Poetry anyone? Good, bad, mediocre...any suggestions or comments?

Question

Paper Rose

We sat, so aquainted
and talked over bad coffee.
You looked at me charmingly
and breathed out the relief of a day's end.

I mesmerised by your blue eyes
and rich smile.

You could have taken my hand.
You could have leaned in for a kiss.
But we both thought love a miss.

In your hands u folded some thin napkin
and produced a charm, a delicate vow of
"I like you".
Unfolded empty but in words everything.

Answer 1

You have a nice premise, but it seems to me that it could use a fair amount of work.

For example, in line 5 you have a grammatical error. It should be "I was mesmerised...", unless you meant a pause after the 'I', in which case you should probably stick a dash or colon in there to let the audience know.

Likewise with line 10, where you use "u" instead of "you".

While I concede that purposeful misspellings and errors of a grammatical sort can have effect in poetry, these are too isolated to get that point across. So if this is a stylistic point I'm overlooking, I think you need to empasize it much more with MORE misspellings and errors.

I think the same is true for your rhyme scheme. Which is mostly none. Lines 8 and 9 rhyme, and lines 2 and 3 have a weaker sort of rhyme. I find this confusing, and am distracted along the rest of the poem looking for more rhymes that don't seem to be there. 8 and 9 rhyming could be very appropriate as the apparent crux of your poem, much like the final two lines of a sonnet, but we have the similarity of phrasing in line 7 which does NOT rhyme with 8 or 9 throwing things off again.

I also think that a poem without rhyme can be really strong, but then you have to pay extra attention to meter, phrasing, and line breaks, or what you're really composing becomes a poorly formatted paragraph instead of a poem in the true sense of the word. I see you did this with line 12. That's cool. But you also seem to hyperemphasize line 6, which doesn't seem appropriate again... unless maybe you break up line 5.

You also break character in line 9. The poem is all first-person, but in line 9 you talk about what you 'both' thought... unless you're a telepath, how would you know? If you throw in a bit more uncertainty in that line then it would read more like what people think and experience. Or you could cut most of it entirely and emphasize other parts in the stanza to make the same point... I can't do italics for an example here, but let's assume I can: "You -could have- taken my hand. / You -could have- leaned in for a kiss. / But..." Leaving it with just that stresses the next stanza more about what DID happen instead of what didn't happen. It's up to you, of course. These are just ideas I'm throwing out here.

You wording, too, strikes me as a bit overformal. It makes it sound as if you're trying a little too hard. I would suggest produce a test sample rewriting the poem as a paragraph just as if you were talking, and change some of the wording in to me more personal in that way. You still have your phrasing to underscore what you want as a poem and justify the medium.

You could personalize it in another way too by describing more of how you FEEL and what you EXPERIENCE. Instead of saying, "You could have taken my hand." you might try "I wanted you to take my hand." or somesuch. Likewise with line 3 "You looked at my charmingly" it might be better to know how or why it was charming, or again add feeling, "You looked at me in that way that makes me feel -alive-". I hope you get the idea. Cram the reader into your head, I say! Even if it's a hypothetical head!

Hope that all helps! It may sound kind of negative, but believe me, I wouldn't bother criticizing at all if I didn't think you could turn the poem into something really good (it would be a waste of BOTH of our time!). Good luck!

Answer 2

the poem is geniune because you put effort and honesty in your expression. writing poetry too much can also make for bad habits. some of them are the rules that poets go by, with line breaks, rhymes, commas, periods, dashes, love themes or poems about nature. for the most part those are good rules, but sometimes you can question them. i've said whats good about the poem. it also is an appropriate subject, and the tone of the poem is very good and consistent. it does not get into other categories for instance, spirituality. its a work which is on subject. the poem is good, not great, but good. the only thing to work on is just writing more for practice and reading the poems other people write. books of poetry and so forth. some poems like e.e. cummings poems can be completely radical in terms of grammer. poetry has loosely formed rules concerning grammer. you can get away with alot, and its self explanatory to the reader and writer. i liked your poem because it did not bore me. i read it and read along without yawning. that just means your poem was good. to make it real good, or great and so forth, are labels. poetry should be an experience and it can also be a professional experience. your poem was more on the professional side and less on the emotional experience. to speak of an emotional experience, and to convey it so that it is both emotional and professional, keep doing what you are doing, but write from the heart. make sure that your hands are coordinated with your feelings. if you do not feel the words coming out of your hands, than it is not poetry.

Answer 3

Not bad at all..

Answer 4

i think its nice