If you would be so kind and charitable as to critique my poem, I would be most obliged to thank you kind gentlemen of /lit/. I’ve been writing poetry since the day I was a little tyke and think that true, honest (and scathing) critique only helps me grow. How could I improve my use of form and build my repertoire as a poet?
>>25403459It's shit.
jesus fucking christ have you got no soul of your own, this shit is a pain to read. fair fuck if it was some random poem from 200 years ago but sitting down in 2026 to write this is just peak larping
Lose the em dashes in the 3rd lineThe repeated "stars" doesn't work at all"lope and creep" is not antonymic in a good wayThe double meaning of "mantled Earth" doesn't work, the geological meaning is way too dominant"bifurcated" is too scientificmaybe emphasize the "moon" bookends by having both lines mirror each other even more (same sentence structure, synonyms and antonyms, etc)
>>25403459You haven't solved the central problem of contemporary poetry, which is to synthesize colloquial speech and formal speech. As a result, although you're affecting formal speech using vocabulary, it's heavily colloquial in the grammar and these two things clash. They don't have to, but they will unless you give it more attention. Specifically, you're using too many words to say each sentence. They're sentences like we're writing here when we post. You need to condense that because it smothers the effect you're aiming for.The other major issue is the emotional substance of the poem. The reader can feel how distant you are from the subject, consequently the imagery fails to evoke deep meaning and lies inert on the page. The way to solve this is to get in touch with your deepest feelings and use them as the starting point for your subject. Do you actually care about Ishtar? Do you love her? What does she mean to you? Maybe some aspect of the goddess connects strongly to certain intense experiences from your past, but those need to be part of what your imagery communicates and the dramatic action of your poem.What is it you're actually saying about Ishtar here?>she's an inspiration to dreamersThis isn't stated strongly enough, convincingly enough. A lot of people who'd describe themselves as dreamers may not ever think about Ishtar. You need to make the case for your goddess.>beautiful, gleaming, luscious, connected to metaphor of the cosmosThe metaphor isn't bad, it's just not focused enough. The terms in which you're describing her beauty aren't powerful enough. They need to be rooted in the senses and in peak experiences, ecstatic moments that you have to draw on experience to convey truthfully.>marble skin, purity, contrasted with animalistic nature and hornsSo the imagery begins to disintegrate around this point due to the lack of focus. The statue imagery seems redundant with the earlier gleaming, which you're parsing out across your lines to fit your meter. You're diluting the more important elements, you have to focus on just the few things you're trying to convey, and once you have them, preserve that phrasing in the meter rather than forcing it to fit.From there the second half of the poem falls apart. We have no emotional narrative stakes to understand Ishtar or why it's important that she's both beautiful and destructive. It's unclear how the way the poem builds to and delivers the one connects back to the theme you were trying to establish about her being the goddess of dreamers.
>>25403520>It's unclear how the way the poem builds to and delivers the one connects backThe way it builds to and delivers on the turn*, and how that connects back
>>25403520You’ve absolutely convinced me you’re a bunch of windbags who can’t critique. Nothing you said was remotely of substance. It’s not that you were negative, but that you said nothing.
>>25403528The poem hardly deserves a quick skim, let alone a proper critique.
>>25403543That doesn’t really excuse you for saying nothing for however thousand characters.
>>25403545I am not that anon, who was naive enough to think you were actually open to criticism.
>>25403528nta but kill yourself
are you the aussie bloke who did the vathek clark ashton smith poem a while back mush?
>>25403528That's the void of nothing in your soul that spurred you to write such a dead piece of verse in the first place. Next time I'll shit in it.
>>25403560Wherefore?>>25403554I am. He just asked inane questions about superficial things. >>25403563Yeah.
>>25403593No one wants to go, line by line, over a poem that deserves to be completely revised, and tittle with you about your inutile imagery that conveys nothing. What you think is important isn't, and if you have a better idea of why your poem sucks despite you practicing since childhood, I'm all ears.
>>25403593youre a mush with a good skill for poetry and the one you posted is good and maybe its just me but i think the last line the "whate'er" breaks the metre sort of
>>25403616Why are you focusing on imagery? That’s something they teach in high school. Maybe you’re stuck there.
>>25403620I agree that “whate’er” is harsh and breaks the metre a bit. Thanks mate. If I’m mush, so be it.
>>25403459OP what inspired you to write it?
>>25403636Mush is a lower class british word meaning man or blokeequivalent to "dude" in americait aint an insult mush
>>25403459what's your motivation in writing Heav'ns and whate'er instead of just Heavens or whatever? Trying to keep it in iambic pentameter? It comes across as LARPy
>>25403459Your poem sucks ass. Too many metaphors.
