Spontanious poem, GIMME FEED BACK PLEASE

A wrenching, hopeless expression of confusion. An eloquent photo of pain.

tjp, for a young man in high school, I want to commend you on your poetic expression of pain. I know that you will go back and edit your own mistakes, both physically and virtually.

I will enjoy seeing your poetic evolution, so please continue to post here at A2K. Welcome, my young friend.

He's *that* young? My goodness, he has potential! Keep it up!

thanks everyone, yeah, i'm still in high school, I am a youngen' thanks for all the positive feedback and critisism, it helps me in my writing, I will try to re-edit it all my stuff, and fix what mistakes I make, for we all are human haha :wink:

Hmmm...Okay, as a young poet myself, and having gone through the inevitable stage in highschool trying to tell people about my stress/anxiety whathaveyou through poetry, I just want to offer a few words of advice that I wish I had been told earlier - and eventually was by a writing teacher.

Don't use vague words like beauty, love, feelings etc. What do they mean? And what do they signify? If you think about all the different kinds of love and manifestations of this love there are in the world, you'll realize that one single word contains so much! So when you use it in a poem, realize that you're dealing with a HUGE topic.

So get specific! And SHOW me the pain you're going through (if indeed you are) without TELLING me about it. Telling is underestimating the reader, and no reader likes to be told how to feel. I am capable of figuring that out for myself. So give me things to work with, ideas, moments, thoughts, times when your girlfriend/boyfriend kissed or slapped you...and let me decide where to take them emotionally. Or else your poems just end up sounding like bad song lyrics.

Also, vary the starting points of your lines. Poetry's gift is that it can break all bonds of prose work. You don't need to use full sentances, punctuation, etc. And remember, that the form your poem takes must also reflect its meaning. I think the turmoil of your poem deserves a more turbulent form - not something so regulated.

Your flowery language will eventually disappear and if you are truly interested in becoming a poet, I suggest studying poetry/literature in University. You will be exposed to the greatest works there are, and you can learn so much from them. My writing skyrocketed after studying English lit in Uni.

So resist the temptation to be cheesy, melodramtic, or didactic. Poetry is the strategic use of words, not just the meaning of the words. Good luck, and keep writing, even the bad stuff. It eventually turns good.