Hi! I came across your poem in the Read a Newbie section, and I was quickly intrigued. You've chosen a subject here that has such high potential to make a splendid poem. However, while your poem is pretty good, it could be better (as could everything, though).
First thing: you're talking about dancing. This gives you the perfect opportunity to use a lilting rhythm and nice rhymes. I'll get to the rhymes later. Frankly, this poem is hard to read when it should flow naturally. Have you tried reading it aloud? Especially with poetry, that can help a lot with identifying which lines to tune up. For an example of a rhythm you could use, take these lines -
"Dancing is fun, it really is,
Watch me and I'll show you all there is."
The first line flows well to read, the second line comes across as clunky when paired with the first line, as your rhyme attempts to do. As an alternative, you could do something like (though this isn't great, it just illustrates my point) -
"Dancing is fun, it really is,
Here - I'll show you all there is."
You can see how it leads to a natural stress upon every other syllable in the second line, even though it doesn't look quite as nice. It simply illustrates the point. Or this -
"Dancing comes in different forms,
but to be honest, there is no norms."
The 'honest' flows weird, and accentuating 'is' is kinda weird. So, as an alternative,
"Dancing comes in different forms,
but to be frank, there are no norms."
Do you see what I mean? Your work looks nicer, but it doesn't read well when, with your subject matter, while you could have some lines read awkwardly, they should be deliberately and clearly awkward, not just weird phrasing.
But anyway, that's rhythm.
Your rhymes, you know what's a stretch and what isn't. You rhyme is with is, and rhyme count with groove, both of which are like "huh?". Perhaps that was just a simple oversight.
And then one more suggestion - you seem to have a great sense of drama with your first line, not seeming to rhyme with anything else. Rather than being an outlier, that actually accentuates it very nicely, a good effect. The problem is, you seem to have rhymed something with it in the conglomeration of a second line, which made me disappointed because you really had something with the unrhyming first line. For that matter, the first line doesn't need rhythm either.
Again, this is all suggestion, take it or leave it as you wish. But this work definitely reads like a newbie trying to write poetry and, while I'm not very good at writing poetry myself, I've read enough poetry that this one kinda stood out as being really hard to read right, no matter which direction I looked at it from. The words are good, but you're missing the flow, which is the most important part of poetry, by far, far surpassing good grammar and all that. Good grammar is probably a hindrance to good poetry.
Nevertheless, your poem still intrigued me, and despite the above-mentioned problems, you still managed to get emotion across, which is really good potential, and I feel you really could make something remarkable out of this work - because no matter how flawed a work is, it's still work, and practice makes perfect. And I've probably been too harsh through here as well. I've certainly read far worse poetry, and you at least seem to have a sense of what you want to write and how rhyme works and a desire to use it, rather than just throwing words around.
So, summary: you need flow. You have a good framework, but it doesn't flow. If you could catch flow in this poem, it would really sparkle, as it is, it's like an uncut diamond - doesn't look very good, but has potential... but if not used carefully, is still good for sharpening things. Practice makes perfect.
Thanks for sharing, I hope you do stay around, and keep writing!
This is a very rambly "The Power Reviewers Group"  review. |
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