Hello, Mandi! I am happy to critique your first work today on scribophile. I have to say that this is a great story that is actually dark, deep, and also very brooding. Though I find this to be very good, there was only a couple parts of your poem lines and the way they are written they are a bit confusing for me or either something is wrong with it:

Fear pulses.

It's out of control.

What really irks me about how you have written this poem is how you put periods at the very very end of your lines. Usually in most poems, poets do not have a use for periods at the end of every sentence. The only thing that you need to do is omit the periods.

Yet you look just fine.

 

Ok. This part was what irked me the absolute most of the time. Why did you say "Yet you look just fine?" I do not get that and so this poem got me very confused. I think that you should say Yet I look just fine. That is all for this poem. All in all, I liked your approach on this poem especially the end. Thanks for sharing this work with me and the other scribophile members! Maybe you should read my works sometime. Come to my profile and critique Heart of Ice. It is not quite done yet, but enjoy! Take care!

Hi Mandi, I've got some feedback for you.

On a general note, I have an opinion on the kinds of themes that this poem explores, and the opinion is this: As a reader of your poem and fellow human being, I (and everyone else) feels the feelings you explore here... that is, depression, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, boredom, etc.  All of us either have felt them or are feeling them now, and there's no exception to that.  That being said, one must wonder WHY are you writing about these feelings?  How does your poem shed light on these feelings, or take them to another level, or provide some kind of deeper insight that in fact doesn't involve these feelings but uses them as a substrate?

The fact is, nobody likes to feel this way, and yet we all have at some point.  If your poem doesn't aspire to provide some kind of deeper insight into what it MEANS to feel like this, or some kind of intellectual insight, why am I reading it?  Certainly not to try to recreate these feelings, because I don't like them--nobody does.  I prefer to be happy.  And probably not just to "get into your (Mandi's) head," because no offense, my own head is interesting enough.  If you're writing just to express your feelings without thought to what your poem brings to the reader, then you haven't really written a poem, you've written a diary entry.  Which is fine, but shouldn't be passed off as something meant for public consumption.

Now that I've said all that, I have to say that this is my opinion IN GENERAL for this kind of poetry, but I think that this opinion applies in this case.  I've read it over, there are some pretty images, some interesting meter, but beyond the technicalities, it appears to be another "I'm depressed and anxious" poem, which are a dime a dozen.  As you write, ask yourself, WHY am I writing?  If the answer is, "to express a personal emotion," then that's great, but it may not be something that can be critiqued, because it's nothing but that--a personal expression, a diary entry.  If the answer instead is, "to somehow provide value to the reader," then you've got something meant for public consumption, because it can be INTERPRETED.  And once somebody can INTERPRET what you've written in different ways, then you have something that 's worthy of deeper inspection and critique, and is ultimately what will keep your reader reading.  I hope that makes sense.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, on to some technical details:

It captures me -- takes me captive.

"takes me captive" is unnecessary here... you've just said that it captures you!

Trapped in the confines of myself, Wondering when the calm will set in.

This is interesting, because I was left wondering, how is one "trapped in oneself?"  Or better put, when are we ever NOT trapped in ourselves?  We ARE ourselves, by definition.  Maybe you could be alluding to a state of permanent disconnectedness or nirvana, but I doubt that's the natural state for most regular people.

Attempting to overcome my mind. An invisible illness Yet you look just fine.

This is a good slant rhyme.  The longer preceding lines add a very nice contrasting rhythm to the shorter lines ending in "fine."

Will I find comfort in this day, Or tomorrow or the next?

I would change "in this day" to "today" or "in today,"  which sounds more natural.

When will someone strike my canvas with a color? Not black, no more black. I'm tired of this grayscale life. Forget the gothic paintings, Give me a Monet.

I found the transition to the painting metaphor a little jarring.  Just a few lines ago we were talking about tornados and storms, and now we're talking about paintings.  They're unrelated and the poem provides no connection between the two.  Maybe add a transition to clarify the connection between the two themes?

Will I find comfort in this day, Or tomorrow or the next?

This contrasts with your earlier imagery of wild storms and tornadoes of fear.  You're implying that you're feeling this violent torrent of anxiety, and yet you state that you hope it won't last longer than a few days.  This is fine, but I want to make sure that that's what you mean; having a violent storm of emotion like you've pictured is not something that I associate with the long term.

Overall, as a technical piece, it's fairly strong; but please consider my big point above about providing value.  In the end, what will make the reader want to read your poem?  Would the reader really enjoy reading about somebody's day-to-day anxieties, but in verse form?  And I don't mean to trivialize what you've written, because it certainly has meaning to you as the author; but I think it's a point that many, many aspiring poets miss.  The best poems out there use emotion to guide the reader to some kind of insight, not just lay emotion bare on the page and call it a day.  I hope that doesn't sound too harsh!

 Hi Mandy, I'm new here, so I'm just jumping in to see what happens. Here are a couple of things that I hope will be of some help.

As for punctuation, there really aren't any hard and fast rules these days (in fact, it's a debate that has been going on for a while - since ee cummings who, of course was the first to take standard punctuation out of poetry). From what I've read, lines with less than three words do not need periods. That's a general standard, but poets break the rules all the time - the rebels!

At any rate, you should be consistent with whatever you decide to do. You would need a comma after 'illness'.

In the second line, 'it's' really adds nothing. 'It captures me' ---takes me captive' choose one or change one. It's redundant and detracts from the piece. Personally, I would take out 'it captures me' or you could replace 'captures' with ...i don't know...'chases' (?) or 'takes me captive' with 'holds me hostage' or something like that.

I think the end is where a more powerful and less clichéd metaphor lies. If you develop it more throughout and lose the weather metaphor, your piece will be much more original. Depression and storm metaphors have just been way overdone.

I have to say that laying raw emotion on the page without adding any insight, does not necessarily make it meaningless. Sometimes there is value in reading something that you can relate to and saying to yourself,  'yeah, that's what it's like.' But to take a feeling and flesh it out into a powerful metaphor takes the relatability to a whole new level. To do that, you have to take out the 'I's and 'you's and really become the painting. That's a very difficult endeavor, but worthy of exploration.