Love and war

[Chaotic Body]

The majority of the lines are dependent clauses, often lacking a subject, and often not referring to one. It would probably be beneficial if the sentences were written out in order to make sure each contains the necessary elements to be intelligible. I suspect the writer does what most neophyte poets do in an attempt to copy what they perceive as the abbreviated style what is often associated with poetry; they omit words which contain necessary pieces of information. Primarily this happens because the writer projects these omissions onto the piece because they already know what it is suppose to say. Often the piece must be laid aside for some time, and then returned to with fresh eyes in order to perceive what is actually happening. It is difficult in the beginning to understand why we are not understood when what we have written seems perfectly clear to us. As we gain experience we may not necessarily becomes more adept at seeing the text the way the reader sees the text, but we become aware of the problem, cease fighting it, and begin to make allowances for this "writer's blind spot". The lack of clarity that arises from this blind spot is probably the primarily area of focus for workshop type critiques, and certainly it is the area that benefits the most.
Certainly it is difficult to accept (and often it comes with no little amount of self consciousness), that others see more clearly into what we write than we do. However, coming to acceptance of this blindness in ourselves is the first major step in becoming a writer.
Sometimes it helps to have this explained, and to know that we are not unique in this.

Dale

(updated original post)
(I took advice from the posts in this topic, so thanks)

Yeah I'm aware of this, and thank you for taking the time to explain it so clearly for me. My mind's not on the use of grammar, even. Maybe because I spend a lot of time visualizing. I noticed when I finished the first draft I'd got 'head' and 'hands' the wrong way round... the end result is what matters, though, and it will show eventually. I posted here rather than in novice critique because it seems like there's more of a response.

About "time and effort".. I spend most of my time thinking about video game design and philosophy and psychology, but I'm having motivation problems and poetry, for me, is just a nice way of getting positive feedback, and a good creativity study. But I do understand lots of fundamental things about life.