Writing Poetry [PG-L]

[darkstorm123232]

This is my poem darkness I won alot of poetry contests

[CENTER]Darkness
By: Darkstorm12323

There is a door to lock the darkness,
People say I?m black hearted,
But I just mean for the best,
People think that the door can?t be locked,
Because beyond that door lies the light,
Other than darkness,
The door has been locked,
But you broke the lock,
When you were nice to me,
Rather than darkness,
My heart fills with light,
Because my heart was black,
I was mean,
But my heart shines bright,
And now I am kind hearted not black hearted,
People always thought darkness is strong,
But my light and your light equal pure light,
And love will conquer the darkness,
And my heart fills with light because of that.[/CENTER]

[thepinkprincess]

[COLOR=Magenta]owwwwwwwe^^!!!!!!!!
that was pwettie^^!..
.....and so true, love is the strongest light of all^^![/COLOR]

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR=DarkOrange]You know, without rythm, meter, stanzas, rhymes, or language which appeals to the senses, you don't really have a poem. You have a giant metaphor -- a letter maybe or a memoire at best.

Yes, it's not terrible, but I don't want to say it's a poem. There is mad repitition of the words dark and light (take up thy thesaurus and walk) falling into no sort of scheme.

It's very direct... nothing fancy to help it. The tone is just conversational sounding as well.

Sorry guy, but all I see here is a bunch of lines sewn together with the cheapest of threads.[/COLOR]

[darkstorm123232]

Thanks for the feedback. Here is another one you can give me feedback on thanks
This one was a 2nd place winner.

Binding Chains
By: Joel Hummel

Let the chains that have bound you for all eternity break and shatter away,
Let the god of destruction bring chaos and dismay,
Let it destroy and rampage through our land,
Let chaos?s womb hold the child of darkness,
After he is born the chaos and Armageddon will start and never end,
The only way to stop chaos is to accept and let it be,
But you know our world chaos has to be,
For our world to survive,
God of destruction cause the next Armageddon,
Let the child of chaos and darkness end the light in our world,
Now destroy anyone that opposes,
Just finish this world and start it a new,
Let the chains the once bound you bind chaos,
So that the Armageddon can happen,
Let the world be cleansed and started a new,
Just start the world over and help us forget.

[Damburaki]

I liked this. It was very nice; I enjoyed it.

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR=DarkOrange]You had some rhyming and some format in the first 4 lines, but then your poem basically became the chaos you described.

As far as grammer goes, you're fine. The only misspelling I saw was chaos's so you're okay with that.

The subject and execution of your poem is simply uninteresting. It sounds more like a rallying speech than a poem, or pehaps a prayer to some god. Theres no figurativeness or language appealing to the senses once again.

Lines like 'Just bring about the apocalypse' seem out of place here. The poem is obviously very serious, but this line is so offhanded it doesn't fit. There are other things I personally don't like that don't have anything to do with good or bad (I can't stand the word 'Armageddon') so I may be slightly biased, but I find your 'poem' very boring.[/COLOR]

[Lady Asphyxia]

[quote][color=DarkOrange]without rythm, meter, stanzas, rhymes, or language which appeals to the senses[/quote] [size=1][color=black]
I have to disagree, Digital Boy. Freeform poetry is a very common and accepted form of poetry these days. You can't just ignore its existance because you don't like it, which is what you seem to be doing. [Also, it's rhythm. ^.~] In fact, freeform poetry often uses a conversational tone, too.

I do agree with you in some respects, however; Dark Storm, do look up a thesaurus -- just by typing in 'dark' in [b][url="http://thesaurus.reference.com"]thesaurus.com[/url][/b], I came up with these:[font=Verdana] [/font][/color][/size][/color][i][font=Verdana][size=1]aphotic, atramentous, black, blackish, caliginous, clouded, cloudy, crepuscular, darkened, dim, dingy, drab, dull, dun, dusk, duskish, dusky, faint, foggy, gloomy, grimy, ill-lighted, indistinct, inky, lightless, lurid, misty, murky, nebulous, obscure, opaque, overcast, pitch-black, pitch-dark, pitchy, rayless, shaded, shadowy, shady, somber, sooty, stygian, sunless, tenebrous, unlighted, unlit, vague.

[/size][/font][/i][font=Verdana][size=1]As for light: [/size][/font][i][size=1]ablaze, aglow, bright, brilliant, burnished, clear, cloudless, flashing, fluorescent, glassy, glossy, glowing, lambent, lucent, luminous, lustrous, phosphorescent, polished, radiant, refulgent, resplendent, rich, scintillant, shining, shiny, sunny, unclouded, unobscured, vivid, well-lighted, well-lit.[/size][/i][size=1]

This doesn't even take into account that I didn't search 'darkness', etc. ^.~ [Just make sure that you don't fall into a trap of using a word when you don't know its meaning, yeah?]

