04-15-2016, 03:51 AM
I'm leaving us my love,
my reckless entanglement,
my fucking mad, headlong descent
into today.
You swore we'd die entwined 5
in each other,
loving each other.
Give me a chance you said,
to prove my love, you said.
Ha! you had me there, 10
I didn't ever see this coming,
This cold, this freezing cold,
I'd have taken hatred any day.
Didn't I deserve that,
at least that? 15
Didn't I, my love?
There isn't much that keeps me interested here. The main problem is the wording: it's not specific. What I mean is that your poem is riddled with abstractions with words like "love," "hatred," etc. People think in images — not abstractions. (If you don't believe me, try an exercise where you write down the first things that pop into your head when you hear a certain word. You'll find that they are almost always concrete images.) These words are meaningless because of this, but also because they don't have much of a connection to the situation presented in your poem. Give us specifics. What exactly happened? Also, try using your own words! Don't rely on words like "entwined" and "entangled" to describe the relationship of the speaker -- too many others have used these! This seems to be a personal situation, so the poem should be personal too.
However, there are definitely some positive qualities!
For instance, I like the repetition of "other" at the end of lines 6-7 and "said" at the end of 8-9. If you wanted, you could improve upon this repetition by making it more frequent throughout the poem. This could form a stronger relationship between the words and their lines. Here's something to consider: many poets, like Sylvia Plath, repeat the same word twice to create a kind of echo. Maybe you could have the end-line words lead up to this "echo" to convey a sense of emptiness that the speaker feels? Again, this is just a suggestion. Consider it brain fodder!
"my fucking mad, headlong descent/ into today" is one phrase that caught my eye. The lines create a kind of dramatic music with the words. It's slow at the start, but increases its speed immediately with "descent into today" due to the "d" and "t" sounds and the changes in rhythm. It's almost like the words are falling... one might say "descending." The double meaning of "mad" is also interesting. It could either mean mad as in angry or mad as in crazy, which opens up new interpretations and meanings in the poem.
Let me point out that the poem isn't bad. It's just generic. Being more specific and using your own words would greatly benefit it!
my reckless entanglement,
my fucking mad, headlong descent
into today.
You swore we'd die entwined 5
in each other,
loving each other.
Give me a chance you said,
to prove my love, you said.
Ha! you had me there, 10
I didn't ever see this coming,
This cold, this freezing cold,
I'd have taken hatred any day.
Didn't I deserve that,
at least that? 15
Didn't I, my love?
There isn't much that keeps me interested here. The main problem is the wording: it's not specific. What I mean is that your poem is riddled with abstractions with words like "love," "hatred," etc. People think in images — not abstractions. (If you don't believe me, try an exercise where you write down the first things that pop into your head when you hear a certain word. You'll find that they are almost always concrete images.) These words are meaningless because of this, but also because they don't have much of a connection to the situation presented in your poem. Give us specifics. What exactly happened? Also, try using your own words! Don't rely on words like "entwined" and "entangled" to describe the relationship of the speaker -- too many others have used these! This seems to be a personal situation, so the poem should be personal too.
However, there are definitely some positive qualities!
For instance, I like the repetition of "other" at the end of lines 6-7 and "said" at the end of 8-9. If you wanted, you could improve upon this repetition by making it more frequent throughout the poem. This could form a stronger relationship between the words and their lines. Here's something to consider: many poets, like Sylvia Plath, repeat the same word twice to create a kind of echo. Maybe you could have the end-line words lead up to this "echo" to convey a sense of emptiness that the speaker feels? Again, this is just a suggestion. Consider it brain fodder!
"my fucking mad, headlong descent/ into today" is one phrase that caught my eye. The lines create a kind of dramatic music with the words. It's slow at the start, but increases its speed immediately with "descent into today" due to the "d" and "t" sounds and the changes in rhythm. It's almost like the words are falling... one might say "descending." The double meaning of "mad" is also interesting. It could either mean mad as in angry or mad as in crazy, which opens up new interpretations and meanings in the poem.
Let me point out that the poem isn't bad. It's just generic. Being more specific and using your own words would greatly benefit it!
“Nature is a haunted house—but Art—is a house that tries to be haunted.” - Emily Dickinson