I'm pretty young, barely a teen, and my work is very amateur, but I really would like some criticism. My English teacher is useless in that department as he knows little on the subject. I want to improve my writing, but without a second opinion, that has become quite difficult.
I wrote this poem one day last winter and i got negative feedback at a poem website. No one would tell me what i did wrong, but simply that it was poorly written.
A Winter Day
The cold air teasing my neck,
Making me wish I had brought a scarf
The subtle crunch of my shoes into the snow
I stop and look over to the hill,
It hides shyly beneath its white sheet
Silence ensues, complete peace and utter blank
White light reflecting off the blanketed ground
Trees bare their pure jackets with glowing pride
And slowly from the rays of the sun
A single cold drop falls on my shoulder
and I wrote this one afternoon in Fall-
Fall
The wind blows against the trees,
Tempting the leaves into a pleasant dance,
The air chilly, with the scent of spices,
Wafting from kitchen windows.
With every step, crackle goes another leaf,
Their array of colors brilliant,
Their swift movements graceful and entrancing.
Every sense clouding with autumn's unyielding possession.
We savor this time,
Because o' too soon,
Its transient favor will blow away,
Leaving the trees bare and the mood cold.
Just to clarify, i do have a summer assignment that i am working on. It is of the same type as these are and that's why i posted them in particular. I have to describe a summer scene. I want to get advice on describing scenes, and critiques on my past works so that I can improve my style of writing.
It seems you are drawn to imagism, in which the poet tries to communicate a feeling or idea purely through the use of images. To make an imagist poem work, you must attend closely not only to finding the right words to convey the image but also to the rhythm and flow of the lines.
Of the two you've posted above, I prefer "Fall." The images are more crisp and the wording is also more clean. However, I don't like the last stanza, where you tell us what the poem is about. Better to refer to the scent of the spices drifting away in the wind and let the reader make the connection to the autumnal theme of transience.
By all means, post what you've got so far for summer so that we can help with that one.
And here's another tip: To learn to write poetry, read poetry. Not the poetry on poetry websites, which varies so widely in quality. Go to the library. Camp out in the poetry section. Pull books from shelves. Flip through them. Copy any poems or lines you especially like into a notebook for future reference. Use the notebook to scribble lines or images or overheard dialogue whenever they come to you, understanding that most poets write scores of failed poems for every one they like well enough to share with others.
oh thats a really good idea! Thanks. I am still working on my Summer poem, but i'll post it when i am finished.
Can you give me an example of a poem that doesn't use imagism, but describes a scene in another way?
The last stanza in Fall was mostly out of habit becuase i am used to explaining things or concluding them.
For contemporary poetry, you could go to the "Poetry International Web" and browse around. This month's issue has some pretty descriptive poems by Yao Feng. For older poetry you could go to the Project Bartleby Archive, click on the "Verse" tab, and then either browse a few anthologies or have a look at some of the books by D.H. Lawrence or G.M. Hopkins, both of whom are pretty descriptive. For famous poems from all eras, visit the "Famous Poets and Poems" website. Maya Angelou, who is represented on that site, is particularly descriptive and innovative in her use of imagery.
You might also like some of the Romantic and Victorian poets. Your winter poem contains narrative elements, and the last good narrative poem was penned over a hundred years ago. Also, didactic elements weren't considered anathema then. The notion that these should be avoided has become so deeply ingrained in what passes for poetic circles these days that it is easy to forget that the dislike of them is a period preference, not a reflection of anything objectively wrong with them.
If you are writing with a view to eventually being published, then you should of course conform to the prevailing period preferences, but if you are writing for your own benefit, then there is no reason you shouldn't model yourself on the sort of poets who wrote well enough to sustain a widespread public interest in poetry, especially if you find you enjoy reading them yourself.
Several things. In the poem titled "Fall," who is the speaker in the poem, also, who is the "we?" This is important to know because you bring in the "we" all of a sudden in the last stanza. Also, where is the speaker? In the first stanza, it seems as though they re inside, then in the second stanza they are walking out side.