Posts: 8
Threads: 2
Joined: Sep 2012
Shades of valentine red
marry pink blossoms
delighting bride and groom
reciting vows promises...
tears fall; two lovers embrace
echos of eternity
dazzling in the mist
twilight glows over skies
they dance the midnight sun
correlating their movements
the sweet peach
of her lips beckoning him
she creeps closer
teasingly backing
away whispering-follow me...
rosemary stars
guide their path- a secret garden
pulsing flowers radiant
she smiles
warmly in his arms
he strokes her hair
tender touches on skin
both exhaling slowly
every moment lingering deliciously
Posts: 5,057
Threads: 1,075
Joined: Dec 2009
it's very lovely poetsorrow but it needs to be original.
in general it feels very cliche. in most stanzas the 1st line is a cliche.
there are other lines as well. so many clichés can make a poem a run of the mill stuff that's been written many times before by others..
walking hand in hand....is cliche
something else that says the same thing in a new way would work much better. (often they don't go down the isle together either  (i took my daughter down the aisle)
she dragged the train bearers
though i guess they walk together down it once they're married.
they ran like dogs in heat 
down the aisle not what you're aiming for but it's just an example. make the whole poem yours
Posts: 342
Threads: 49
Joined: Sep 2011
Hi poetsorrow 
It is good to see you posting. I like the overall picture you are painting and it is certainly familiar territory. The trouble with a subject like this is that it takes a different spin to make it interesting. Without your own personality and developing interesting images that convey well, the poem is in danger of blending into the thousands of other poems out there 
Luckily, I think you have a good start and with an effort this could become a stand-out piece
I did notice that the punctuation is irregular (sometimes;like this, sometimes; like this)
I am not expert on grammar and punctuation but I do feel that whatever you do it must be consistent. jmo
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your work with us and welcome to TPP
Don't forget to give others some feedback when you have the time.
Posts: 8
Threads: 2
Joined: Sep 2012
Thank you for the feedback! its a work in progress defiantly what exactly is a cliche? and how do I avoid these? must avoid them entirely?
some might be used sure but this is poetry were talking about ideas have been used for thousands of years how can you be original?
I love learning and want become a great poet let me in on what it takes to make a poem original with heart at the same time following the laws
of grammar poetry?
alright I tweaked it some sometimes in stead of improving cliches I noticed its better to just remove them outright
About cliches, a poem can be as cliched and corny as anything in experienced life. The point is whether you're aware that you're saying something that almost anyone would say in the same situation. When you're trying to express love that you actually feel, the temptation is great to simply say all the average stuff, with the sense that it's different this time because you've never said it about this particular lover. You say you want to be a great poet. I guess that means you want to be original and relevant. I tell you my opinion: The rules of language and logic are your tools, they're not sacred or eternal. They are your tools that you can use to do anything you want or need to do. But if you don't know how to use them, they're not tools, only objects. You work with those tools or objects. Simply work with them. And decide, art for art's sake; or do you have something that needs to be said, and poetry is your chosen medium? Work it all out for yourself and just do it. Don't wait till you've worked it out, just do it and see what happens: a bad poem might embarrass you so much that you stumble onto what it takes to make a good or great one. Like learning how to play a harmonica or how to masturbate, just feel it out. Make it happen.
One concern here is your spelling and word usage. 'Paradise' is an example with spelling... 'luminescence stars' would be rather 'luminescent [if I spelled that right] stars'. Proofreading your own work for typos is hard; but it's best if you try to look through the rest of the poem yourself, and try your best to get everything as correct as you want it to be to the best of your ability. If anything is still incorrect or questionable, hopefully someone will point it out for you.
Posts: 5,057
Threads: 1,075
Joined: Dec 2009
clichés like anything else can be used to good effect. generally there just words we've remembered and put down on paper as being our own,
i will love you till the end of time.
why did you break my heart?
your beauty is like a rose
when we're together again
all these and a million other phrases are cliche, things that have been expressed the same way a large number of times. rowen hit the nail on the head when he said did you know it was a cliche? i'll ask; did you intend to use it as a cliche? if the answer is no to one or both of them, you need to rethink what you've written.
when we write poetry, it's true, we are posting about the same things that's been posted about for a 1000 plus years.
language being the wonderful thing it is allows us to do this in a different way every time. metaphor and simile are two of the best tools for this, there are many more but these are the easiest to pick up at first.
like grammar once we learn it (i'm really bad at it) we can play around with it and make it do things it shouldn't.
