Thread: What's wrong with this?

Oh dark mistress I've been watching you.

In Black dress you walk by, I'm drawn to you.

A familiar emotion in your eyes I see.

You might not know it but you're just like me.

You're a glare on the darkest night.

Your pale skin reflects the moonlight.

Share with me your thoughts and dreams.

Tell me what do you think our life means.

Look at what you made me do;

I wrote a poem just for you.


So what's wrong with this poem?

You imply she is dark-skinned, but then call her pale

Black is unnecessarily capitalized, and there's an error in pluralization ("our life means" should be "our lives mean" or "your/my life means"). Both of those errors, however, could easily be covered by poetic license.

I like the imagery and the symbolic contrast of darkness and light. The last two lines kind of throw me off, though.

The darkest night wouldn't have moonlight

Dickenson used to capitalize certain words in her poems, so I don't think that's 'wrong'. I knew another author who always capitalized the word 'Cold' because it had a particular significance to him; it was practically a proper noun. And I don't think 'dark mistress' implies that her skin is dark. This is a poem, it could imply her emotions, behaviors, the way she talks, subject matter etc. Or maybe it just refers to the dress which is, afterall, black.

The only thing that kinda got to me was the yoda-ish syntax in some of your lines.. but maybe that's just me.

Nice poem.. it kinda made me want to see a picture of her.

I meant "life" as in existence.

I don't know why I capitalized "Black".

That's the second Yoda comment I've heard. I'm not a big fan of Star Wars and I don't know what he said.

Literature was my worst subject in school.