As a young writer, naturally, you'll write in the words and contexts you know. As you develop your personal style, you'll begin to explore technique, voice, tone, and color. You'll begin "painting" literal and metaphorical images by putting situations, feelings, conversations -- everything, really -- under a microscope. So far, you're doing a great job.

Bryan Falla 323 days ago

Well put Bryan J

 

Amber, 

This poem has good bones.  You have done a good job avoiding cliché and although your descriptions are familiar, they are not boring or trite.  I saw very few grammatical errors, which tends to be the downfall of many writers, young or experienced, so good job on that.   I will say you might do better with more sentence breaks rather than commas.   Additionally capitalizing every line rarely serves a purpose other than to be distracting.   I would encourage you to take more chances with your descriptions and think outside the box.  Bryan offered great advice about putting everything under a microscope and painting literal and metaphorical images.   Experiment with what you want to show us.

 

L1:  nice opening line. Introduces the concept of the poem and makes the reader want to read more.  In my opinion you should end the first sentence after “heart.”

 

Take a journey to my heart.       

 

L2-6:  Should also be its own sentence or have a semi colon at the end.  I think there is more you can do with this.  Is it a long journey or a bumpy ride so to speak?  How else can you imply scars, dents and grooves?  Mountains, rocky terrain, underbrush, thorns….  How about L6? Join me in my cell, cave.  There are a million ways to show us what you are telling us here.    

 

It’s a long way to go;

past the scars,

the dents,

the grooves,

down into the darkness.

 

L7: I like this.  Good use of a rhetorical question.

 

Cold, isn’t it?

 

L8: this line starts a new sentence and concept but doesn’t really finish it as L9 jump back to the cold dark heart.  If you must keep it as it is, I suggest ending the sentence with the line break at salvation.  Still it doesn’t really make sense…hell is no comparison to what? Your heart? Actually it sounds like it is a good comparison to the heart described above.  The way this sentence is structured it seems you are declaring salvation to be the opposite of comparison which it is not.  However it could be viewed as the opposite of hell.  In my opinion this line needs to be eliminated or restructured to more clearly state its intent.

 

Hell is no comparison, but salvation.

 

L9-11:  you almost have a slant rhyme going with true and you, not bad.  My issue with this is that it uses the same premise as the rest of the poem to give us new information (unrequited love) so the new information falls flat & seems unimportant.   L9 simply restates what the beginning of the poem told us and L11 is too generic to be a solid ending.  What is it about this person that is missed?  One solid poignant image is all that is needed.   “The scent of you pools and mists…”  If you make no other changes to the ending I at least suggest these grammatical changes.

 

In my heart where cold and darkness is true,

all I know is,

I love you…

The title implies that you do not want anyone to make a stop at your heart "journey on" however, the ending of the poem implies that you do want at least one special someone to come back.  Just food for thought...

I hope you'll post your revision :)

-Erin

Erin Hopson 263 days ago