"Cliches bite. Vampires do too. (poem)" by Kaeli Grotz

Do you know, my favourite part of this is the title. I love it! The poem is really good too, but you know how I love a corny title....
Also, I actually really liked the 'cliche-ey' vampire part, normally I prefer an original twist, but this was excellent. Plus I have a thing for vampires since 'Spike' from Buffy first came onto the screen.

I have decided that it is unfair that you have control and understanding of punctuation and can write brilliant poems and stories too....
*sticks bottom lip out and goes off to sulk childishly*I went on a writing course a while back, and the advice I was given for when you're stuck with a title is to think of the most obvious title for the piece, then think of the most wacky far out title even if it has nothing to do with the story, and somehow work the one back to the other. 'Tis the only secret behind my corny titles.My punctuation isn't perfect, the comma and I had a sort of wirlwind love affair a while back and saw too much of each other, so these days I only invite him over when I absolutely have to, and even then I sometimes forget and Beth has to nudge me.But you are most kind, and I'm glad you enjoyed this. Vampires hold a special place in my heart too.

Stanza 2: 'mountain' is where I stumble. Would be great if it accented on the second syllable.
Idea: Inside a dark mysterious castle

Stanza 3: 'marble' throws me.
possibly: He lifts the lid of his cold tomb

Stanza 4: Nearly perfect! Removing 'are' from line 3 makes it flow for me.
'Unaware, the sleeping people'

Stanza 5 (Two thoughts, Sorry!)
'And swoops down to the room' OR 'And swoops into the room'
How about: 'Everywhere a sure wind blows'

Stanza 6: Nearly perfect again! The first line hungers for just a tad more. What about this: 'A lovely lass, she lies abed'.

Stanza 7: Absolutely perfect!

Stanza 8: Excellent.
Consider 'A maiden's cries, they pierce the night'

Stanza 9: Maybe, 'Her wraith floats to the air'?
and 'Her dark shadows are now to bear' Although that would force me to accent the second syllable of shadows.

Stanza 10 and 11: Very good

Stanza 12: I'm thinking 'His bones crumble to dust' but I'm accenting the wrong syllable in crumble. Better yet,
'His bones, they shred to dust'

Stanza 13: Maybe,
'With the Vampire now gone to hell'
With penance for his greed
In the world again now all is well' (have to rush 'in the world' a little)
And the victims souls are free

I hope my ideas don't make you hate me. I rarely ever find anything on your shelf that I can critique. It all seems excellent to me. This is one of those rare cases that I might have something to share. Mainly the musician in me coming up with rhythmic ideas. Then again, I have no idea what a South African accent sounds like. Is it something like queen's english? So your accent and annunciation could make all my suggestions null and void lol. I loved the content and idea behind the poem. Intriguing! Vampires are always interesting to write about.I don’t hate you for all your wonderful ideas! To the contrary, I adore critical comments, the nitpickier the better. Poetry has never been my strong point – it’s only really something I write as procrastination when I should be writing other things (well, poetry and nauseating punk pop lyrics) – so I appreciate this kind of comment more than I can say.You gave some absolutely wonderful suggestions, all of which I’ll take into account if/when I ever have the time/inclination to rework this. Thank you so much.I usually stick to a tighter rhyme scheme/syllable count to make it more of a challenge, even if I’m not 100% successful. I used to consider rhyming dictionaries as a cheat, but I’ve recently given in. I went through a poetry spurt just recently, two of the products of which have been sitting in the mod queue for over two weeks, and the rest will be posted after that, I’ll be sure to bug you to come give me some more useful crits. =PSouth African accents are somewhat like Queen’s English – or so my English friends tell me, although I don’t see the similarity – but there was nothing you said that didn’t make sense said in my accent.

Well, if you ever decided to fix the tense of the first stanza here's an idea.

Round and fat the full moon shines,
With Pregnant possibility,
But by its light the night maligns,
A prelude to hostility,

I'm not really a poet but I've done a fair amount of songwriting which is similar. I have a nifty Thesaurus and rhyming dictionary near by to help me out of ruts. Excellent tools for a poet or songwriter.

So, yes, your rhyme scheme is quite sound and clever. If I had written it I wouldn't have even bothered trying to rhyme lines one and three. I would have focused on two and four lines only which would have left the door open for me to say much more. But, hey, you pulled it off quite nicely within the confines of a strict rhyming pattern so I have to congratulate you for that.

Rhythmically you've got a pattern that roughly flows like BUM ba BUM ba BUM ba BUM. It certainly doesn't have to be that strict (the lines could easily start with a ba) but that is the basic flow the reader is going to expect. Occasionally, I'm feeling a BUM where I want a ba to be or vice versa. Notice, I switched two words in the second line to make it feel better to me rhythmically.

eww... a poem about vampires.

News flash: vampires suck.

*grins*

(I made a funny)*lifts an eyebrow, turns to pack of miniature pocket vampires* D'you think we should let him get away with that? No? Then go get him, boys!*aside to Matt* I'd run if I were you.

Awww, it's so cool!!! The title doesn't give the story line away at all (lol) but this is indeed a fabulous poem (better than my attempts lol)

Your rhymes are really good and I think the metre works out (don't ask me seriously, I'm not a poet). My favourite part has to be the way in which you describe the sun, very original. Keep it up Kae, and I'll see you soon XD Thanks Guin, glad you liked it! If it didn't set off major alarm bells with regards to rhythm etc, then that's great too. I normally hate personification but that one was just asking to be written. Thanks for reading, see ya!

