Forum:
mistake
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Published 
Public: Anyone can view. i must admit that i have often thought
of leaving it all behind and letting go
i was loat and alone, as i always am,
so many people around me,
yet no one seems to care,
they say they understand and love me very much
but just when i trust love, they forget and move on
iheld the knife so close
as tears, mixed with blood
began to fall slowly
like a foolish child i cried
knowing that i ould end it all now
made my mind draw a blank
i put the knife away and tried to wipe the blood
that ran faster than i can describe
i knew suicide wasn`t the answer i was looking for
i knew there was areason for me being alone
so many bad things happen at once
they can make you forget
about the good qualities of life
even though life is hard
and trouble an inevitable part of it
if you decide to leave it all behind
maybe you will
but i can guarantee that others
......you mistake wiil haunt
two years ago my dad left home and my mum killed herself
i really wanted to die
so i wrote this
to stop me doing it
cos i had my little sister to care for
please let me know what you think about this
Darlin', once this pounding headache decides it's had enough of me and leaves, I will take a close look at your writings and be as nit-picky as you'd like. For now, however, I am going to go back upstairs, pop a couple extra strength painkillers, and try and sleep with a three year old constantly begging for my attention. Sounds like fun, don't it?
In my defence, I mentioned at the outset that I can be a harsh critic. That being said, I still welcome anyone to rip through any of the pieces Ive thrown up here. I mean, if I was cruel enough to have yall read them, I cant see any reason why Id object to folks throwin in their two cents on how I might have improved them. I was actually surprised when no one had anything to say about Holy man. And its not as if I didnt give people ammunition when I butchered Lord Byrons She Walks In Beauty.
On the plus side, it's good to see so much traffic in the Lit forum. :)
Poor kid... here we are, telling her to practically re-write her entire poem, and not only that, but telling her how she should have written it to begin with... but I agree with you, "loathed and alone" is a lot less cliched, which is a large part of the problem with this poem. It's predictable and over-done.
On another note, I am currently speaking with my Grade 12 English and Lit teacher... I miss being a student, too!
I believe the word they were looking for was not "loathed" but "lost".
Oh yah! I can totally see that. Especially since the "a" and the "s" are right beside each other on the keyboard. But I suppose you can see my point about making the wrong guess, thus impossing a different meaning on the poem.
Now that I think of it, I almost wish it was supposed to be "Loathed and alone." The coupled long "O" sound is a complimentary pairing with the alliteration presented in all the "a" words. I think it contributes a sort of howling sound (as in "Oh! woe is me," but less trite), and howling noises tend to conjure up images of lone wolves on craggy mountain ledges, crying up at an unresponsive moon. It would also be less cliche than "lost and alone," while still making reference to the commonly used phrase.
Good God! I miss being a student.
What I meant, and I know that you know this already, is that the poem, when ready aloud, is choppy, inconsistant, not easy to read. I read it a couple times, and parts of it made me stumble, parts of it were just not pleasing to the ear. It's difficult to enjoy a poem when those things are in the way.
PS: Yes, I can tell... I miss highschool, too. I loved it. Not for the students, but the teachers and the material we studied. I was, am, such a geek. Go me!
Guilty as charged. I went over that poem about three years back with my grade 10s. It has since become my favourite example of establishing voice.
On another note...
"There is very little flow to the poem, some lines are quite long while others are very short."
When I saw this, I was instantly reminded of one of my poetry profs.
He insisted that "flowing was for liquids." And further, "poems would be better described in terms of their rhythm and meter."
Just picking at nits, as usual.
Swoop
PS Can you tell I miss my job?
I believe the word they were looking for was not "loathed" but "lost".
Anyhow, that aside, I have to agree with Swoop that while your poem conveys a very strong message, it was lost in all the typing errors and grammatical mistakes. If you are going to post something that means so much to you and weighs so heavily on your heart, and if you want the people reading it to give proper criticism, then proofread your work before putting it up, or much of the feedback might end up being about your poor grasp on the English language.
That out of the way, I would like to look at the poem itself and give my input. You start off trying to have a pattern, a stanza of two lines and then a stanza of four. The only problem with this is that your structure ends there. There is very little flow to the poem, some lines are quite long while others are very short.
The fourth stanza has very vivid imagery and a feeling of despair and lonliness, and then all of a sudden you turn around saying "I knew there was a reason for me being alone", and then leave that thought, a very important one to the poem. You don't expand upon that idea, you instead jump into trite sentimentality and "don't kill yourself, there's always something better at the end of the tunnel, people will be sad if you do". Being someone who has gone through that kind of loss, you should, perhaps, try and avoid the cliches about suicide. I am sure that you have more insight than that.
I also had a great deal of trouble understanding this stanza:
even though life is hard
and trouble an inevitable part of it
if you decide to leave it all behind
maybe you will
but i can guarantee that others
......you mistake wiil haunt
The first two lines are clear, if not a little shallow, but the rest of the stanza is lost in the midst of poor grammar and sentence structure.
This poem is a good start, and I think that you have a lot of potential, but this work needs a lot of fine-tuning. The problem with poems written out of extreme emotion, be it sorrow, joy, anger, etc. is that the person is so intent on getting everything they feel out onto paper that the thoughts are disjointed, the structure is chaotic without intention, and the end result is more theraputic than a literary work of art. Keep working at it, and keep us posted!
(PS: Please don't think I am a bitch... I am just trying to be helpful. ^___^)
For me, the most interesting thing here is the third line. Its loaded with alliteration and assonance. Sounds good when read aloud. Unfortunately, the word loat isnt in my dictionary, so its hard to know what you meant by it. For the meantime Ill guess you meant loathed, as it best fits the context.
Trixy made a valid point the other day when addressing your language skills. The primary reason for using good grammar is to communicate effectively. You dont want people to guess at your meaning, for it is quite possible that they will guess wrongly, and your message will be lost. I acknowledge that using proper grammar can be difficult (because English is difficult), but one should at least try to type out the words they know correctly. Two examples from this piece include a missing letter in front of ould, and wiil instead of will. Errors like these only serve to further distract the reader from the core of your work.
Thats not to say that good poems require perfect grammar. Sometimes the use of poor language skills contributes to the voice of a piece of writing. The Langston Hughes poem, Mother to Son is a good example. Lines like:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Where there ain't been no light.
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
The use of double negatives, and a very unique contraction of an improperly conjugated verb are characteristic of the vernacular of early African Americans in the southern US. Hughes uses these errors very effectively to establish the identity of the poems speaker.
I dont think this is quite what you were looking for, but I hope it was helpful nonetheless.
SwoopGuy