The end of the world

Hi all!
I'm from Taiwan and I've been secretly admiring and following a lot of amazing works here. Now I finally have the courage to post my work. I must say that I love poetries but am not especially good at composing them. So I'd be more than appreciative if I can receive suggestions that would help improve my every aspects on composing poetries. Thx=)
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The end of the world

I know the world is coming to an end,
So I hold your hand,
In the dribs and drabs of rain,
I,
Look into your eye,
Content.

I know the world is coming to an end,
With a whimper, not a bang;
We all just want to have a name.
Rise,
In front of the unknown cosmo,
All is vain.

I know the world is coming to an end,
So I look up,
Trying to look beyond
the surface of the sky.
Still sunshine.

In the darkcorner of a
Perfect sunshine,
Blue sky, breeze day,
We curl together,
In thick clothes,
Faces gray,
And rainy wet.

I try to stand up
And have the courage
To feel the golden flowers
And the Bare feet that touch the soil
That I’ve long seen before,
And to have the rapture
To abandon the old sick corner
That conceals light.

Because the world is coming to an end,
So I must change.

I stand and
I wait;
For the bang,
But gradually fire
burns my skin,
Though still cold-wet.

I keep on standing
Will someone turn the switch off,
And end all miseries?
Will someone give me a
Bullet?

No,
But my heart
Runs like fire
Unknowing where
It is going.

When the fire stops,
When my hue recovers
to gray again,
I might again
Damp myself
To cold and gray. (For now I am dry and hot and pain)
So let the eternal fire
The eternal cosmo,
Remind me what it is!

I stand up,
My legs trembling,
My mouths fear
Of saying.
Saying the words of acceptance,
Of the truth,
Of the fear.
Remind me,
As we are men
We are meant to make mistakes
We are meant to end the world
We are meant to go on that one-way road.

But I know the end of the world is coming,
It ends today,
The same time it starts
Always,
And I stand here,
Forever.

whew! Despite a few grammatical errors and things that are not quite idiomatic, it's clear that you have a good strong sense of mete, or how to break your lines for dramatic effect and how to build an interesting dramatic structure.

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Originally Posted by TheEarthIsRound

The end of the world

I know the world is coming to an end,
So I hold your hand,
In the dribs and drabs of rain,
I,
Look into your eye,
Content.here's the first place where you defiantly (and successfully) break with the line structure you set up in the first three lines

I know the world is coming to an end,
With a whimper, not a bang;
We all just want to have a name.
Rise,
In front of the unknown cosmo,This should be "cosmos," I think
All is vain.

I know the world is coming to an end,
So I look up,
Trying to look beyond
the surface of the sky.
Still sunshine.

In the darkcorner of a
Perfect sunshine,
Blue sky, breeze should be breezyday,
We curl together,
In thick clothes,
Faces gray,
And rainy wet.

I try to stand up
And have the courage
To feel the golden flowers
And the Bare feet that touch the soil
That I’ve long seen before,
And to have the rapture
To abandon the old sick corner
That conceals light.I'm not sure I fully understand these last three lines but the image is strong!

Because the world is coming to an end,
So I must change.

I stand and
I wait;
For the bang,
But gradually fire
burns my skin,
Though still cold-wet.cold and wet

I keep on standing
Will someone turn the switch off,
And end all miseries?
Will someone give me a
Bullet?

No,
But my heart
Runs like fire
Unknowing where
It is going.

When the fire stops,
When my hue recovers"recovers/to" is awkward. You could substitute becomes
to gray again,
I might again
Damp myselfshould be something like "Make myself damp"
To cold and gray. (For now I am dry and hot and inpain)
So let the eternal fire
The eternal cosmo,
Remind me what it is!

I stand up,
My legs trembling,
My mouths fearnot sure what you mean to say here. Maybe My mouth in fear
Of saying.
Saying the words of acceptance,
Of the truth,
Of the fear.
Remind me,
As we are men
We are meant to make mistakes
We are meant to end the world
We are meant to go on that one-way road.

But I know the end of the world is coming,
It ends today,
The same time it starts
Always,
And I stand here,
Forever.

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Wonderful how you return near the end to the variant of "I know the world is coming to an end," that you used so well a few times before. Carry on writing - PLEASE!

Thank you for your encouragement and detailed comments for my improvements! Grammar is a major problem for me in writing poetries since sometimes, in between lines, I have a "false sense" for English, the language that is not my native tongue =(
I will indeed carry on my writing!!

Quote:

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I have a "false sense" for English, the language that is not my native tongue =(

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Yes, that's noticeable, but forgivable, particularly when you come up with phrases like

Quote:

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a
Perfect sunshine,
Blue sky, breeze day,

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I love that! It's not grammatically correct, but that doesn't matter (and arguably makes it better) because it can easily be understood - and stands out for exactly those reasons. I'm English and am trying to 'unlearn' the language to create new or effective phrases. One of my favourite contemporary poets, Glyn Maxwell, does exactly that, and will use phrases that hurt your brain because he messes with grammar or syntax but you understand what he's saying and then marvel at how he expresses things in a unique way - which is part of what poetry should be all about, I think.

I shouldn't worry about trying to correct everything, although it depends on context. If you write something like 'breeze day' think about whether it works - but don't automatically discard it.

