Source
r/OCPoetry•
willworkforabreak

Making the Blackberries Bleed

Feedback Received!

Deep in the forest

Down through through the trees

Sit my sister and I making blackberries bleed

 

The sun sends down shadows

Silhouettes of leaves cross the floor

We dance with new memories

And hide treasures in logs

 

Then the sky became weary

While the light left our eyes

Not a creature was stirring

So we bided our time

 

The world was pitch black and empty

It was colder than ice

We knew we had to get home soon

But we had nowhere to go

 
(This one was just a quick one. I'm mainly looking for feedback on the quality of individual lines and stanzas for later expansion.)

 

Critiques:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/533wbr/watercolour_snapshot/

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/533tt1/corporeal/

Posted Sep 16, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

16
kinless33•

The first stanza is really strong. It has a solid meter to it, and I like the slant rhyme of trees and bleed.
Having one stanza with a different number of lines is a little jarring. I wouldn't advise changing that first stanza, though. If anything, switching the others to tercets would be a better call.
I don't know if your beginning slant rhyme was accidental, but not having any further rhyme scheme feels off. That first stanza sets a certain expectation to the reader. I don't know if it's too strong to suggest so much change, but a switch to more closely align with the first stanza would be helpful.
"Not a creature was stirring" is such a well-known line from another work that I'd shy away from it. If you cut it and fill out the last line you could work with eyes and time as another sort of slant rhyme.

2
willworkforabreakOP•

Interesting, this is a good critique. I'm not surprised that the first stanza comes off as a lot stronger than the others. I started the poem with the line "making the Blackberries bleed". That popped into my head and I knew I had to write it. The rest was pretty much filler with some of the same atmosphere. I think you're definitely right about keeping it to tercets and I'll just have to see where it goes.

2
MustBeMoreOriginal•

I like it. Flows quite nicely and all fits together very well. Keep it up :)

1
willworkforabreakOP•

Thanks. Just a heads up, if you're trying to use that to fill our the missing critiques from your other post then it's not enough. For a feedback to count your usually gonna wanna go for at least a paragraph.

1
MustBeMoreOriginal•

Guilty haha, not that i didn't mean what I said in the previous comment but I generally keep things short and sweet, so thanks for the tip

1
neotropic9•

"not a creature was stirring" has to go unless this is a deliberate allusion. "colder than ice" is cliche.

first para: nice rhythm. Making blackberries bleed is a good image.

Rhythm is weird in final stanza. First line in particular feels too long somehow. Lack of a rhyme in final stanza is a bit jarring, since we have had half-rhymes capping the previous stanzas.

Not sure why the first stanza is three lines. The third line reads like two lines (one of them starting on "making").

There is kind of a dark tone even though the content is playful. This is poem is about, I presume, two kids playing in the forest in winter but they stay out too late. But the word choice makes the tone feel quite dark. "bleed", yes, obviously, but also "down" and "shadows" and "cross" and "weary", "pitch black and empty", "colder than ice", "nowhere to go".

You wrote "through" twice in the second line.

1
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1