Poem I wrote (can I get your opinions?)

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That's a really good poem. I could have written that, 12 years ago.

So I wrote this poem while depressed and would like your opinions as well as constructive criticism as I would like to improve it and submit it to my school paper anonymously.

I don't know why I attempt to impress people
or why I try to fit in in
I just wish they could understand me
and include me so that I can be seen with them.
They don't know how they make me feel
They haven't cried at night.
They haven't been forced to hate the world
And hope to never have sleep murdered by light.
They don't understand my differences
nor do they try.
There eyes are blinded by their views
of what is wrong and what is right.

They don't realize how I just need their approval
and that I just want to be liked
I just want to feel normal
Be happy when I go to sleep at night.
I just want to feel loved
Loved by all my wanted friends
But how can that ever happen
When I am not cool enough for them.

I want to change the world
And show them they were wrong.
They then will want my approval
And I could finally get what I had longed.
But is it right to get it that way?
Are they even really my friends?
In reality they are there only for my name.
Realizing that makes me more depressed.
At times ignorance is bliss, but other times it is hell.
But I would rather know I have true friends, than believe in imaginary tales.

Thank you . Do you think there is anything I can improve on with it? What did you think while reading it? Was it written nicely? Did it provoke any emotions?

I want to change the world
And show them they were wrong.
They then will want my approval
And I could finally get what I had longed.
But is it right to get it that way?
Are they even really my friends?
In reality they are there only for my name.
Realizing that makes me more depressed.
At times ignorance is bliss, but other times it is hell.
But I would rather know I have true friends, than believe in imaginary tales.

They don't know how they make me feel
They haven't cried at night.
They haven't been forced to hate the world
And hope to never have sleep murdered by light.

i highlighted a misspelling.
Supposed to be "their"

It sounds like a journey of somewhat painful realization--maybe once, people just acting like they accepted you would have been okay, but now you realize that would be even worse than them openly not accepting you because it would be false.



What I get out of this is that you're not looking for "political correctness"--you're looking for people who genuinely like you, not people who feel like they "have" to.

That's a pretty powerful statement. Where does "being PC" end and "true acceptance" begin?

You write very well.

I think that you should make a decision one way or another on whether or not the poem is going to rhyme - at the moment it seems a bit flabby in that sense, and as if you've inserted words simply because they rhyme, and not bothered to match this elsewhere. For instance:



'Hope never to have sleep murdered by light'? What does this mean? It comes across as if you said it purely because it rhymed, and not for any other reason.

Prosodic niggles aside, whilst I understand the sentiment behind this poem (mostly), it isn't one that I find memorable or moving, because of the subject matter. The persona behind it strikes me (and I speak only for myself, not others) as melodramatic and whiny. All of the poems that stay in my mind and that I find touching are ones that either have a hopeful chord within them somewhere, or that - whilst quite pessimistic generally - present a broader, more balanced view than yours does. Take, for instance, my favourite ever poem:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html

Arnold acknowledges the 'eternal note of sadness', and the fact that the world 'Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light' - but what I think makes this poem so beautiful is that it also acknowledges the capacity for redemption and hope. We may be alone, the voice says, but we are together in our isolation and in the fact that the world, 'vast' and 'drear', doesn't care for us.

Look at these poems by Philip Larkin:

Wild Oats

About twenty years ago
Two girls came in where I worked -
A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs I could talk to.
Faces in those days sparked
The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt
If ever one had like hers:
But it was the friend I took out,

And in seven years after that
Wrote over four hundred letters,
Gave a ten-guinea ring
I got back in the end, and met
At numerous cathedral cities
Unknown to the clergy. I believe
I met beautiful twice. She was trying
Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

Parting, after about five
Rehearsals, was an agreement
That I was too selfish, withdrawn
And easily bored to love.
Well, useful to get that learnt,
In my wallet are still two snaps,
Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.
Unlucky charms, perhaps.

* * *

The Life with a Hole in it

When I throw back my head and howl
People (women mostly) say
But you've always done what you want,
You always get your own way
--A perfectly vile and foul
Inversion of all that's been.
What the old ratbags mean
Is I've never done what I don't.

So the sh** in the shuttered chateau
Who does his five hundred words
Then parts out the rest of the day
Between bathing and booze and birds
Is far off as ever, but so
Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod
(Six kids, and the wife in pod,
And her parents coming to stay)...

Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbeatable slow machine
That brings what you'll get. Blocked,
They strain round a hollow stasis
Of havings-to, fear, faces.
Days sift down it constantly. Years.

* * *

These are essentially rather whiny too, but display both humour and a nobility of spirit that the bitter view expressed in your poem lacks. Larkin's persona is able to laugh at himself, and able to appreciate beauty, and the pleasure of other people in their own lives, despite the fact that he finds little pleasure in his. These are likeable qualities that make the reader more likely to sympathise and understand. Your persona merely complains sourly about his lot, which will alienate people. If you publish that in your school magazine, your classmates aren't going to think "Who is this anonymous and heretofore unappreciated poet in our midst, whose magnanimous humour we miss out on, and whose kindness we have never experienced?" - rather, they will probably just frown and forget they read it, if they read beyond the first verse at all. It may be sad and it may be wrong, but I don't think people really care about pain and misery in its undiluted, stark form. There has to be something in it for them before they are remotely bothered. Successful poems, I think, are revelatory - crystallised accounts of how a realisation or epiphany was reached. Your poem represents to me the sludge and drudgery that must be endured by the poet to reach a new plane of purer, more productive thought, but ultimately deprives the reader of any sort of enlightening conclusion.

I recommend you read 'The Ode Less Travelled' by Stephen Fry - I think there's a lot in it that you would find helpful for your writing. Even if there isn't, it's a very funny, entertaining book.

it's good but it can't hold a sonnet to my poems

lol

Thank you . Do you think there is anything I can improve on with it? What did you think while reading it? Was it written nicely? Did it provoke any emotions?

Ah thank you.