WordPress Styles

In my CW class we have to decipher/find the theme and suggest improvements for our classmates’ work. I’m having a little bit of a hard time with this one…

The water pushes through cracked, cool ice, whistling and tumbling over itself,
The wind pushes it onward, it cant look back; it has no desire to
Little whirlpools gather in front of a stone, beside it a clone:
A concoction waiting to brew.

His fingers extend, his legs curled around himself to protect from the cold,
He lets the water run through the gaps, swallowing his regret,
Words die before they get their opportunity to share their beauty, a treaty:
Each proposal an argument is met.

His efforts diminish quietly, for he has no other tools to capture his water,
He hesitates before walking onward, as far as he can go before the drop.
His stomach plummets with the height, forced down by bitter spite
Hes unsure of whats forcing him to stop.

The water, it laughs as it presses on, pregnant with alliance,
He can see its future, see that company will never be scarce to find
Too far to jump, too close to forget;
He knows hes left behind.

I think it’s comparing the waterfall to his ex-girlfriend but I’m not sure! And also, what improvements could I suggest? Thank youuuu! =)

I see here a waterfall that someone is considering jumping from.

Maybe a suicide?

It seems like he changes his mind though with the "what’s forcing him to stop" and "too far to jump" ideas, but I could be wrong.

I don’t see any connection to another person (girlfriend, etc.) but it mentions argument, and you might picture a fight with a girlfriend.

Suggestions for improvement? Geez, that’s always a tough assignment for creative writing, and I don’t necessarily agree with the pedagogy behind that.

I personally don’t find this to be very good, but I wouldn’t believe that’s my job as a fellow student to say. It’s inconsistent in meter. There’s this little quick rhythmic/rhyme thing going on at the second to last lines of the first two stanzas, and it creates an almost playful rhythm that seems inappropriate for the subject matter. Then it breaks free of that and keeps a more straightforward rhyme scheme for no apparent reason.

It tries to be cryptic in ways, but there’s a huge difference between revealing a meaning subtley and just sounding mysterious and pretentious. This crosses that line, I fear. It’s obviously very clearly meaningful to the author, but it suffers from not translating well. This is a common weakness of all writers–not being able to see that what’s in one’s head is not coming across so clearly on paper.

Poem’s shouldn’t be guessing games. You can be cryptic all you want if you are artistic and can get away with it. This isn’t, and doesn’t.

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