Life On Rapids

[ireland4scots]

Going down a river, Water smashing against rock,
Nowhere to turn to, But only downstream
Into Chaos.

My boat tossed back and forth, My paddle nearly snapped,
Into the white foam I go, Not knowing if I’ll come back.
I go all about, twist, turns and all,
Nowhere else to turn to,
But only inside, Where optimism still lies,
And where dreams seem to prosper.

Hope is all I cling to, and endurance keeps me free,
For if I give up now, my dreams will be smashed
Into Smithereens.

Past all the obstacles I go, Freedom in my grasp.
The trial is now over, but I still can not relax,
For life on rapids is not easy, But only challenges to be held,
Rewarded with only achievement, Which is worth more than gold itself.

[Malu]

Going down a river, Water smashing against rock, Why is "Water" capitalized? When all it did was follow a comma. And water smashing on rocks, that's probably not the image everyone gets from thinking of rapids, oh wait it kind of is. If this is "Life on Rapids" I would think that it would be a more important hobby or aspect of your life, give a more personal description. What does that water look like to you? What does it make you feel?
Nowhere to turn to, But only downstream Same thing here, "But" capitalized after a comma, why? And I can imagine there is only one way to go in rapids, the second part of this line doesn't need to be mentioned for us to still know where you're headed.
Into Chaos. I don't think "Chaos" needs to be capitalized, or even stated. Rapids are pretty chaotic in nature, so why state the obvious.

My boat tossed back and forth, My paddle nearly snapped, "My" shouldn't be capitalized after a comma.
Into the white foam I go, Not knowing if I’ll come back. Again, don't capitalize after the comma. And white foam is extremely generic and uncreative.
I go all about, twist, turns and all,
Nowhere else to turn to, You go all about twist and turns, only to have nowhere else to turn to. Interesting.
But only inside, Where optimism still lies, Again with the capitalization after a comma. I'm starting to think you get commas confused with periods, or at least have no idea what a comma is.
And where dreams seem to prosper.

Hope is all I cling to, and endurance keeps me free,
For if I give up now, my dreams will be smashed
Into Smithereens. Yes, a stanza with no capitalizations after a comma! However, I don't think you need to capitalize smithereens, which is also a generic word for this.

Past all the obstacles I go, Freedom in my grasp. I knew it couldn't be over, why is "Freedom" capitalized? After a comma!
The trial is now over, but I still can not relax, can't instead of "can not" would read better.
For life on rapids is not easy, But only challenges to be held, Yay, more incorrect capitalization after a comma.
Rewarded with only achievement, Which is worth more than gold itself. And of course the last line proves to be like the rest of the poem.

If you couldn't tell by my bold comments, seeing the same error in a lot of lines is irritating. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt by thinking those words were capitalized for emphasis, but some of those words are "which, but, my, where, not" so there goes that. The imagery was nothing new, which leads to the other issue I had. Which is that any novice to master whitewater river rafter, or whatever title you want, could have written this. Probably someone who just sat on the banks of the river could have written this. Someone who grew up in a desert could have written this. What I'm saying is that there wasn't any personal connection to this activity. I didn't get any sense of what you felt or what river rafting does for you. If this really is "Life on Rapids" it should have much more personal connections and meanings. I didn't see anything that made this your poem, this doesn't have much of a difference from other poems written about this activity, or at least no differences from the generic ones.

[Viktor Vaughn]

Overall, the poem itself has a simple, generic idea (life is a river sort of thing), and there isn't too much originality with the word choices either.
I do like the structure, and how it remains consistent. I also like the rhymes, with "snapped" and "back", and then another with "grasp" and "relax". I think you could have gotten more creative with your words if you had tried to rhyme more, and it would help the flow a bit better as well. I'm not one for over-rhyming, but with a poem like this, and the simple idea, good rhyming would add a lot more to the quality of it.

[drithebee]

I have a problems with lines 6-9 in the second stanza. The lines sound disconnected and awkward. The phrasing an the structure could use further experimentation. As the audience I found it hard to travel through the poem without a constant rhythm. Could it be that the structure of the poem is meant to mimic that of rough, inconstant waters? I'm not averse to providing feedback yet, so I could be completely missing something.

[Keaner222]

I completely agree that lines 6-9 seem to lose a rhyme scheme. I read it aloud to myself and was confused. I recommend that you rework those. Other then that I really enjoyed it. The first and third stanza are very nicely put together.

[lainey]

I couldn't parse the conceit, so I'll just read this literally.

Going down a river, Water smashing against rock, capital W?
Nowhere to turn to, But only downstream Nowhere to turn but downstream
Into Chaos. Towards Chaos. You never make clear what this chaos is, could be an interesting development.

My boat tossed back and forth, My paddle nearly snapped, This image is expected, I want to be surprised!
Into the white foam I go, Not knowing if I’ll come back.
I go all about, twist, turns and all,
Nowhere else to turn to, unnecessary repetition
But only inside, Where optimism still lies,
And where dreams seem to prosper. Ending each stanza in abstraction isn't working for this poem

Hope is all I cling to, and endurance keeps me free,
For if I give up now, my dreams will be smashed
Into Smithereens.

Past all the obstacles I go, Freedom in my grasp.
The trial is now over, but I still can not relax,
For life on rapids is not easy, But only challenges to be held,
Rewarded with only achievement, Which is worth more than gold itself.
I still have no clue as to what reason your narrator has put him/herself in this danger. Is the purpose of his life just to survive?

[nhanna1223]

Found this poem predictable, exactly what I would expect to read. Was waiting for a twist or turn to it. Its decent, just predictable!