In your poem - I think the 'end of the world' line is repeated too often and I would drop the one in the first line, for example. Because your title explains the idea I don't think it's needed.

I think it should be shorter as well, I get the idea of what you're trying to express. I would shorten the narrative aspect and try and concentrate on strengthening the way in which the narrative is being expressed - language, metaphor etc. Still, it's an interesting and thoughtful poem.

(And have you heard the REM song 'It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)'? Your poem reminded me of that.)

I pretty much entirely agree with both Prince and blnk's comments and criticisms. I think whatever you lack in a mastery of English you make up for with a real intuitive eye (and ear!) for poetry. I really commend your use of line breaks and delayed rhymes. In fact, I think the stanzas which read less like sentences and more like fragments of thought work best in this piece; more like poetic snatches or snapshots of life rather than a linear narrative. I think when the piece gets too prose-like is when it becomes less effective. I would probably remove (or alter) these stanzas for that reason:

I try to stand up
And have the courage
To feel the golden flowers
And the Bare feet that touch the soil
That I’ve long seen before,
And to have the rapture
To abandon the old sick corner
That conceals light.

and

I keep on standing
Will someone turn the switch off,
And end all miseries?
Will someone give me a
Bullet?

I might also suggest combining some of the other, shorter stanzas that express a similar idea so there is a clear progress in the piece. One thing you have to pay careful attention to in longer pieces is pacing; whether you pace it thematically or with some kind of narrative or imagery thread, it needs to feel it's moving forward.

Thank you both for your very helpful comments. They have given me new aspects to think about and to try on.

@blnk_vrz: Yes I indeed agree a lot of times a thought (or a soul) can go beyond the boundary of the rules in language with a beautiful core (I'm not saying my poem is anything near that but I had the intent). Perhaps because i'm a non-native, but sometimes when I read pre-modern English literature (things like Shakespeare) I find just the stuffs that go beyond the boundary of the rules in language, and they are so beautiful
Same thing I discover with Ancient Chinese literature: I cannot give a proper definition for each ancient word, yet I feel exactly what's being said.
In Dan Millman's Way Of The Peaceful Warrior and Susan Griffin's A Chorus of Stones, they argue that there is a universality in language. Perhaps when we 'feel', instead of 'read', we'll get to the very soul--a buried universality within ourselves that is in every one of us

(No unfortunately I did not =( )
(btw, is there any Glyn Maxwell's poems that you would recommend?)


@MorpheusSandman: I totally agree with your suggestions. Here is a problem I've been dealing with: I sometimes find myself jumping between thoughts without a trace, and sometimes even I can't quite explain the subtle connections; so I have a dilemma (or even a fatique) to decide whether to be more repeatedly elaborative, so to get to my point, or just to say what I mean. Simplicity indeed is a dilemma and a very hard thing to achieve.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

whether you pace it thematically or with some kind of narrative or imagery thread, it needs to feel it's moving forward.

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By this, you mean either a poem needs a strong sense of from start to conclusion, or to have a build-up and change in pace and beat?


Once again, thank you three for giving such great advices. I look forward to progressing on my writing.

My comment comes late but:
you got us, with your setting sun!
Yes, you could do with some corrections, and you have received such a good guidance how to proceed", but one can easily put aside what doesn't sound "right", because the poetic power of your poem prevails on the whole. Hello to Taiwan and thank you TheEarthIsRound!

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Originally Posted by TheEarthIsRound

By this, you mean either a poem needs a strong sense of from start to conclusion, or to have a build-up and change in pace and beat?

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In short pieces you can get a way with rambling and repetition because you can really condense the focus on one or a few things specifically. In a longer piece there needs to be something that moves it forward. You can do this by a progression of images, metaphors, or themes. It might help to think of it like a film. In any given image of a film you are looking at some kind of scene with something that's relative to the overall whole of the film. It's the same thing within any given stanza of a poem. So when you move to the next stanza you are essentially "cutting" to the next scene, like in a film. You have to ask how these two scenes connect to each other; what is connecting them? How does the first lead to the next and what new element is this adding to the piece. It's not that you have to make these connections obvious but there does need to be a sense for the reader that it's going somewhere; leading up to something.

It's probably outside the scope of my abilities to detail every way in which to move a piece forward because there are many. But in your piece I sometimes get the sense it's just standing still. For instance, your first 4 stanzas could be described as:

1st: Intro to the repeating theme of the world coming to an end. An image of holding someone's hand and looking in their eyes in an ominous rain.

2nd: Describes how the world itself will come to the end. The "wanting a name" seems somewhat out of place and disconnected here.

3rd: Now you're looking at the sky and seeing sunshine, which kinda conflicts with the idea of being in the rain. It's not that you can't move from rain to sunny skies in a poem, but there's really nothing that gets us from that rain to the sun.

4th: Here you combine the images of the sunshine and the rain along with it being breezy/windy

You can track this yourself through all the stanzas. There's very little progression and much of the time only minor changes between what they're describing. This isn't inherently bad. In fact it could be described as a kind of minimalism, but minimalism is difficult to make work because you have to really get the biggest impact from the smallest thing/change. And with minimalism it usually helps to have a more identifiable rhythm/meter and repetitions.