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Critical Analysis #1
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raleighbttrfly
Member
since 2000-11-21
Posts 160
Raleigh NC

0 posted 2000-12-13 08:54 PM


Your damaged heart speaks to me
Your pain has been made mine
The tears you cry fall from my eyes
In this love divine

The sorrow you whispered softly goes by
But the sound of the pain will never die
The guilt that beats in your heart beats in mine
There is so little distance between you and I

You pray for an end
I long for a start
And it is only ourselves we make fall apart
Living in this lie of love divine

Bitter regret that won’t heal with time
Our souls we have shared now intertwined
Tears fall in rivers washing away the lines
Forming a landscape of our love divine

The pain still so new the scars faded and old
Nightmares come and some never go
All that is yours you make it now mine
And this we call a love divine

This pome is one I think might be my best, but i might be wroung. I would like your honest opinon and don't pull any punches. I would also like sugestions for a new tittle.

< !signature-->

I am not always lonely even if I am always alone

[This message has been edited by raleighbttrfly (edited 12-14-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 Amberlyn - All Rights Reserved
aurora rain
Member
since 2000-11-15
Posts 90

1 posted 2000-12-13 11:06 PM


the repetion you used is quite lovely. it makes the poem very uniform.

i also enjoyed the off-scattered rhyme throughout.

here, though:

quote:
You pray for an end
I long for a start
And it is only are ourselves we make fall apart


i would make it

You pray for an end, I long for a start
And it is only ourselves we make fall apart

you had an extra "are" in there...i didn't know if you'd realised.


and i think love divine makes a fine title.

raleighbttrfly
Member
since 2000-11-21
Posts 160
Raleigh NC
2 posted 2000-12-15 11:55 AM


thank you for pointing that extra "are" out to me i missed it, I made the change. Also thank you for takeing the time to read glade you liked it.



I am not always lonely even if I am always alone

Skyfyre
Senior Member
since 1999-08-15
Posts 1906
Sitting in Michael's Lap
3 posted 2000-12-16 03:45 AM


Hi there ...

Well, for starters, I will agree with aurora rain and say that I think Love Divine is an excellent title for this piece.

You managed to keep a relatively consistent theme throughout, and I thought the "love divine" bit to describe what was obviously anything but was a nice touch.  The return to this mantra, if you will, at the end of (almost) every stanza gave the poem a sense of continuity and wholeness.

What this poem lacks, in my opinion, is an identifiable structure.  If it were intended as a free-verse piece (and therefore would be exempt from structuring), I do not think that you would have taken pains to repeat the key phrase, nor would you have put the effort into the end-rhymes.  This sort of piece would gain much if you simply put a bit more thought into making the lines work together to create a rhythm rather than competing with each other for the reader's attention.

For example, the first thing that caught my attention was the drastic shift in syllable count from line to line in stanza 3 -- this makes for a bit of a stumble in that the previous eight lines established an expectation in the reader of a certain line length, and leaves him wondering what happened to the last line of this stanza.  If you take aurora's suggestion and meld the first two lines, however, and tack on a fourth, that will mend this problem nicely, I think.

The second area which could use a bit of improvement is your rhyming ... you change schemes more than once in this piece, which is distracting (again, a violation of the reader's expectation causes the stumble).  Below is a map of your rhyme scheme in this piece, broken apart by stanza for easier  comparison.  In case you are not familiar with this sort of notation, the basics are that if a line is labeled "A," then any other line that has an end-word that rhymes with the end-word of the line labeled "A" will also be labeled "A," and so forth.  

S1:
A (me)
B (mine)
C (eyes)
B (divine)

S2:
A (by)
A (die)
B (mine)
A (I)

S3:
A (end)
B (start)
B (apart)
C (divine)

S4:
A (time)
B (intertwined)
B (lines)
B (divine)

S5:
A(old)
B (go)
C (mine)
C (divine)

As you can see from the map, none of your stanzas agree in rhyme scheme.  If I may suggest, since you seem to want to use the "love divine" in the last line of every stanza, that you try an "ABAB" rhyme scheme -- that is, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth -- I think you will find that it will be easier to fashion your poem that way than in couplets, which would be "AABB."

Hope this was helpful ... please re-post your revision, if you make any!  

--Linda


Remember: maintaining a positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will certainly annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

aurora rain
Member
since 2000-11-15
Posts 90

4 posted 2000-12-16 05:05 AM


i don't know much of the terminology for "formal" poetry (as opposed to free verse) because i don't write much formal poetry.

i get feelings when things look out of place, that's all i can say.

linda, you make me feel quite uneducated in poetry.

