Poetry Forum

Forum Home » High Critique » After All This Time...

For poets who want unrestricted constructive criticism. This is NOT a vanity workshop. If you do not want your poem seriously critiqued, do not post here. Constructive criticism only. PLEASE Only Post One Poem a Day!!!

4/10/2015 6:23:57 PM K.M North Posts: 97	she said she wanted to be broken wanted it like the others i said something about a shotgun wedding a valentines day present like my brothers cross my heart and hope to die and wake up on the wrong side of 25 with the sheets tied around my neck did my best carradine effect she said she wanted to be bandaged a night spent with a razor again and when she shaved her head i said she looked like my dead friend crossed her heart and closed her eyes woke up in the wrong side of monogamus life with the rope spun around my neck I wrote my name next to brooks and reds the boys and girls in america maria came from nashville and we sing holly halleluja we have such a sad time together we've got to stay positive even though we know it'll never get any better speak of the devil and he'll appear good god I know I can't make it through another year sweet sixteen and go to sleep darling i'm old enough to know that I'll never be positive again edited by Reisenhoffer on 4/10/2015
	• permalink • reply with quote
4/22/2015 10:44:35 AM Nadia Steel Posts: 6	I really enjoy this poem. It is bittersweet and nostalgic. The feelings from the memories are all there. Good job on that. Technical side, there were a few minor spelling/grammar errors. Also, do you want this poem to be all lowercase lettering? Because, you switch between lower and upper case letters. It is distracting, and bothers me. Make them ALL upper or ALL lower. Please don't switch between. Just a personal pet peeve! Additionally, format wise, I think the last 9 lines should be grouped together. And the one sentence I mention below, removed. But that's purely my opinion. Your format is your decision. ("a valentines day present like my brothers") 'valentines day' would be 'valentine's day' you need the apostrophe. And it would be 'brother's' instead of 'brothers'. ("woke up in the wrong side of monogamus life") Corrected to monogamous. Also, 'on' would make more sense than 'in,' placement wise. ("I wrote my name next to brooks and reds") I don't understand this sentence. What do you mean by 'brooks and reds?' ("and we sing holly halleluja") Did you mean 'holy' or did you mean 'Holly' the name? And it is more commonly spelled 'Hallelujah' with an 'h' not just 'Halleluja.' ("the boys and girls in america") Doesn't seem to have a place really. Thought it was kind of an unnecessary sentence. It is a lovely poem, though. Keep it up! edited by thefragileheart on 4/22/2015
	• permalink • reply with quote
4/22/2015 11:34:40 AM K.M North Posts: 97	Hey, I've stated it before on another critique, but I will do it again cause it's worth mentioning. The writing program I have on the new windows 8.1 is truly the worst program I've ever written on. It's as if they weren't even trying. They don't spell check/capitilize anything and I have to go through and reformat everything. If you look at my other stuff on there I went through and did that, and just got sick of doing it {so lazy, lol}. So that's why sometimes there are things ins caps and sometimes not. Truly just me being lazy and not formatting it, which I should I and I take full responsibility for it. It's also the reason for such mistakes as you mentioned with {valentine's day and the like}. I write very fast and having used the other windows program on my old computer for about three years I've gotten used to having things either automatically corrected or at least pointed out...I promise I will format things/check things better going forward. Now I'll tackle your questions/comments. The sentence about Brooks and Reds is actually a reference to The Shawshank Redemption {or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption}. They are two characters that get released from prison and carve their names into a beam in the same room they get. Brooks however hangs himself, while Red skips parole and goes down to meet with Andy. For the Holly Hallelujah part, it's supposed to be Holly, another reference to The Hold Steady which are a favorite band of mine, and they have a character in some of their songs called Holly. As for the "boys and girls..." line, it's a reference to On The Road by Jack Kerouac and goes with the line "have such a sad time together". It's actually a two fold reference to both The Hold Steady as well as the book. Thanks for checking it out though. Always good to hear what people think and those who offer good criticism {even if it's bad, in my opinion it's still good}. I'm looking forward to reading some of your work-Kevin
	• permalink • reply with quote
4/23/2015 1:21:39 AM Nadia Steel Posts: 6	Ah, that's why I didn't understand. I'm not good with movie/music/culture references. I have a terrible memory, so half the time even if I've seen something, I forget things like that. As for writing programs, I personally think you grow more as a writer if you hand write, or use a program that does absolutely no formatting for you. Like Notepad or something. Then you are forced to go over it and over it until you've caught all your own mistakes. I guess that's a bit archaic now.
	• permalink • reply with quote
4/23/2015 10:36:30 AM K.M North Posts: 97	Yeah I'm a movie/music/culture junkie. So most of my time whatever I write is indebted to at least something. I can't write by hand to save my life, after about two minutes of writing my hand just cramps and becomes the most painful thing in the world. I'm the exact opposite when it comes to writing programs. I loved my last program that basically took all the work out of writing. I'd write the words and it did pretty much everything else. I guess it's a "to each their own" type of thing. It's always really cool to hear how people write or what their ritual is. Typically 99.9% of the time I have to be listening to music. Hate writing on paper, however I will if I just need to scribble something down quickly.
	• permalink • reply with quote