Breaking the Bough

[billy]

good poetry is good poetry be it usa or british. i own the site and i am british, we have aussies, yanks philippinos and many other poets. altering flow is fine, unnatural speech however is unnatural speech. it's usually also bad syntax. language moved on since the classics. the licence poets have is vast, here's the rub, what you said [ Considering that we are trying to write poetry] is correct, the main word at play there is [trying] once we get the basics, we try and write better or good poetry. here's the other rub; we're often proud of a poem we write when we're starting out or haven't yet read good poetry. we have nothing or little to compare it to apart from xmas cards etc. rhyme is good, good rhyme is very good and bad rhyme not so much. it's like the word game where i say a word and you say the next word that comes into your head often when we do it, it's noticable, it's expected, what we want to read is an unexpected rhyme now and again. a theme need not be a rhyme, in fact rhymes can be opposites. not all poetry has to be rhyming poetry. in general a theme is what connect lines, stanza, or verse. poems of the sea will have lots of words related to the sea, poem's of love will have words related to such horror, the countryside will hold clouds, grass, plants, soil, crops and country life. a theme runs through a poem.  this post is just in question to what you say about your poem, in general i reiterate what's already been said. this is where you start to write better poetry >< >< >< ><

Yes, well, welcome indeed LOL.

Thank you Tectak, Todd and Dale.

I was quite proud of this piece, and now it seems there is little if nothing about it that anyone else likes.  If I were to implement everything that has been pointed out, then there would be nothing left.  (All the better for that I hear you cry).

I did say that I wanted a serious crit, and I definitely got it LOL.

I would say that I am British and that I didn't realise at first that this was a predominantly American website.  I don't know if that makes any difference to some of the comments about syntax because, at the points where it is mentioned, I don't see anything wrong with the syntax.  Considering that we are trying to write poetry, it seems that I've been left very little licence to alter the flow of natural speech, to a more "poetic" way of saying something.

I must admit that capitalising every line, is a habit of mine that I should probably break.  Although I was not trying to be a 19th century romantic, I could not in any way describe myself as a contemporary writer (indeed, not a writer at of any description, looking at the comments), I was never trying to be ultra modern in my approach.  I am nearly 50, and so the poems and styles that influence me the most, tend to be more classical in nature.   It seems also that my rhyming is a problem.  I do think that if you are going to rhyme, then it should be a theme that runs through the whole piece and not just here and there, which to me, looks almost like an afterthought, like someone thought, considering that it's a poem, I'd better shove a rhyme of two in somewhere.  Yes, perhaps not every line, but a common theme which ties the piece together.

There is just too much for me to be able to defend it all, so I don't think I will even try.  It's pretty clear that this was not well received and that's that, to the scrap heap.

Thanks again at least for taking the time to read it.

Best regards

Mark