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Ever Shining
Topic Started: Sunday, 23. January 2011, 04:31 (86 Views)
Karzhani

An experiment with poem structure and delivery


There is day, there is night
Prosperity, misery; contrast
Against one another
Evermore cycling, changing

The night is deeper, dark
It drowns out the call of sun
As if it were a mark
For happiness to flee

Yet in the shadows,
You shall not despair
In spite of the black
Hope endures, lives on

In throes of
This dark night
Look into
The water
And see

The moon still reflects sunlight.
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Warrior Poet
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If you lead me, I will go.
Hmm, interesting thing there. We've had a lot of poems about light and night and all that lately, and it's pretty overused, but I liked this one. First of all, huge props for actually caring about structure and delivery. I'm always getting on this in my reviews because there are a lot of writers here who seem to think it doesn't matter.

Now poetry is a really good window into someone's worldview, even if that's not what they're writing about. Consider this.
Quote:
 
Against one another
Evermore cycling, changing

You believe that good and evil are both things, fighting against each other yet maintaining some kind of necessary balance, right? I could be wrong, because I am sometimes :P I'm different, see, I believe that darkness is not a thing, but an absence of light - that much we know. I believe that evil is also not a thing, but the absence of God. A balance is irrelevant, kind of like a balance between hot and cold.

Quote:
 
The night is deeper, dark
It drowns out the call of sun
This is wrong, physically, because the slightest bit of light means that there is no longer darkness. Dark can't destroy light; it's impossible by definition. But this is a figurative statement, and I'm trying to figure out what you mean by it.

Water (especially vast expanses of it) is a metaphor I use all the time. I used it in Mount Improbable, a poem, and more importantly my fantasy novel Anodyne Sea, which is a work which I think is really cool that's kind of about the meaning of life and existence. I explore it by removing the true meaning of existence from the equation and seeing where it leads. Since water is a big deal and common to all humanity, I encourage you to expand on the water thing. One line doesn't give water justice :)

Throes is nice. Throes are typically a convulsion or seizure, and the word is usually used in reference to death. I love that.

The significance of the last line is unclear to me. Is it that we have proof that the sun exists even at night?

Got a cool quote for you. "When you're lost in the dark, just remember what was true during the day."

So there's the actual content. With the delivery, you didn't rhyme at all. Rhyming can be powerful but also really a part of it. The best rhyming is sometimes when I don't even realize it rhymed until I looked for it. But it's also fine not to rhyme at all. Just remember that it's powerful when used right. And so is rhythm! I'm a rhythm nut. And that seems to be what you focused on. Like the way you put the stress on "contrast." Good job with that.

I also notice that you pay attention to your syllable count in at least some of it. All five syllable lines in the 3rd to last stanza, all 3 syllables in the second-last. Except the last one, which was 2, and threw me off. In addition to the number of syllables, pay attention to whether they're stressed or unstressed. The natural flow of English is alternating between unstressed and stressed. Put a mark above each syllable, / for stressed and . for not. It should usually be in that . / . / pattern, or maybe / . / . - usually when it's not, you're doing some kind of inflection or emphasis. That'll make it sound much more natural. An easier way to achieve this is to read it aloud, and at a decent volume. You'll have to graph it out for sonnets and stuff but doing it in your head is usually fine for free verse.

That it? I think it is. Get really into your rhythm. You care about delivery, and caring is important :)

Write more poetry!
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Karzhani

Thanks a lot for your informative review ^^. About the significance of the last line, it used the moon reflecting sunlight (scientifically, the moon doesn't produce light) as a metaphor to show that even in the pitch blackness of night, there is still a glimmer of hope from the day.
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Sfabulous
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Sleepy Kat
Your message was easy enough to grasp. Light amidst the darkness and all that. Your last line was very clever though, and I liked your explanation of it. A glimmer of hope from the day. Interesting thought.

Last stanza was a little jarring in its abruptness. I'm guessing there's an effect in that, though I'm not entirely sure what it is. Hm.

On a different note, I'm very glad to see you aren't rhyming for the sake of it. It's artificial and awkward and I despise it. You planned your rhymes well here (dark/mark, night/sunlight) and I noted them unconsciously as I was reading. Excellent. Hooray again for the absence of garish rhymes!

Mm. :)
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James
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it's all cool
:) I liked this. My brain liked reading it. Go write more. :) yeyy
To protect the world from devastation.
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Harket
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asian
Simple, small, cute, great, amazing, beautiful, deep.

I liked this. Alot. :)
Birds don't like to fly, they have to fly.
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