How do you like this poem from my first book?

Question

All the colours of our nature,
All the sounds and smells!
We look and think about the future
While our sorrow melts.

We say Thank You, use, and go,
Leaving so much mess,
Melted sorrow, stress,
Into seas and rivers flow.

All the colours of our nature
Soon will fade away.
Beautiful but helpless creatues
Will have naught to say.

Their voices will be filled with dust,
Coughing, their once colours grey...
Protect themselves they truly must
To keep the Devil at bay.

Are the promises all lies?
Could there be a compromise?

Because otherwise,

All the colours of our nature
Soon will fade away.

Thanks T!FF!. The devil was not meant to be literal. I'll leave others to guess:)

Answer 1

Hello Dani,

First, congratulations on having a first book—that’s quite an accomplishment. I’m guessing there may be environmental theme or tie in given this poem.

I’ll just give you some basic feedback hopefully some of it will be useful to you. I may not be connecting correctly with every image so where the feedback isn’t useful please ignore it:

All the colours of our nature,
All the sounds and smells!
We look and think about the future
While our sorrow melts.

L1-2: After reading the entire poem, I think you may want to consider more concrete images here as opposed to colours, sounds, and smells. I understand what you’re getting at, and I don’t really mind it at all—I just think specific images might be stronger if you are going to go for that visceral punch. I don’t mind any one of these things like colours but I just want something more here. I’m also taking our nature to mean nature itself not human nature.

L3-4: Okay, so you are now leading into the idea of the consequences of actions. Sorrow melts is interesting—given the context I think about thinks like global warming. I am not sure though about the way you are using sorrow here. To say it melts makes me think that it will go away or dissipate. So, unless I’m missing your meaning I think it would increase (you may be going for that, but I’m not pulling it out of the image here).

We say Thank You, use, and go,
Leaving so much mess,
Melted sorrow, stress,
Into seas and rivers flow.

L5-6: I’m taking this to mean that we pollute and destroy our environment. That we use and consume with no care for the consequences. L5 is a little awkward to my ear you may want to consider other phrasings.

L7-8: In this case I imagine pollution flowing into the waters. Again you may want to consider working for more concrete visual images.

All the colours of our nature
Soon will fade away.
Beautiful but helpless creatures
Will have naught to say.

L9-12: This is clear to me. This seems to be the heart of your theme.

Their voices will be filled with dust,
Coughing, their once colours grey...
Protect themselves they truly must
To keep the Devil at bay.

L13: Voices may not be the right word here.

L14: I’d like something more vibrant here. Something that hit’s harder. Same idea but more visual.

L15-16: I’m unclear as to how them would protect themselves from the careless way we treat the world around us. This seems like it needs more build up to introduce.

Are the promises all lies?
Could there be a compromise?

Because otherwise,

All the colours of our nature
Soon will fade away.

L17-20: I think the close works. Again I just want to see more vibrancy in the beginning so the loss feels greater—more poignant.

Again Dani congrats on the book, nothing here is meant to be harsh just a quick overview. I hope some of it helps.

Answer 2

The Giving Tree Where the Sidewalk Ends These are both beautiful Shel Silverstein books with many poems. I highly recommend them..

Answer 3

I like your poem but I do not believe you can blame to devil for killing the world...because technically speaking us as humans would be your devil. It is our fault for the world's troubles not the devil, but this may just be seen as a belief. Also I write more dark poems including ones about the devil.

Answer 4

i liked the entire thing it was good and intersting.