[hakking]

Compared to the rest of the poems on here this effort might seem a little lame but please take time give me constructive criticism on this poem if you can. I really want to improve my writing.


The Madness of Lust

Lust seeds in the eyes and grows to blindness,
It feeds on the gaze and dies if deprived.
In its sickness, cries till thirst make mind wander
in search if its unattainable prize.

The eyes close
The lovers mind
Opens as the first shuts behind
Lost in the labyrinth of hope and insanity
Of vain hopes
and vulgar vanity
And so twisted path unwind; till

Split-second bliss,
As imagination conjure,
A smile or kiss,
No image can capture,
A moment as this,
Thus reality is torture,
For a mind in abyss
But a pill.

Of the distasteful kind
A dual-action cure
For the soul and the mind
But so strong a detox
So in many cases find
The lover’s withdrawal
Cause to remain blind.

Fixate on the floor and guard your gaze with gallantry,
This temporal prison unlocks an eternal sanctuary.

[tigermoth99]

You have a good ear for rhythm and the piece works well structurally. Your style, whilst not to my taste, does show promise.

Keep plugging away and if you're serious about poetry, engage yourself with it. Read contemporary poetry, go to poetry readings and keep writing.

[littleshambles]

I actually think it's much better than some of the stuff on here, but I don't like that it's written about a very weathered subject (lust) in a very weathered manner, with very weathered metaphors and so on (thirst, sickness, intoxication). "Lust seeds in the eyes" is an absolutely lovely phrase which makes me think if you extricated yourself from more, er, weathered themes and ways of writing you could be really good. But I can't tell you how because I'm crap at criticism. Lol. Sorry.

[hakking]

Thank you for your comments so far

Above: You're obviously right about the weathered theme and traditional writing style. Even I get tired of reading that stuff on the net. Guess I just needed someone else to tell me that. I'll keep that in mind for future poems.

JR, I look forward to your sober contribution

[emanuel_arsenalfc]

niice one..

[JR]

Originally Posted by hakking

Compared to the rest of the poems on here this effort might seem a little lame but please take time give me constructive criticism on this poem if you can. I really want to improve my writing.


The Madness of Lust

Lust seeds in the eyes and grows to blindness,
It feeds on the gaze and dies if deprived.
In its sickness, cries till thirst make mind wander
in search if its unattainable prize.

The eyes close
The lovers mind
Opens as the first shuts behind
Lost in the labyrinth of hope and insanity
Of vain hopes
and vulgar vanity
And so twisted path unwind; till

Split-second bliss,
As imagination conjure,
A smile or kiss,
No image can capture,
A moment as this,
Thus reality is torture,
For a mind in abyss
But a pill.

Of the distasteful kind
A dual-action cure
For the soul and the mind
But so strong a detox
So in many cases find
The lover’s withdrawal
Cause to remain blind.

Fixate on the floor and guard your gaze with gallantry,
This temporal prison unlocks an eternal sanctuary.

I don't like to harp on about form (honest I don't), but there are numerous instances here where the disjointed nature of your style interrupts the rhythm - it's a sort of weakest link style chain reaction, where you're building up and then a line or a word makes it crack and you have to start again.

I'll look at this stanza:

Of the distasteful kind
A dual-action cure
For the soul and the mind
But so strong a detox
So in many cases find
The lover’s withdrawal
Cause to remain blind.

For me, this stanza seems to be running in and out of various meters - this line "So in many cases find" is entirely trochaic, for example, while "For the soul and the mind" this is entirely anapaestic, and while this "The lover’s withdrawal" is iambic. Add on top of that that you're using a different number of feet/beats in each line and you'll begin to see what I mean (hopefully). I'm not suggesting that you need to use anything specific throughout - certainly it'd suit your style not to - but for me the different numbers of beats and syllables etc in your lines has a negative effect. I think that it's mostly the odd word here or there that's actually throwing the rhythm off, so here "many" and "remain" seem to be the two biggest culprits. I'd also quickly like to point to your second stanza.

The eyes close
The lovers mind
Opens as the first shuts behind
Lost in the labyrinth of hope and insanity
Of vain hopes
and vulgar vanity
And so twisted path unwind; till

Why aren't the first two lines on one line here? I don't understand why you've broken up this stanza with the shorter lines that could well enough be a single line when put together. It doesn't seem to add anything to have them apart - in fact the rhyme of "insanity" and "vanity" doesn't work because the line break at "hopes" forces a brief pause that runs the rhythm off course again. That's really enough about form.

I think littleshambles is probably right in saying your metaphors are a little 'weathered'; and I'd say you do yourself a disservice in forcing your quite abstract lines into rhyme.

Anyway, your first two lines are nothing short of excellent, and the line "Lost in the labyrinth of hope and insanity" is wonderful too - which is a shame that it's lost in such a confused stanza.

On the whole there is promise here. You say you wish to improve your writing style so I'd suggest a good place to start might be to try writing some poems but restricting yourself to/imposing on your writing a a metrical form - it doesn't have to be anything as fancy as iambics either - maintaining the same number of beats in lines would suit you. You can always alternate beats or be a bit more creative with them once you're hitting the right notes. Secondly I'd think about dropping rhyme - although at times it works well at others it doesn't - using it sparingly (or within lines rather than at the end all the time) would produce a better effect. Sorry if all that is more critical than it ought to be.