Because because is a conjunction it's seldom used to start a sentence. or you can discard it altogether if you know how to lay down the lines of poetry in order to do so.
you'll find yor own poet in you eventually, feedback will help, you'll learn what to use and what to discard. it's a craft that you'll learn if you want to.
Posts: 8
Threads: 2
Joined: Sep 2012
its true about getting constrictive criticism just a couple of suggestions on this site and I got much better my poem flowed better and felt for the first time like a poem
You can ask somebody to fix the title of the thread, to fix 'Paradise' for you.
Shades of valentine red
marry pink blossoms
delighting bride and groom
reciting vows promises...
Are you happy with how that reads? Without punctuation? There could be a comma after 'blossoms' and one between 'vows' and 'promises'. Two pairs are getting married; the shades and the blossoms, the bride and the groom. I see that.
tears fall; two lovers embrace
echos of eternity
dazzling in the mist
The mist is in relation to the tears, is that what you are saying? 'Echoes' is normally spelled with an 'e' before the 's'. And 'echoes', 'eternity' and 'mist' are used to transcend the present moment as 'tears fall', and this idea is strengthened by the rest of the poem, since it appears to be a clear, bright night rather than a misty one. You haven't been framing your sentences with periods, so
twilight glows over skies
they dance the midnight sun
correlating their movements
'twilight' is an assumed beginning of a new sentence. Maybe you rejected the use of periods for some effect? 'Twilight', is it glowing over the pair that are dancing, as the next part implies? For a moment it might occur that 'twilight' stands for glowing stars that are dancing a dance called 'the midnight sun', or 'twilight' or the pair are dancing 'the midnight sun' in an obtusely similar sense as someone "burning the midnight oil". The next line brings us back to your true meaning: but the punctuation would help if it read:
twilight glows over skies.
they dance the midnight sun,
correlating their movements.
the sweet peach
of her lips beckoning him
she creeps closer
teasingly backing
away whispering-follow me...
A few commas could be used to guide the lines:
of her lips beckoning him,
she creeps closer,
teasingly backing
away, whispering
the 'whispering-follow' is using a dash, but it looks like - a hyphen. You could use spaces, 'whispering - follow', or a comma, or a longer dash. You could use quotation marks, but sometimes you want the words spoken to blend with the other words of the poem: to blend the narrator with the person saying 'follow me', or for other reasons.
luminescent stars
guide their path- a secret garden
pulsing flowers radiant
If you like that style of phrasing, you could use commas:
a secret garden
pulsing flowers, radiant.
she smiles
warmly in his arms
he strokes her hair
tender touches on skin
both exhaling slowly
every moment lingering deliciously
The rest of the poem can use similar punctuation. Some of the lines are constructed kind of abnormally, which isn't bad, but they flow into each other in ways that may or may not be the effective style you're trying to produce. What do you think?
'Luminescent' is a tricky word here if you actually look it up. You might want to use 'luminous'. Compare those words, and see what you think.
Posts: 8
Threads: 2
Joined: Sep 2012
no im never happy with my poems I know they can improve and get better!
I admit I think more of the words being creative avoiding cliches as best I could... then actual punctuation and grammar can these break poem just as much as bad cliches and words?
I do need to seriously brush on punctuation the commas and periods you put on there made it flow even better how is punctuation different in poetry then it is say essay or fiction writing?
Posts: 1,568
Threads: 317
Joined: Jun 2011
(09-23-2012, 01:34 PM)poetsorrow Wrote: I do need to seriously brush on punctuation the commas and periods you put on there made it flow even better how is punctuation different in poetry then it is say essay or fiction writing?
In poetry, punctuation is just another tool. Essentially the rules are the same as in prose writing, however as with other aspects of grammar, once the poet knows the rules he/she may break them to manipulate the text in new and interesting ways. Nothing is set in stone. The absence of a comma to separate clauses might have the effect of adding ambiguity to a poem and allowing the reader to create meaning for him/herself. Like any technique, it should be used sparingly and deliberately.
Remember that poetry is intended to be spoken aloud. Just as sound techniques such as alliteration and assonance add interest to a spoken text (even if we're only really speaking it in our heads), so too do the pauses created by punctuation. We've long since moved past the thinking that every line of poetry has to end in a comma -- use them when you need to use them, as you think they're needed.
I'll change the spelling of your title for you
It could be worse
|