Irish Rose
Member Patricius
since 2000-04-06
Posts 10263

5 posted 2000-12-16 03:37 PM


Ok, not pulling any punches, you're in the critique forum which is a whole lot different than open and others!  

Let me begin by saying this is loaded with non-specific words such as "pain, tears, sorrow, regret, and dripping with ssentimentality.  Now, I'm the queen of sentiment, but this is overdone, in my opinion.   The rhyme is a bit forced in certain lines, and isn't consistent, I go for perfect rhyme of free verse, delft rhyme is very hard to pull off.  I think it has potential but needs a whole lot of work.
I hope I've helped, dont be discouraged, keep writing and learning, take what you feel you can use and leave what you don't.  

There is no form to the scanning of this,
the flow is stopped up in places.

As far as syntax, how can a love be divine when it is described so sadly and with so much sorrow?  But what IS the sorrow and what IS the pain, it's got to be more specific. Keep working on it!



"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day,
so I never have to live without you."

Winnie the Pooh



Skyfyre
Senior Member
since 1999-08-15
Posts 1906
Sitting in Michael's Lap
6 posted 2000-12-16 04:48 PM


aurora:  if the quality of your writing is any indication, free verse or not, I would have to say that you need no "education" in poetry.     I simply listened too hard in English class while everyone else was sleeping ... LOL

-L

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
7 posted 2000-12-16 06:19 PM


Linda and Irish Rose have alread stated many of the things I would have but I'd thought I'd elaborate just a bit.

There are at least two reasons for avoiding words like soul, tears, and heart in the way that you are using them (if you use them in a different way, well, that's a different story). First, simply read any page on just about any poetry internet site and start counting. When a content word (as opposed to a functional word like the or a or pronouns like he and she -- words necessary for grammatical reasons) is uses that much it loses it's effectiveness to a reader (this is not to say that your feelings are in anyway lost but it's important to keep the words and the feelings separate. Contrary to what many people seem to think, they are not the same thing.). So, what actually happens is you place the reader in a position of projecting his or her own context on to the words themselves -- 'I know how you feel' 'I've been there too'. In a genre called Inspirational poetry for lack of a better term, this is fine, even necessary, for that is what people want to do.

But is that what you want to do?

Second, in order to create this type of inspiration you have to mute the very individuality of your own experience, its unique context if you will. You have to talk around what really happened so that others can place their own context in your words.

This is not what I want to see.

Connecting with other people is important but as a base, not as a goal in itself. I'm far more interested in reading about your specific situation -- what happened, why, with whom and so forth. I'm far more interested in reading a description of the concrete world in order to create the feeling of tears inside of me, of feeling a damaged heart within me, than I am in simply reading those words.

I want to read what happened to you.

There's more to poetry than simply telling the story (the unity of form and content is another one worth discussing) but, for the moment, I'll simply end with a question:

What type of poetry do you want to write?

Either one's fine but you are writing for different audiences and those audience don't really mix very well. I, of course, am not a big fan of inspirational poetry. I prefer the ever finer gradations of emotions and contexts to the generality because it enriches my own life.

Just an opinion,
Brad

raleighbttrfly
Member
since 2000-11-21
Posts 160
Raleigh NC
8 posted 2000-12-16 10:50 PM


Thank you all for taking the time to respond to this post.

I’m not sure what type of poetry I want to right.
I right what I am feeling with out really thinking of structure or a true rhyme pattern.
That is why I don’t relay take myself to seriously as a poet.
I use my writhing to work out my emotions and only really try to make is sound good I guess.
I don’t try to make it free verse and most of the rhymes that come out, on there own with out me relay think about it.
But I relay like this one and plane to think vary seriously about what you all have said.
Give me some time to work on this and I might make some changes and repost it.


Incase any one wants to know what I wrote this about its more about a vary deep conversation than the relationship. A vary close friend of mine (that I am in love w/) pored his sole out to over the phone.
He told me some vary personal and pain full things about his past. The pain was still so deep for him and since I know him so well he was able to make me feel his pain. The other theme that’s also here is jest me trying to work out my feelings abut him and our vary complicated relationship.



I am not always lonely even if I am always alone

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
9 posted 2000-12-17 03:44 AM


Why not try both? I do think the audiences are different but see no reason why you can't write both.

Good luck,

Brad

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