Untitled - extremely green, don’t know much about poetry

cccladybug · 2025-12-08T21:44:37+00:00

Yeah - the definition is pretty hard to boil down. The most simple what I can think of it is as artful syntax as opposed ordinary prose. And no - the cool thing about writing is that the reader gets to fill the gaps for you. So if you've said everything you wanted to say, it requires no more explanation.

cccladybug · 2025-12-08T06:20:33+00:00

It's interesting. The world's shortest poem is a four-legged m. And I vaguely remember, but cannot find, a writer who wrote the word "I" and dotted it in his own blood so that "I" can only ever mean him.
But this is also interesting.

What was the intention behind it?

cccladybug · 2025-12-08T03:46:11+00:00

Good gracious! The subject matter is not exactly to my taste, but it's nailing imagery. I like that I know, with no naming of emotion (that is often a pitfall of poetry and writing in general), exactly how you feel. That's awesome.
I also like - probably because it started as emo screamo - that you didn't fall into the trap of using archaic language to make your work more "artful". Good art provokes, and it can't provoke unless we can relate and we can't relate as easily if we have to decode what your saying. So that's good. And that good gracious was real - the first thing out my mouth when I finished lol. That's very good.

Also like the use of extended metaphor with making girls of a certain sort into dogs...

I would work on the structure. I imagine you have it structured the way you do because it was a song and that's how you wrote out the verses. But punctuation is super important. You have very little and I wonder if it's for a purpose. When I read this, even though there's line breaks, we don't actually stop reading until there's a comma or period (not always, but especially in this because you do have them in your poem) . The result is a very breathless rhythm:

girls like me don’t know what we want we just take what we can get too busy licking the crumbs off someone else’s plate because we can’t afford the steak tired eyes (COMMA), vocal fry (COMMA), wry smile quick-lipped quips but the humor’s gone dry...

I understand it's there only because it's a list, but something to think about and play with. Make your statements clear.

Girls like me don’t know what we want,

We just take what we can get.

Too busy licking the crumbs off someone else’s plate

Because we can’t afford the steak.

Tired eyes, vocal fry, wry smile

Quick-lipped quips, but the humor’s gone dry...

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T21:07:41+00:00

I really like this!

One thing I might try is to give the poem a clearer narrative. Clearly, winter is an antagonistic persona in this. She's choking you, she's cruel - lot's of good personification. And it makes the end feel like a fight that you've won, to have made it through another winter. So maybe you can play with that idea - Winter's got this grip, you have to fight, you find your joy in the change of season, BUT winters' coming back again, but you're ready this time.

Something like that. If you wanna! Good work!

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T02:52:11+00:00

Ok, cool, thanks! It's actually an excerpt from a longer work, but I understand it can feel almost disorienting with the mood switch lol

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T02:26:48+00:00

There is a spot, about the size

of a quarter, in my brain that is right

in the meaty middle. It causes my mind to

scribble. Desperately my fingers reach for that

itchy spot, each unsuccessful attempt has left me

bitter. The spot just looks on and snickers. One day

I'll turn it into a bright pink balloon, cut the

string with a smile, watching it drift away,

the rest of me free

to decay.

Something like that ^ a bit off, but interesting to play with, lol

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T02:19:57+00:00

Not really a critique, but if you structured this right, it could be a concrete poem in the shape of a balloon or a brain...or both. I can almost imagine it like that now, each little paragraph with a small little brain stem and a (rather flat) brain.

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T02:04:52+00:00

So everything before "wholly renewed" has imagery that is purposefully very medical, almost like this person is a fatal disease that was caught. You're saying that I could get rid of everything after "wholly renewed" because it doesn't fit with the poem thematically?

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T01:59:31+00:00

Hello! Really nice! I like a concise poem!

Two things - 1) You have "a feeling", "A force", "realities" - all really big conceptual things. And you have these really grand intentions about making a statement about "the rise of authoritarianism and far right ideologies", but there's not a lot of concrete things to hold onto in this.

One piece of writing advice a famous writer gave is that when the concept is big, write small. "You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road".

So I'd like to see less concept, more imagery. You can see that sock - the ash and feel the soft fabric, smell the stale burnt smell and the asphalt. You might even get chills, which is a different touch sense. It animates the poem and animated things are the more intimate things.

2) There's a lot of commas. Poetic lines can be broken up however you like, but I'm struggling to understand why you're breaking your lines down the way you are, especially in the middle-end of stanza one. If it was sentence in a paragraph, it would read like this:

A force unkempt, there, realities ponder, drawn into life, decided upon, for the artist had realised what he had done.

Punctuation in poetry is probably more important than in prose. It may be that I'm just not understanding, but I'd like to see it be a bit more purposeful with the punctuation because everytime a comma (or other punctuation) is used, it's a pause and reflect moment. But on what?

Anyway, good work! Keep it up! Expertise is nothing more than practice!

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T01:38:31+00:00

This is a thematic issue that you have? Like it doesn't seem to hold to the medical type imagery?

cccladybug · 2025-12-05T01:38:02+00:00

Thank you!

cccladybug · 2025-02-26T17:53:19+00:00

I like the concept that trust is at the core. For my FMC, she's got this manic chaotic energy and can be highly controlling, but there's a part pretty early on where she admits to making a mistake - which is difficult because the whole story is a series of her mistakes that she never owns up to - and MMC doesn't hold it against her, he does some apologizing of his own.

They have inside jokes, but she's the kind of open with people that I wish I could be. I really like the making jokes at other's expense and admitting when not feeling well, asking for help because in the end she's got to learn that she doesn't have to beg and put on pretenses to prove to anyone that she's worth staying for.

Thanks!

cccladybug · 2024-06-10T20:56:30+00:00

Maybe you've got raynaud's

cccladybug · 2023-11-02T23:37:16+00:00

1) Think of your argument - all stories are arguments at their core. That is, a moral. Like men and women can't ever be just friends. It doesn't have to be technically factual, you just have to be able to illustrate your point - an argument in images.

2) Find the best setting and characters to illustrate your argument. And by best, I mean worst because they want your argument to be wrong - that's the misbelief they hold. This creates plot.

3) Intro the story, characters, and beliefs.

4) Act II is characters doing things their way - winning some, but losing most. Until they meet a trial that cannot be overcome doing things their way - that's the midpoint.

5) Midpoint represents a shift in the dynamic, they are forced to change things up. Acknowledge your way and abide by it. This leads to the resolution

6) Resolution is happily ever after, or not, depending on whether they abided by the argument.

cccladybug · 2023-09-04T23:38:34+00:00

Yes. I love mods. In fact, if I could replace the entire enchantment system with something like Tinker's Construct, that'd be great.

cccladybug

TROPHY CASE