I remember a night in June
you picked a rose from the garden,
the garden lit by the summer moon,
you handed it to me in a special way
you real romantic for your day.
Although I never cared much for you
I remember always the scented night,
the rose, the walk beside a moon kissed bay,
my memory of such a magic moon
will remain until my dying day.
A contest entry
- ~ By The Light Of A Harbour Moon ~ by Stuart Higginson.
1400 points, ended November 5, 14 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
-
Thanks for this contest entry. While I found some nice images and felt I could envisage/share in this scenario/memory ( be it actual or poetic-fiction), I felt the entry did not satisfy the contest theme adequately, and contained a number of flaws/points that weakened rather than strengthened or benefitted the poem. In a constructive way, I shall try to address the main ones for you in my critique, so you can understand why I felt this entry fell short of placing in the contest, and in doing so give you some tips which will be helpful with your future work. It is never my wish to upset someone or deter someone from writing, or to "bash" their work, so I hope you will find this helpful, rather than just negative.
THEME:
The theme set was for a poem about a harbourside moment/memory/scene, yet in this poem you only allow half a line ("the walk beside a moon kissed bay") for it to feature at all, giving more space in your poem to speak of the "garden" than the "bay" ("harbour" or "port" or "dock" do not even feature at all), and there was a distinct lack of detail about it even when it was mentioned, which was disappointing. If you had written a longer poem, you would've allowed yourself more space/lines to write about the gardens and the romance (story element if you like), but also giving yourself more lines/space/scope to cover other elements of the contest theme, such as detailing the harbour setting and presenting matter which catered for the spirit of the age.
REPETITION:
The repetition of words, I felt, weakened rather than strengthened the poem - "moon" (used x3) "rose" (used x2), "night" (used x2), "garden" (used x2) "you" (used x4). Although in longer poems repeated words are not so noticeable, in a short poem of a few lines they do stand out. Instead, use a synonym book or thesaurus, which will give you options of other words you can use to say the same as a word you have already used once or twice in your poem. This keeps the poem/language fresh, which is to the benefit of the poem. Widening vocabulary and word-knowledge is essential for any poet.
RHYME: Try to avoid using simple rhyme-words at the end of lines if possible, ie "way/day" if you can help it. Especially in a short poem, never repeat rhyme-words already used (unless there is a specific reason for using them). For instance, "day" is used twice in the poem to rhyme at the end of lines - first to make the rhyme with "way", second to make the rhyme with "bay". Also, try to avoid cliches (Moon and June are almost always quoted as the most over-used rhyme-pair in the history of poetry).
I do hope the above notes/points are helpful to you with your writing. Thanks again for taking time to write an entry in this contest. Please feel free to delete this critique once you've noted the points made.
Best wishes
Stuart
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