Young Writers Society

*cracks knuckles* Okay, let's delve into this review.

The first thing I noticed was the tone of the poem, which reminded me of Biblical poems, or Epic Poems, but it was way too short to be either, which was one thing that I found was to my disliking. Anyway, onward.

Another thing I didn't like about this was the narration all too well. The way it's worded, it seems like it's supposed to be upbeat, but instead it seems rather solemn, which i didn't think was a good twist to put on to it. I was figuring something to be about God from the title, but I feel as if you took a rather deep concept and just.. Left it there? I felt as if there could have been more imagery divining god rather than listing things to do and what God can do for you.

That's one thing I've noticed in a lot of poems, hymns, and gospel music, is that they take one of the most bottomless ideas of mankind, and just drop it in a bucket. They don't expand on it in the ways of imagery, they just say it's endless and great and really don't go into great detail on how great it is without resorting to bland,"He did this."

I would really enjoy to see this idea grow into something bottomless. I want to read this idea and think,"Huh, what if he did this or that?" But instead I'm left with this list and I don't really get anything supernatural from it, and that was one thing that I didn't like.

You also don't have to capitalize every word at the beginning, or use proper punctuation- but that's strictly preference, I would just figure i would mention it.

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say on this one, and I hope it helped.

Keep on doing what you're doing.

Sincerely, Casanova.

Hi DoubleRiders,

I thought I would take a look at this as it's been sitting in the Green Room without a review for 5 days now. Now, the reason why I think nobody has reviewed it is this reads like a personal prayer. It's tough to approach something religious with a critical eye. On that basis, it is worth saying I am not religious, and consider myself to be agnostic.

Here are some suggested improvements if you look to move this to another draft:

Pronouns

A significant number of words in your poem are pronouns, or otherwise nouns referring to people: me, thee, our, brother, my friend, Him, It, My Lord, My God, Our Father. It is first confusing to use so many variants of similar nouns, especially near the end of the poem, where you use "my dearest brother" and then "Our Brother's" on adjacent lines. I have to be honest and say I got lost understanding who was who in the poem. When capitalised, I assume it is in reference to Jesus Christ or God, but I have to admit even with that to guide me, it can become unclear who is who. I would suggest reducing the number of pronouns, the variety of pronouns, and be clearer with your voice. There's a lot of "my friend"s and "my brother"s which I think you could eliminate and not lose much.

Forced rhymes

Rhyming poetry can be powerful when used well. At the moment, I think you are actually losing power by forcing some lines to rhyme. It is causing some of your lines to suffer. For example:

The climb ahead seems long and the cross a heavy weight,

But we would be soldiers only by name if at the first sign of suffering, we took flight!

These are both two of your weakest lines, because you are crowbarring in flight to rhyme with weight (not to mention that weight and flight are only half-rhymes, which also ruins the effect). There are some other times you do this too, to the point where the sentence barely makes sense e.g. "the punishment of our sins destroy!".

The other problem is you are decided to rhyme your lines, but your metre is not as tight as it could be. There is some pattern of metre, but it gets lost often and also right at the start with the "Drip... Drip... Drip...". Now, I don't think metre is necessary for poetry. But I do think if you're using rhymes that metre takes on more importance, or the way the poem reads suffers.

No concrete place, setting or development of character

Now, this could be the feedback you feel is not helpful. If this is not a poem for general consumption, it may be worth ignoring. But if you do want this to have a wider readership, I think you need to consider tying the abstract feelings here to something concrete. Right now, this poem takes places in a vacuum. It is unclear where the characters are experiencing this, or anything about the characters. I don't think those elements are always necessary for a poem, but to have nothing concrete leaves the poem feeling like hot air that will just disappear. If you give it shape, some boundaries, some defined edges, then maybe that hot air is then stuck in a balloon, and that balloon can maybe take people with you to wherever it is you want them to go.

Okay, that was a laboured metaphor, but hopefully it helps sell my point.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with any further drafts!

Jack