Lore/Story Futility Of A Dream

Futility of a Dream
A short poem, written by me.

A dream, fleeting and floating
A fantasy unwinds
from thoughts and doting
on all humanity's minds

Is it not better to sleep, to dream
than face our world's harsh reality?
As graceful as all dreams may seem,
they have no substance, no causality.

Here in the world, life's full of pain,
but accomplishments are earned
as are the achievements you gain
from the lessons you've learned.

The ecstasy of a dream by comparison is tame
and disappears as your thoughts churn.
From nothingness hollow dreams came,
and to that same nothingness they shall return.

 

Just my feedback, don't take it too seriously.

The first stanza's metre needs work - unless you're going for some abstract exposition, in which I'd like to see more emphasis on what your central theme is. As it stands, it's rather insubstantial and almost... guileless? The contrast with the other stanzas, whether intended or not, could be better delivered with another scheme (which I'll elaborate on later)

The second stanza does an okay job of introducing some sort of theme but it's rather jarring in the way it does it. I know it's a cliché, but "show / don't tell" is almost an integral part of Romantic poetry (which your poem brings to mind, for me) - and perhaps using that would be a more 'poetic' way of conveying your message. There's a few minor nitpicks in terms of metre - which, again, could just be me regularising a bit of free verse.

In my opinion, what you're trying to say in the third stanza could be done much more succinctly - and even integrated into your previous stanzas. It sounds like it's trying to bring some sort of reconciliation but the words ring hollow in a truer sense. I'm not sure if you even need to include this minor theme - but that's up to you; it's your poem. And again, I'd change a few things in regard to metre.

For me, the fourth stanza concludes abruptly and naively. It basically echoes your third stanza - and your ending sounds all nice and whatever, but for me it's too arrhythmic to have whatever effect you might've intended. I think a stronger continuation of your main message in the second stanza would be a better way to focus the overall poem. You might want to consider using the scheme of the Petrarchan Sonnet - a modified conclusion would serve well as a sestet. You can read more about that here, if you want.

But poetry's art, and necessarily subjective - so take from this what you will. If you like the poem as it is, then that's fine and there's no reason to change anything. Again, these are only my two cents. ​

 

Perhaps I should have said this up front, but I wrote this entire thing within the span of about 15 minutes on a random whim at 3am and spat it out onto here without much revision, so any serious feedback is a much-appreciated pleasant surprise.

Spoiler

While I could argue that the odd metre and insubstantiality reflect the idea of the emptiness and unpredictability of dreams - including how short-lived some can be - I see your point.

Again, I didn't pay too much mind to metre, and the addition/removal of a few unnecessary words could fix that issue rather easily.

I think I was trying way too hard to make the lines rhyme in this stanza, and left out one of the key ideas I had meant to include here - the idea that a reward is only worth as much as the effort put into obtaining it. Perhaps that's why this stanza feels hollow. And again, metre was not something I was thinking about late last night.

The abruptness of the end does reflect what the words say, in a sense. I think the fourth stanzas serves as an answer to the question proposed in the second stanza, which had been alluded to in the second half of that stanza, and also serves to show the counterpoint of the third stanza.

---

Basically, the setup I was gping for ran something like this:

What is a dream?

Why are they good or bad?

How do they compare to real life?

What, then, is a dream worth compared to real life?

The first stanza is short because there is not too much to be said of dreams - each is different and unique, but very few last for more than the night.

The second stanza asks why we dream, and why we live when we could dream instead.

The third answers the second by assigning value to that which we do in our waking hours,

while the fourth removals all traces of value from dreams, rendering them meaningless and futile, thus the title of the poem.

I agree that this poem needs quite a bit of work to more accurately convey those ideas, and I thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed criticism.