09-02-2015, 01:01 PM
Hi BrokenSoul,
I think you're taking the right approach with reading poems and working on technique. Especially when you're starting out, the poem is less important than stretching your creativity and working on technique. I don't want to overwhelm you with a bunch of stuff at this point. So, I'll share something that I think will help your writing a lot. You are developing an extended metaphor where light may stand for the love or the heat in a relationship that the speaker of the poem once thought was real, and now is questioning. That light is also being giving to someone else so there's an aspect of betrayal and pain. When you're building this kind of construct avoid what you did in line 2 "mist of deception". Trust the image just mention the mist. Yes you can break every rule, but for the most part it's weak writing. Let the image speak. Don't layer on characteristics that way. Remove anything like that from your poems and they will likely be much stronger.
Just a technique to consider.
Best,
Todd
I think you're taking the right approach with reading poems and working on technique. Especially when you're starting out, the poem is less important than stretching your creativity and working on technique. I don't want to overwhelm you with a bunch of stuff at this point. So, I'll share something that I think will help your writing a lot. You are developing an extended metaphor where light may stand for the love or the heat in a relationship that the speaker of the poem once thought was real, and now is questioning. That light is also being giving to someone else so there's an aspect of betrayal and pain. When you're building this kind of construct avoid what you did in line 2 "mist of deception". Trust the image just mention the mist. Yes you can break every rule, but for the most part it's weak writing. Let the image speak. Don't layer on characteristics that way. Remove anything like that from your poems and they will likely be much stronger.
Just a technique to consider.
Best,
Todd
(08-23-2015, 09:23 AM)BrokenSoul Wrote: Revision #1
The light begins to fade,
shrouded in a mist of deception.
Faint shadows are all that remain.
The fire that once warmed me
now bathes another with its glow
as darkness falls around me.
Perhaps the light was never truly mine.
A phantom guiding me along a path with no end.
Where do I go from here?
I seek comfort in the shadows
where I cannot be seen.
But truth can be seen...and felt.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson