So this is just a thread I thought I would make to get some critiques for my poetry from the good citizens of Menewsha. I am a very difficult person to offend so be as harsh as you please. I am very good at taking constructive criticism. Love it? Hate it? Let me know!

I would also like to note that if you would like your own poem critiqued by me, I will gladly return the favour. After all, we are all brothers and sisters of the creative universe. Just remember that I will return critiques in the capacity they are given to me. Meaning, if you tell me "I like your poem." and ask me to critique yours, you will get one line of my overall feeling on the matter.

I will start with the one poem I wrote that was published:

A Poem About Drowning

Drifting into the darkest of deep waters
A peaceful place away from man
Where a slight pressure cold as ice
Pulls me further into its beautiful opacity
My breath has stolen away to the surface
As a cool liquid rushes to replace it in my lungs
I open my eyes to see the calm quiver above
The light trying helplessly to find me
But the crystal clear fluid begs to differ
And as empty as my heart is
I feel it's better if I did not leave
I can't pull myself to resist
The hypnotic falling
That keeps me enchanted in it's gentle caress
I reach out to touch the mercury sky
But it had grown so far away
Realizing that hope had left me alone
And I let my eyes close to the shadows again
Sinking deeper and deeper
As consciousness fades away

I am not a "harsh" critic, I just give a lot of feedback! And since I go to school for poetry (just finished my BFA, working on my MFA in poetry now) I assume no poem is ever finished, published or not (most poets revise their work even after it is published, sometimes even after published in their own books!). So the "critiques" I give are ways to make the work better, not evaluate a finished project. For the record, I think your work is some of the best I've seen on Mene so far. And so it begins:

First of all, center-aligned works always strike me as a bit juvenile and corny. It's good for nursery rhymes and looking pretty, but left-align works fine when one wants to seriously consider form. There is a poem here but absolutely no form, and the form is not saying too much about the piece, although it is more successful than other center-aligned poetry because it helps the reader feel that sinking motion of the drowning person. Nevertheless, I think the form deserves a bit more consideration.

The writing is actually pretty decent. Only some grammatical errors ("it's gentle caress") and few cliche turn of phrase. Nevertheless again, I would work on replacing some of the more cliched or over-romanticized phrases. I have provided a list:

* You try to vary up "deep, dark waters" by writing it differently, but it's just that, deep, dark waters. It's been done. Find a new way to describe the water.
* "cold as ice." Anyone else thinking about Foreigner while reading this?
* "crystal clear." Another very bad cliche. And is the water REALLY crystal clear anyway? I know this is a very romantic drowning, but I still imagine something particled, misty, foggy about the water. Couldn't that also be a romantic notion of the unknown?
* "gentle caress." Ehh. It's like a throwaway romance novel descriptor. You can do better.

Things that can be removed/clarified:
* "I open my eyes to see" - if the speaker, the drowning person, is telling the reader the story of this drowning, we know that they can see it, why use six useless words? It's more affective just to say "the calm quiver above."
* "as empty as my heart is" - the physical heart or the figurative one? Either way, find a better image to use here. This does nothing for me. The only thing I can get from this line is that this "drowning" is more of a "suicide," that the speaker is willing death upon them. But there are better ways to show this.
* "I feel it's better if I did not leave / I can't pull myself to resist " These lines don't really say anything to me, they are just a bunch of words. There's nothing for me to really grip on to....it's just wordy.
* "I hold out a hand" Again, if it's touching, we get that a hand must be involved.
* "But it had grown so far away" be careful about how you describe things. I thought "Mercury sky" was the water, not the sky. And either way, how did a sky "GROW" so far away? There's a difference between poetic liberty and confusion.
* "Realizing that hope had left me alone" What does it really mean when you say hope has left you alone? Try to get rid of large ideas like "hope" and replace them with concrete images. Hope means different things to different people. You want the emotion to be sharp, not blunted by generalities.
* "..." Take out ellipses. They're silly, especially after "As consciousness fades away..." If you want that knock-out of consciousness, put the ellipses after "deeper and deeper" and let the reader ASSUME that consciousness is fading away even as the speaker is still talking!
* "The hypnotic falling motion" I like this line, but cut out "motion". Falling is a motion already.

What was good:
* "My breath has stolen away to the surface" - I can see the little air-bubbles traveling away from the body toward the surface. A nice image that works well.
* "The light trying helplessly to find me" I'm enjoying the frantic desperation of the personified light. I wonder if there's any other elements you could personify? Maybe some fish stroll by and shake their heads and swim sadly away? haha. I don't know, up to you.
* "mercury sky" - beautiful.

Iffy:
* "beautiful opacity" I'd rather keep the language simple. The gaudiness of the phrase throws me. Also, again, if it's opaque, the "crystal clear liquid" line is harder to take, in my opinion. I mean, how would the drowning person even be able to tell if the water was indeed "crystal clear"?


Overall, it's an interesting poem with some very nice turn of phrase. Great news is that for a revision you have a lot to work with! I would suggest paring down the language and all the extra words. If I may offer a sample revision:


The Drowning

Drifting down into murky and undistilled waters
peaceful and undisturbed by man, a slight pressure
cold as frostbite pulls me through opaque sheets
of off-white and greenish flake. My breath has stolen
away to the surface, cool liquid replaces it in my lungs.
I open my eyes to see the calm quiver above, the light
trying helplessly to find me. But the velvety sheets
have no issue finding me, tangling me up in their embrace.
And as empty as my body is, it does not float,
dragged down and down by this straight-jacket weight.
I don't resist the falling, gestural and harmless,
like a pocket-watch swinging across my failing vision,
calming me, enchanting me, with hypnotism.
Touching the mercury sky, I realize how far away
I've drifted in this darkened world. Closing my eyes,
the shadows envelop my body like lost lovers,
as they pull me, deeper and deeper, into the abyss.

This is not saying you should write this poem, but a good suggestion showing that rewrites can go practically any way you want them to. I used fabric and clothing imagery to describe the drowning, because for me drowning reminds me of being trapped in my king-size comforter in the morning and trying to wrestle my way out, haha. Sometimes it takes a while! Anyway, find the images that you can relate to best and run with it. Also here note that I used "mercury sky" to mean the water.

Good luck with future edits of this, and future poems as well! Right now I have tons of peers critiquing my poetry, but before another term starts I might bring some poems by Mene. :)

Fantastic! Oh how I love a good critique. You are absolutely right, I never see a work as finished necessarily. This wasn't my favourite piece, but it was one I could never get a good critique on. I always got people praising it. While I do enjoy and appreciate praise, it isn't very helpful, lol. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your critique. It was not only helpful for that piece in particular but for my other poems as well. (^_^) For instance, I never thought about the alignment of my poem. I have had it both left and centered and never thought of how it effected my reading experience.

The funny thing, is that the poem wasn't about drowning at all. I fell asleep in class when I was about 14 and had a dream about just sinking into the water(seemingly the ocean), when I woke up I jotted this down. I could never think of a title for it, and I imagined that the only thing a person could be doing is drowning when that is going on. Of course in a dream I can breathe underwater so I wouldn't know. It was a super long time ago when I wrote it, so I always think a good place to start is my early works.

I actually thought of a few revisions while reading your critique that I will likely add very soon. Off the top of my head, I could change the "Hold out a hand" to "Reach out" or something of the like. I will likely do a nice overhaul when I am a tad more awake.

I was thinking of moving the "I open my eyes" part because I realize that before that I had meant their eyes to be closed, but if they saw the bubbles chasing to the surface then their eyes would have been open already, lol.

When you have a newer revision (or something else) post it here! I'd love to read more. :D

Ah, ideas usually do happen like that. I awoke one morning (er...afternoon) and had the idea to write a poem about sleep (using it as a metaphor for death).

I'm at a writer's workshop right now...going into the classroom in a few hours. Very exciting but nervous at the same time.