Dismal's Child by dismal

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Submission Name: Dismal's Child dots

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Author:	dismal_s child
ASL Info:	17/F/Florida
Elite Ratio:	3.19 - 325/319/125
Words:	85

Class/Type:	Poetry/Alone
Total Views:	259
Average Vote:	No vote yet.
Bytes:	561

Description:
My auto-biography poem. Enough said.

Dismal's Child dots

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Child of the dark dismal pain,
Where the sin-black tears reign.
Holder of the key to torture
A true crime to be sure
Off spring of darkness
Always feeling helpless
The captor of hope and love
Your absolute opposite above
Blackened strength leads to a twisted smile
Hardly seen hardly for a while
You are a momma’s girl
Left alone though to carry this pathetic world
Not to find true anything
Always lusting soothing
You, I, will hate almost everything

Submitted on 2005-06-26 09:35:14 Terms of Service / Copyright Rules
Submissions: [ Previous ] [ Next ]

1: >_<
2: I dunno...
3: meh!
4: Pretty cool
5: Wow!

||| Comments |||
  Hi Claire,

You asked me to comment on some of your work. This is your featured piece, so I assume it’s the most important to you. Let me start here.

The first thing that hit me was the spelling errors. I know I probably sound like your high school English teacher, but this really does matter. The reason it matters in particular for poetry is that we’re looking for flow. We really want the reader to go straight from one word to the next with no hesitation. Every time we have a spelling mistake or a typo, we force the user to stop reading and regroup. I do all of my writing on the computer in Word. Others, like my wife, write on paper then type into Word. The important thing is to pass it through a word processing program somewhere to catch stuff like this. Then you can copy and paste into the Elite Skills submission page. Here’s what Word caught:

Child of the dark dismal pain
where the sin-black tears reign
Holder of the key to torture
a true crime to be sure
offspring of darkness
always feeling helpless
the captor of hope and love
your absolute opposite above
blackened strength leads to a twisted smile
hardly seen hardly for a while
you are a mommas girl
left alone though to carry this pathetic world
not to find true anything
always lusting something
you, I, will hate almost everything

I read this really slow and detailed and discovered “off spring” which Word didn’t catch. Also you had "hardly" twice in the same line, which I believe was a typo. Those are the only things that have to change; everything else drops in to various zones of opinions and preferences. So you can take the rest of this with a grain of salt.

Poems come in free form and structured varieties. Most of my stuff is free form. To be honest, structure and rhyme are very difficult for me. I get a thought in my head and I don’t want to sacrifice any bit of it to structure. That doesn’t mean structure is wrong, it’s just hard. I do think though, that once you start a structure and rhyme, you pretty much have to go through with it. A half done job really muddies the reader.

I just can’t do structure without a lot of boring analysis. A big part of structure is the syllable count. Here you have:

Child of the dark dismal pain (8)
where the sin-black tears reign (6)
Holder of the key to torture (8)
a true crime to be sure (6)
offspring of darkness (5)
always feeling helpless (6)
the captor of hope and love (7)
your absolute opposite above (8)
blackened strength leads to a twisted smile (9)
hardly seen for a while(6)
you are a mommas girl (6)
left alone though to carry this pathetic world (12)
not to find true anything (7)
always lusting something (6)
you, I, will hate almost everything (9)

That all distills down, taking your rhyming structure into account, as 8-6, 8-6, 5-6, 7-8, 9-6, 6-12, 7-6-9. It looks at first glance, like you’re close to 8-6. Now, not every series has to be exactly 8-6, but big differences from that will cause readers to stumble. Once you’ve started the rhythm, your reader’s minds will follow it. Da-d-d-da-d-da-d-dum, da-da-da-da-da-dum. So if we were to try to force 8-6:

Child of the dark dismal pain (8)
where the sin-black tears reign (6)
Holder of the key to torture (8)
a true crime to be sure (6)
Imprisoned offspring of darkness (8)
always feeling helpless (6)
the captor of faith, hope and love (8)
your true opposite above (6)
blackened strength leads to twisted smile (8)
hardly seen for a while(6)
you really are a momma’s girl (8)
alone in this pathetic world (8)
not to find true a single thing (8)
always lusting something (6)
you, I, we will hate everything (8)

I told you I was terrible at structure.

Another idea might be to abandon the structure altogether and go for a more free form. If you do this though, you really need to use the freedom you’re granted to give you drama.

A child of dark, dismal pain,
Held in a world of sin blackened tears
   The holder of the key to torture

Offspring of darkness
Helpless for all time
   The captor of hope and love
   Opposite of those on high

Blackened strength leads to a twisted smile
A rare sight here

A “Momma’s girl”
Yet, left alone to carry this pathetic world

Not to find anything true
Always seeking, lusting for something

You, I,
We...
Will hate almost everything

My 2 little pieces of copper,
Steve
| Posted on 2005-07-01 00:00:00 | by Lost Sheep | [ Reply to This ]
  Your mother's right Claire...;). This is hardly the way I wished to contact you, but there is nothing to say that I can't. Your writing is exquisite for your age, far more advanced than I could've imagined possible when I was in my youth. I sincerely apologize for not being able to help you through anything...and for being a failure when you and your sister needed me the most. I can feel the emotions in your works, and it makes me very proud to know that you are as smart and capable as I have always imagined you to be. I hope that you can forgive me my past transgressions, and know that I have and will always love you more than life itself...

His Assholiness-
| Posted on 2005-07-01 00:00:00 | by His Assholiness | [ Reply to This ]
  you might be dismal's child, but you have your own voice, and a platinum plated razor blade tongue...you will be a far better poet than me. i can't believe how you have improved your poetry in just one short year. the references to Atlas were very beautifully executed. i like how you hint at the charector, but do not give away his name. spell check, Punkin, you inheritted a distinct lack of respect for spelling from your mother, you know... lub ya, Mom
| Posted on 2005-07-01 00:00:00 | by ruejacobs | [ Reply to This ]
  this was a nice piece, but there are a few things that i had trouble getting past. mostly spelling errors.. such as:
"lovwe".. i think you meant love.
"absoulte oppisite " it should be "absolute opposite"
"strenght".. should be "strength".
and the line
"hardly seen hardly for a while" throws off the flow you had going with the piece.
overall i could hear the voice of the words well.
| Posted on 2005-06-26 00:00:00 | by fallingingreen | [ Reply to This ]
  Rhyme, blah. Bad things about rhyming is keeping it up and trying not to make it sound forced. I agree with Rain, the rhyme scheme did bother me a bit. And as for spelling errors, well, a quick way to fix that is write out your poem in Word (or whatever thing you have) and then transferring it to here (copy and paste, gotta love copy and paste, lol) Other than that, nice write. And welcome to Elite
~Kat
| Posted on 2005-06-26 00:00:00 | by MorbidAngel114 | [ Reply to This ]
  This is a nice piece. You have some spelling errors, but only a couple. Something that bothered me is the rhyme scheme, you started out with cupplets then changed it to something else. I mean it's not bad, and it didn't really distract from what you were saying, it's just something that bugs me, if you're going to start with a pattern, it's usually best to stick with it. Other than that you did a wonderful job.

"Child of the dark dismal pain
where the sin-black tears riegn"
These are my absolute favorite lines.

Keep on writing!

Rain
| Posted on 2005-06-26 00:00:00 | by Rain | [ Reply to This ]

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