In my honest opinion, this could use a lot of work. Overall, it's got a good message but the way it's worded right now could use some work. The first thing you should do-
"Why did you lay a doubtful stare,
why did you try to pick a flare.
Fingers pointing, minds whirling,
anger burning, arms striking."
1. Don't use questions. They make your pieces weaker.
2. Don't force rhymes. "doubtful stare, pick a flare?" doesn't really make sense.
3."Whirling/striking" is a slant rhyme and doesn't really work in this piece unless you use slant rhymes as the entire rhyme scheme rather than a natural rhyme/slant rhyme rhythm (which you don't stick to either) In this stanza you use a AA, Bb (lowercase letters from me indicates a slant rhyme)
"Battered and torn, I was almost gone.
You must be happy, to see me all alone.
No, I don't need your pity and neither sympathy.
I don't need your help and never your falsity."
1. Overuse of smaller words. I.e. this could be better phrased "battered and torn, I was almost gone/ you must be happy, to see me all alone" as battered and torn and almost gone; / must be nice to see me alone. "No, I don't need your pity and neither sympathy/ i don't need your help and never your falsity." may work better as: I don't need pity, sympathy; I don't need help or falsity.
2. Deviation from original rhyme scheme.. Here it is Aa, Bb
"Hositility- come what may, I will bear it all the way.
Judgements hurled, which painfully stay,
In my mind for the rest of my days.
Dissovle the shame and curb that jealousy,
tend your own life before it sways."
1. You deviate from the rhyme scheme again. Here it is AAAaA.. I would definitely consider fixing this because it makes your poem really choppy and slightly difficult to read.
One example of how I would personally word this last stanza is as follows (you obviously don't have to do it this way)
I will bear hositility, come what may,
tho I remember for the rest of days..
Dissovle the shame and curb the jealousy;
tend your life before it sways completely.
This isn't the best example I can come up with but it is only that- an example. It itself is not a wonderful one. I'd also suggest that you try to avoid the use of the word 'you' in poems because it can make a writer come across as hostile or whiny (not all the time, but a lot of the time) and using "I" in poetry seems to really allow a reader to get involved in the poem more completely than the 2nd point of view.
While I grasp the general concept here, it's hard for me to see much more past the devotion to christ and I think you could probably evoke stronger feelings by doing a few simple things. The first thing- spellcheck. "howel" should be 'howl,' "cover" should be 'cower.' The second thing is that I don't think it is necessary for you to use Christ throughout the poem. Honestly, you could probably simply eliminate the word "christ" from the poem and replace it with 'he' since the title of the poem and the description lets the readers know what it is the poem was written about. The next thing to do is to combine some of the stanzas. For example:
" Christ is a friend that sticks closer than a brother
when it seems that not even your closest friend or
your brother cares
Christ is the comforter of my weary and weak soul
through the times that temptation comes calling and
It would be easy to give in"
If you replace Christ with He... an example of combining these two particular stanzas would be this:
He is a friend, closer than a brother,
when it seems not even your closet
friend or your brother cares. He is the
comforter of my weak and weary soul
through the times that temptation calls.
If you notice, I've eliminated some words and changed the structure of the original poem in order to make it flow a little more smoothly. Be careful that you don't overstate something. The original lines "Christ is the comforter of my weary and weak soul through the times that temptation comes calling and it would be easy to give in" is very overstated. The reader can tell that it's easy to give into temptation when you use the phrase "weak and weary" (which, by the way, doesn't really work as weary and weak because the stronger adjective should always come first). This means that the last part of it "and it would be easy to give in" is redundant and unneeded.
My suggestion would to go back through this, combine the stanzas, and eliminate as many repeitive phrases and ideas as you can in order to make it a piece with a stronger impact. You are obviously free to disregard this criticism, but I thought I would be honest and share my thoughts on this poem. Which, in essence, doesn't have a bad theme- it just a needs a bit of structural work.
I liked this overall but there is one thing that bothers me about this. And that is that the lines are so short. A lot of these stanzas could easily be combined into one rather than elongated this way. I think combining them would make this piece more powerful because right now it reads as fragmented and disjointed. If that was the way you intended, then it came out well, but in my opinion it causes the piece to lose its spark about halfway through. Just some thoughts!
I enjoyed this poem. There are only a couple lines that bothered me. The first line was "forms the velvet backdrop of my soul I savor." At first glance, I love this image, it's a beautiful one. My problem is honestly only with the word "my" here because it's fairly obvious from the lines preceeding this one that it is 'your' soul so it becomes redundant, in my opinion. All that needs to be done there is to replace 'my' with 'the.' The other line that bothers me is "but might soon set this country boy's head to spinning" because it disrupts the rhythm of the rest of the piece. I think eliminating the phrase "country boy's" will help keep the flow and I think the 'country-boy' part is easily alluded to in the first stanza of the poem so there is no need to reiterate that fact. Just some thoughts!
Good point. Definitely an intriguing way to interpret the importance of parentheses both in real life and in writing. I think that parentheses also give a certain accent, a certain spice to both writing and life and that to ignore it is to miss the point entirely and maybe even something special in your life or the writing that we read. Great insight.
I love that this poem flows so well but there are a couple things that you can do in order to make it even stronger. The comma you use in the first stanza, fourth line, is unnecessary and disrupts the pattern of flow you establish throughout the poem. The fourth stanza is slightly awkward with the lines "What matters most is each to bring/a chapter to life's story" because while it does end in a nice flow the first line "what matters most is each to bring" is a slightly awkward way to phrase this. An example of an alternative line would be "Each one of us to God should bring" or something along that context- something that just flows a little better.
Wow. That's really about all I can say to this. There's so much angst and this is so well written that even if there were errors, I'm too caught up in the way that you so purely express the emotional turmoil here that they don't really matter much. Very well written.
I really enjoyed this piece although I was saddened that the parson chose Doroleen over his wife because the two of them may have been able to work it out. Because in the end he gave into temptation despite being so dependent on God throughout the rest of the story. He never voiced the wish about his wife, but once it came true and his wife heard that he'd stayed silent about it, the two of them never once sat down and tried to talk about it. And that to me shows that their marriage wasn't very strong because of such a lack of communication with the other. The whole story he acts selflessly and his wife selfishly and then in the end it suddenly switches and he acts for himself and she lets him go, which is selfless. This was a very moving story and although I don't agree with the message, it is very well written and enjoyable.
I enjoyed the content of this particular poem but I think there are quite a few things that you can do in order to make it stronger. The first thing that can be improved upon is the spelling. I was confused for the first few lines because you forgot that the type of "to" you are using here requires two 'o's rather than one. Some line breaks would also help make the piece stronger overall but there are a few other things that should be addressed first. The line "I hope to have found a more just one beyond" doesn't make sense. Maybe there's a word there you didn't mean to put there? Or maybe it's missing a word? But it by itself doesn't work well and it makes the piece a bit awkward. Also you use the passive tone a lot and it might make more of an impact to switch to a more active tone. Saying "though I knew it not at the time" is very passive and it just sort of falls flat. Something like "Although I didn't know it then" is a bit more active and isn't as awkward as the original. Just some thoughts. Hope it helps!
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