I think, while you put in a lot of effort, the thing that's lacking from your poetry is focus and vocab. Since I've already linked you to thesaurus.com, which will hopefully help with the latter, I'll move onto the former. Focus mostly comes from editting, which is something that, as a writer, you [i]have[/i] to do. When you read this poem, ask yourself; "What is it that I'm trying to say?" Generally with a poem, you'll be able to reduce it down to even just a sentence. You might even have a metaphor or simile as what you're trying to say.

In this case, it could be, "I was in the dark until you brought me into the light." or you could even include some sort of simile and/or metaphor you want to explore in your poem; "I was locked in the darkness [which, by the way, I read as 'depression', since that's often a metaphor for it], until you gave me the key", or whatever.

Once you have [i]your meaning[/i], you go back and revise. What do you have there that isn't necessary, or is just plain redundant? For an example, I'd direct you to this line:

[i] But my light and your light equal pure light[/i][/size]

[size=1]Think about what you're saying here: Light plus light equals light. Doesn't that seem a little silly to you? I understand what you're saying, though -- you and the other person together are stronger that alone, etc. but you can phrase it in a way that isn't redundant, eg; [i]Our lights together set the darkness ablaze[/i], or something like that.

So when you edit, just go through each line piece by piece. Ask yourself; "Do I need this line? Is it adding to my poem? Is this the best word for what I want to describe?" Once you've gone through piece by piece, read the entire poem. If you notice any repetition, e.g. of dark and light, then circle it every time you see it. That way you can tell exactly how much you've used it, and you can take steps to get rid of those words by replacing them.

Onto [b]Binding Chains[/b].

There were a couple of errors I picked up on;
[i] Let the chains the once bound you bind chaos,
[/i]"Let the chains [b][i]that[/i][/b] once bound you bind chaos".

[i] Let the world be cleansed and started a new,
[/i]"Let the world be cleansed and started [b][i]anew[/i][/b]." One word. "A new" is used to describe a singular thing that is new, e.g. a new bike. "Anew" is used as "over again".

What I really think you need to do here is to find your meaning, again, because you seem to be contradicting yourself here. This is what I'm reading:

[i]1 [/i] Let the chains binding you break
[i]2 [/i]Let 'the god of destruction' bring chaos and sadness
[i]3 [/i]Let it go wild in our land
[i]4 [/i]Let chaos' womb hold the child of darkness
[i]5 [/i]When he is born the chaos & armageddon begins [and never ends]
[i]6 [/i]The only way to [i]stop[/i] chaos is to accept it and leave it be
[i]7 [/i]In our world chaos has to exist
[i]8 [/i]For our world to survive
[i]9 [/i]Cause the next armageddon
[i]10 [/i]Let choas end the good in our world
[i]11 [/i]Destroy anyone that opposes [chaos]
[i]12 [/i]Finish this world and start it over again
[i]13 [/i]Let the chains that once bound you bind chaos
[i]14 [/i]So the armageddon can happen
[i]15 [/i]Let the world start over
[i]16 [/i]Just start the world over and help us forget.
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Let me just pick out the contradicting points; Line 2 says the god of destruction will bring chaos, and line 3 says let it run rampant. [i]Then [/i]in line 4, you say let chaos' womb hold the child of darkness, which is fine, but you follow it up by saying that his birth will then [i]bring chaos[/i] [which obviously doesn't work.]. In line 6 you say the only way to stop chaos is to leave it be, but in line 7 you say our world [i]needs[/i] chaos in order for us to survive [which makes no sense to me, by the way.]

Then you go on to say that the 'god of destruction' should bring the next armageddon -- even though the child of darkness is already bringing it in line 5, along with chaos. Then you want the chains that bound us to bind chaos [line 13], in order for the armageddon to happen [even though they came hand in hand in line 5].

So this piece is very contradictory and very confused. You need to work out your meaning and then re-write this piece, I think, paying more attention to what you're actually saying. You do have some good lines in there, definately, but I think you're becoming wrapped up in the words you're saying and not paying attention to the meaning.

But that's okay. We all do it [believe me, I have a piece where I had no clue what I was actually saying], and it's a learning curve. Making mistakes is the best way for us to learn. You have a flair for the dramatic, obviously, but the way to make this poem better is to concentrate on the meaning for now. ^_^
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