Grace

It's cliche.

What's more to say with so few lines?

None of the lines embrace me, engage me, give me the visceral, let me experience; they're full of presupposed assumptions. The title itself is lacking anything to help a reader connect beyond seeing what one wants; l'art pour l'art without something I can find...depth in.

For what it's worth I approached this without any pre-disposition to anything, as I always do. Show me those mountains. Show the wrestles with angels. Show the hellish embraces; create experiences. Avoid short poetry for such heady writing; don't be afraid to take this to longer lengths.

How should I word this. It's not bad, there is proper grammar and I liked your choice of words, but none of this excites me. Like MeanMrMustard said, it's cliched. I've seen this before.

Also, I have no idea of what you're trying to make as your point. I'll admit, I do enjoy poems that leave room to be built upon, but your poem seems to not tell me enough, and does it in a way that I can't build on.

The title really doesn't reflect what the poem's about. Yes, the word grace is in the poem. I think you could have just gotten a better name for it, possibly longer and less cliched.

Which leads me on to my next point, you didn't elaborate enough. You can make this longer and I think it would have been better this way.

I refuse to sum everything up so I'll just say bye.



Bye.

Hi Hayden!

I know this is going to sound awful, but I would really like to see this piece expanded on a bit. For example, as it is, there is all the makings of something good, but it seems a bit hollow right now.

Uh... let me explain.

Fallen is what I am. Redemption is what I seek.
I’ll wrestle every angel, and climb the highest peak
To find what can’t be found in any hell’s embrace.

So this is good because you're telling a story that is very personal and which has a lot of inherent conflict in it. Plus, you have the threat of hell, the torturous struggle out... it's a good thing! However, the next line is a bit of a non sequitar:

If I could have one thing, it would be Your grace.

I mean, it's not bad, but it kind of ends the conflict before you flesh out and develop it. I do like the lingering thoughts, but I want more. There are so many good poems that talk about the struggle toward God... Dante's Divine Comedy, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress strike my head for starters. And then you have the other, shorter poems like Donne's poetry (I like Holy Sonnet 14,) and so on. What make these poems great, as opposed to just a passing thing, is that we can feel the struggle toward God. And it's a beautiful thing.

So definitely keep this in mind and see if you can develop this poem further.

I'll expand the poem... or not. : )

I like it the way it is. I like the simplicity and I wrote it with a message that was powerful to me. It's not my fault if you don't get it the way I do.

Hi there, Hayden.

Technically, it is your fault as a writer if a reader doesn’t quite get what you're talking about. I’m going to pick at this despite your stating you won’t change anything because you made the choice to put it on a critiquing site, and this is what we do on a critiquing site—we critique. Besides, I think it’s very easy for people to look at a piece with either an inspirational message or some form of risqué material (read Christian writings and poems about girls with bad attitudes) and just melt into its arms without even considering that it needs quality as well, which this rather lacks. With that said, let’s dive in.

Let’s begin with the easy stuff and work our way up. First off, nix the capitalized “To” in line three—it’s not necessary to capitalize the first letter of each line, and lots and lots of people think it is. You write poetry either with correct grammar or no grammar at all, unless it’s completely intentional, in which case you should want to defend your choice.

If you’re going to do a poem with rhyme and rhythm, it needs to be spot-on, or it’s a turn-off for the reader. Or should be, at least. Look at this:

Fallen is what I am. Redemption is what I seek. (13)
I’ll wrestle every angel, and climb the highest peak (13 or 14, depending on how you pronounce ‘every’—14 if pronounced correctly)
to find what can’t be found in any hell’s embrace. (12)
If I could have one thing, it would be Your grace. (11)

So there’s no pattern, no setup that makes it appealing in rhythm. I’ll give you points, however, in using rhyme well, despite only having two rhymes—they’re good and don’t feel too forced…

…except for the second pair. I’ve been around the church circle long enough to know how easy it is to plug grace into a poem or song when you have ‘face’ or ‘race’ or ‘space’ or ‘embrace’ floating around. It’s natural for a Christian, I think, because it’s one of those church words that mean something different to Christians than most people. So, in this regard, you’ve shown yourself no more a brilliant, impacting writer than the six-year-old girl scribbling “Jesus loves me—this I know for the Bible tells me so” on her Sunday School drawing of David and the sheep. And since this couplet of rhymes embodies the poem, I suggest playing with it.

