Heart

[Erthona]

I find relying on visual tricks is best left alone unless of course it is a concrete or form poem and even then one would generally avoid using bold or italics in the place of being able to get the concept across with words. Using such tricks seems cheap, on the whole adds nothing, and poetry has gotten by without them for most of its existence. Besides one cannot hear a bolded word.

For someone new to writing poetry a whole hosts of cliches is fairly common, however it should be understood that poetry is about originality; seeing things in a different way or from a different perspective. When one uses a cliche one is relying on an overused perspective or an overused saying. Why write poetry if one is going to simply repeat what someone else has already said and then has been repeated a thousand times more? There is nothing original or fresh about that. There are certain instances where cliches can be used, such as in satire or parodies, but that is not the case here.
________________________________________________________________________________
Within the poem you refer to the "Heart" as a "Raven" "I" and as a "Dove". The "Heart" is referred to as both subject and object; subjectively and objectively.  This is especially confusing in such passages as:

"When I see it
the raven halts
then its wings flutter
I grow faint,
weak"  

If the "Raven" meant to be the heart, and here it is seen both as an object and subjectively, then who is the "I"?

So in a majority of cases it is unclear who the speaker is. For the poem to have any chance of making sense, the speaker must be clear and even in Stream of Consciousness there is usually some indicator, there is no such indicator here, plus this is not Stream of Consciousness.

The writer appears to be trying to make a switch from a fearful heart, the raven, to a joyful heart, the dove, but this is only acknowledged after the fact leading to confusion.

Overall this doesn't matter as the entire poem is abstract and gives the reader nothing to latch on to or to care about. Beyond that it is verbally burdensome. It can be summed up as:

I lived in the darkness and was fearful,
now I live in the daylight
and that daylight gives me hope
and that hope fills me with joy.

All the rest is for the most part filler, cliches (of course the synopsis is a cliche), and poor attempts at metaphor. Still, it is probably much better than my first poem. We all have to start somewhere.

Oh yeah, on Capping the start of each line:

As a service to your reader(s), please do not cap the start of every line. That was originally a necessity related to typesetting. Capping the lines in print went out circa 1950's, primarily because it was no longer a need in typesetting, and it was less confusing to the reader. Most people coming up through the school system tend to read poetry either in text books or in anthologies. The compilers of these texts prefer not to use copyrighted material, which leaves more of the older material that is typeset in the old way giving the impression that is how it should be done which is an unfortunate misapprehension.

Best,

dale