Oh, hush! You should see what I was proud of once upon a time. ^-~ It really isn't as bad as you make it sound. Sure, there are things off, but they don't make it a bad poem. They just make it a 'not yet perfect' poem, and that's quite a different thing.

You've been on my to-read list as well actually; the stupid thing just won't *empty*... It'd probably help if I didn't add to it every other day or stopped reading whole shelves... o_O Which I am planning on doing here. Reading the whole shelf that is. *ramble*

Er, drifting from the topic here... Point is, this poem is NOT horrible. It is NOT bad. Just not quite where it could be/where you want it t be. You've got the story and the rhyming skills.
And it's a nightmare to rewrite poetry. Which is why, despite loving seeing them torn apart myself, I'm not coming near mine regardless. ^-~

The malign thing is just that, as a replacement for 'seemed wrong' it just simply doesn't work. I do like the idea itself (beyond the personification thing that only really works if that's your intention, I think), though.Thanks. I needed that.Saying it's awful and wanting to torch it is just so much easier than bothering to rewrite it. The lighter is mightier than the pen!

Unaware are the sleeping people Firstly, hi and welcome! I’ve actually been meaning to stop by your shelf and read something for absolutely aaaaages now, firstly because I’ve heard only good things about your writing, but also, entirely selfishly, because I wanted to earn myself some of those fantabulous nitpicky comments for which you’re so famous. But then life happened, someone cleaned out my bookmarked to-read pages, and you beat me to it, for which I’m very grateful. I will be sure to return the favour as soon as I have a break from schoolwork.As for the formatting. *cringe* What can I say, this is what happens when one lets Word write one’s HTML. Since this poem I’ve made peace with the HTML gremlins, and the two poems that have been in the queue for three weeks now, and another three that are waiting to be posted, not only have better formatting, but are also hopefully stylistic improvements.Sometimes I get lazy and commit small crimes like the shone/wrong which is assonance in my accent, but in all likelihood, not in anyone else’s. (Crazy South Africans!) I have no idea how the night could malign but personification has always left me somewhat baffled, so perhaps outside of Kaeli- and Shanra-land, nights do all sorts of crazy things.For the first time in ages, I sat down and actually reread this poem, and I shudder to think that I actually wrote it. (And was proud of it at the time!) There are lots of things that disrupt the flow, and I cringed several times. If I don’t get too frustrated and just bin this, one day I might rework it, though given all the plentiful and sometimes conflicting advice, I shall probably end up doing exactly as I please. However detailed crits are always wonderful to know where the reader gets thrown off (after trying so many different options, I start saying things in the strangest ways just to get them to “work”) and for that I thank you.You’ve combined praise with deliciously helpful criticism, and I wish I had more commenters like you. Thanks a million!

WARNING: Mini-'rant' on poetry formatting before actual comment. Nitpicks come first, general comments at the end.

*twitch* Formatting. *twitch* No. I'm sorry, no. That format simple does not work. It upsets the rhythm, ruins the rhyme, makes every single line a stanza in its own right, it looks horrid and unprofessional (really, give me one single poetry book that has blank lines where they're not supposed to be present, I dare you) and it just utterly ruins otherwise perfectly enjoyable and good poetry.

And now that that's all over and done with, let's get to the actual poem. ^-~ Er, it's probably obvious, but I'm not going to enjoy this poem as much as I should/would if the formatting was fixed.

Really pretty, lyrical opening stanza there. Shone/wrong doesn't rhyme, though. I actually disagree with Brian's suggestion of 'maligns', simply because it means something completely different from 'seems wrong'. If you do use a thesaurus (or a foreign language - English dictionary) always look the word up in a proper English dictionary to make sure the meaning is the one you actually want.
"To make evil, harmful, and often untrue statements about; speak evil of." <- that's what 'to malign' means. I really don't see how the night can do that.

Inside of a dark mountain castle <- I know, I read, you've taken this out. Just want to point out that this isn't necessary grammatically wrong. Just uncommmon. It does work better without it, both because it's more common and because it creates a better flow. ^-^

A wicked and malevolent rascal, <- might want to rephrase 'malevolent' because of stress issues (and syllable count per line reasons), but don't quote me on the latter. I mix about as well with metre as water mixes with oil. It just flows awkwardly for me there.

*grins* i love 'Carpe Jugulum'. one of the best Granny Weatherwaxes i thought..

and the title made me giggle hehe. Though i can't help it, i love cliches...they make me laugh *shrugs helplessly*

So yeah, thought that it was about time i come visit you. and i know that you've got a lot on your plate and are too scared to tackle the large amount of comments, so are unlikely to even notice this one, but i couln't help it.

And if this is something you're ashamed of, then i really can't wait to read the rest. it's really good! but, i will wait for you to come back lol because i don't want to add too much to the pile of comments ^_^Woo! Thanks for reading - and for not swamping me with too many comments - both are much appreciated. =D Glad you liked it. Please poke me if I don't return the favour soon!Carpe Jugulum's also one of my favourites. *Passes round a warm, fresh batch of reserved-for-Pratchett-fans muffins*Thanks again.

Lo~ve it!Wish I could write poems like that. Alas, you have now ispired me to put up one of my own poems! I hope you'll look out for it. It won't be for another ten day though, since I've just submitted something. >_>