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@the-fledgling-artist

Have a bit of time now. Let’s see how far I can go.

I agree with Evelyn on your first poem. The thought behind it is beautiful.

I think the goal here is to Show, Not Tell. Right now, you are telling me what I should see, but you aren’t letting me feel it. Poetry is all about feeling something.

In order to help me feel the piece, you have to intentionally muddle the imagery a bit. Force my imagination to fill in the blanks.

For instance, let’s take the first 2 lines of your poem:
The world is as an ocean.
It’s big, and dark, and violent.

You tell me outright exactly what I need to know: 1. what you’re comparing (the world and oceans) 2.What the analogy means.

To fix it, you want to allude to those answers, instead of telling me outright. <span style=”background-color: #f6d5d9;”>To give an example, I’m going to change the two lines to My heart is an empty hole / black and sad. Here’s one way to fix this prose: </span>

Can you see?
I guess I should say “welcome”
but I don’t know if you’re here.
All I can hear
is the beating of my heart
the crying of my heart.
Can’t you hear it too?
The tears alone fit
except for you –
if you’re really here-
and I.
I can’t get out.
It’s dark in here.

In the above example, I took a few “senses” to give you a sense of what was going on. I told you my heart was crying (hearing, seeing) and that it was dark in hear (seeing) to get across the imagery of a hole or dwelling. I let the monologue sound desperate with choppy, disjointed sentences to get across that I was sad, and implied I couldn’t see at the beginning (though I did say it almost outright at the end. I’m still implying the dark heart).

This is just one of the many ways you can take that imagery and deepen it. Using your poem, see what other, more obscure connections you can make to put the desired images in the reader’s mind.

I hope that made sense. The later in the day it is, the more disjointed my thoughts are. 🙂