Anyway, if I were being embraced by hell, I imagine I would request a few things—rescue, water, a flame-retardant vest—before asking for grace. Given that, I want to see what kind of hells are embracing you. And since I want to see that, I’m going to second-and-third the other two reviewers who’ve given thorough feedback in saying that it needs expansion. It won’t be easy, but it will give you power—and power is something that I think all people with inspirational pieces need. If you want to evangelize, then you need to appeal to your harshest critic. If you want to inspire, then you need to connect. This piece doesn’t do either of those things for me because I can’t see anything or feel anything. They’re a mere four lines building up to a point made before I even opened the thread…which brings me to the title.

If you’re not going to have originality anywhere else, for god’s sake please have it in the title! It makes me a sad Lumi when I see such gray, blobby things floating around, especially when they come from those who claim to have divine inspiration. Make the title clever. Make it appealing.

And there are more things that I could pick apart here, but I doubt you’d take it into consideration.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

-Lumi

Nice Job!!!! It's me paige btw. Lol.

HaydenSmith wrote:I'll expand the poem... or not. : )

I like it the way it is. I like the simplicity and I wrote it with a message that was powerful to me. It's not my fault if you don't get it the way I do.

Fine, we'll just as happily not help you try and connect to the rest of your audience; writers who openly refuse to listen to criticism in a public manner need a reality check. Your reader is just as important, if not MORE important than your writing itself.

I appreciate the help, but I’m not going to change it.

Connect with my audience? It already has connected with multiple people and I am proud of my work and how successful it has turned out to be.

More people have expressed their desire for me to keep it the way it is. I'm not being ignorant, I’ve just realized that there are many people that really understood what I was trying to get across in my poem and preferred that I not change it.

I can’t please every critic and I won’t bend to please them. I wrote this primarily for a Christian audience, too. Wrestling angels, climbing mountains, and seeking redemption and grace are all alluding to specific Biblical stories and the search for God and receiving His aid and grace. There’s a much bigger picture behind this story that most of my audience has recognized and enjoyed. Mission accomplished.

Again, I appreciate your help, but after I mentioned to the lot of you that I would change it, I realized I didn’t have to and I didn’t need to. : )

:O my jaw just dropped open on that one. Haha, it's still ooooopen!!!! anyways. I love that. That's all I can say

GREAT JOB AND KEEP WRITING!!!!!!!!

Lotsa love,
~Kat

Wow, this is really, really amazingly good!
Deep and touching, and even though it's short it's far from simple and you've managed to capture emotion and deliver your message even though you've only written four lines! Nice job!

* You've used great structure!
* The flow is impeccable
* You deliver your message in a very good way - this has got meaning!
* I barely noticed the rhyming because they were so smooth and like miles away from forced, but the fact that you've used them eased the flow and increased the awesomness with this even more!
* No grammatic errors!

- This is just sort of Perfect!

Fallen is what I am. Redemption is what I seek.
I’ll wrestle every angel, and climb the highest peak
To find what can’t be found in any hell’s embrace. - I love this line, it's like it's hopeful yet there is no hope!
If I could have one thing, it would be Your grace.

You get all five of my icky, sticky spiders for this!

Good Luck & Keep Writing

// Demoness

An incredible, yet short, poem. It all just sort of has this beautiful, effortless, aspect to it, although I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. Great work, loved it! Short and sweet was definitely the way to go for this poem!

Wow... I'm speechless. Very profound and very awe inspiring.

I just have a question. The poem wasn't terrible, it wasn't great, either, as many people have said. I could sit here and tell you what to do with it linguistically or grammatically or what vocabulary would strengthen the meaning but then it wouldn't be your work anymore, and I think enough people have given you advice already. So. As previously stated, I. Just. Have. A. Question.



What is it that you are talking about can't be found in any hell's embrace, and what is your understanding of a "hell"?

Also, after people told you to consider their criticisms, you replied by saying you are proud of your poem's "success"...

You are on a website that is meant for new writers, has no prerequisites, and a few people liked it on said website. What success is it that you see? Also, the majority of the people who were enthralled by this poem happened to be under the age of 16. I'd explain but I think with a little thought you'll catch my point.

AND, most importantly, if you don't learn to appreciate the criticism of people who are OVER the age considered by the legal community as "juvenile", then you won't ever get anywhere as a writer and you will completely and utterly fail. But, if your reference point for success is based off of gaining a few underage fans on a free website, I might be wrong about that.

Alright everyone, let me clear up this whole issue, before people start snapping at me some more.

I didn't mean for my comment to be rude. I really do appreciate criticism on my work. You guys have no idea how much I appreciate it.

The problem was after I told a whole group of people that I was going to change my poem, I received a swarm of messages begging me not to. I got a lot of different advice at once. I was telling some people one thing and other people different things. It was all very messy, so I thought I would just let everyone on the thread know that I wasn't going to change it, no matter what.

It ended up sounding very offensive and I apologize.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone and I really do appreciate helpful criticism. : )