

But because it would be rather rude to tell you this without actually obliging, let me sit down and look things over for a bit.

Lack of Eloquence
The first thing I noticed was the rhyme scheme was... all over the place. Some parts of the poem didn't rhyme (like the first two lines) or were very awkward attempts at rhyming (like the third and fourth lines), and the rest used an AABB rhyme scheme. (I'm going to forgive the fourth stanza on the account of being a poem-within-a-poem -- and not a great one, at that.) The problem with using a rhyme scheme is that it conveys an even tone. That is, the reason why one would rhyme is to make the poem flow with a certain sense of rhythm so that it feels like everything fits together. It's like a musical piece, basically. A rhyme scheme is like the drum beat in that it, along with the actual rhythm of the poem (read: a consistent number of syllables per line) keep time so that the rest of the piece comes together seamlessly. In other words, if you rhyme using a consistent pattern, that makes a reader think that every single word is necessary for being in that poem to understand it and to appreciate it.

If you wanted to go for a more discordant theme (like "Revolution 9" levels of insanity), then that would be okay for a poem, but you'd need a reason for doing things like that. As in, every part of a poem, even its rhyme scheme, conveys a certain meaning to a reader. If you want discordant, you're probably trying to portray extreme confusion on the part of the speaker, which means your word choice should be all over the place as well (if you're not trying to leave a reader feeling particularly unsettled, anyway). Otherwise, you're probably trying to go for a more harmonious tone, like the speaker is actually completely sound in thought.

To help you along, read your poem aloud. If it doesn't have a certain rhythm to it and if you really have to stretch it to make it sound like it rhymes (-ce and -t sounds don't rhyme either, meaning things like "eloquent" shouldn't be paired with "elegance"), chances are you'll need to rethink your word choices.

(Of course, you could simply be implying that the speaker really sucks at poetry, but this seems to be an issue consistent with all of your poetry, regardless of the speaker. For example, the last stanza of "December" doesn't rhyme at all, and you have this habit of assuming a word that ends with -S will rhyme with one that doesn't. There's also the fourth and fifth stanzas of "The Butterfly Effect," which doesn't fit with the rest of the poem's ABAB rhyme scheme because "soul" doesn't rhyme with "below" while "rage" and "caged" don't end the same way.)

Other than that, the only other nitpick I have is this:

No, you deserve the best, into the trash the verse was threw

Again, always double-check your work to avoid awkward phrasing. Poetry more than prose relies on word choice because every word adds to both its meaning and its ability to flow properly, so if one word isn't right, it's going to be particularly obvious to a reader. In this case, "was threw" sounds awkward because no one actually speaks like that. (And if you do, I apologize and would like to inform you that this isn't correct grammar.) As a result, it feels awkward because the reader realizes this and would stop for a moment -- even for just a second -- to take that in because it's not natural to them. I could offer an alternative ("into the trash the verse I threw"), but it's really up to you whether this sounds any better or if you'll need to rethink the structure of that line.

In terms of content, it was rather cute. I'm not normally one for romance poetry or poetry that's straightforward about its messages, but I liked that it wasn't a sappy poem where you have a teenager angsting about how beautiful his girlfriend is or about how much he loves her. Instead, you have a speaker struggling to come up with the words to say to her, only to hilariously fall short of actually finding them. Still, it's very sweet that he eventually said the equivalent of, "You know what? Screw it. I tried, and trying counts, right?" Because chicks go for guys who put forth effort for them, even if they don't always get the intended results.

So, yeah. This one just needs polishing in terms of structure to shine as well as it should, but its content is actually pretty good.

Anyway, I'd comment on the rest, but I'm actually rather pressed for time at the moment and wanted to give you a critique on at least one poem. I'll come back for the others later in a review that'll cover the relevance of imagery and all kinds of other fun poetry mechanics not too many people talk about these days.