Seeing Through the Eyes of Faith

Hi DoubleRiders, here to review another one of your poems for Review Day.

SO I don't mind the formal language for a poem/prayer like this - as this is how some people are most comfortable praying anyways. It's a bit difficult to understand as an average reader, and I don't really know what the word "oblation" means - but overall it's fine.

You use mostly imagery that is fairly familiar with Christian audiences - darkness vs lightness, heavens, calvary, oceans - I think you could push yourself to do a few that are a bit more "out of the box" or maybe use some of the old images in new ways. Because without something new or something that grabs the audience emotionally, it's more of a prayer than poetry. An eloquent prayer itself is fine, more than fine, it's beautiful - but not quite poetry if that makes sense.

The main message I'm getting is that the speaker is trying to come to terms with someone's earthly death and is trying to find hope and comfort from looking at the cross and the hope of eternal life.

Some inconsistencies: In one place you capitalized "eternal" and then uncapitalized it elsewhere - I know they're used in different senses, but not all readers will catch that, and might get hung up on the inconsistency.

One main area where you could work a bit on is

Line length consistency
this poem feels a bit all over the place for line length, and that can hurt the flow when you've already got a nice rhyme scheme going on.

Extended metaphors
Some your extended metaphor language specifically the lines using 'hearts' doesn't quite make sense -> try visualizing each line (not each sentence, but each line) and see what happens. For instance "On calvary we present into thy hands our heart"
so much going on here that's just taken for granted/logical steps are being skipped - > is the speaker on calvary presenting their heart? are only the hands on calvary? why would they hand a heart to someone who has their hands nailed to a cross so they can't recieve it.

You see what I mean? Just go through following each line, and then maybe each image, and see if you can clean up the continuity a bit more. I think that'll especially help readers who maybe aren't as familiar with these traditional Christian images.

I hope you keep up the religious poetry! Looking forward to your next poem! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about my review.

~alliyah

This sort of writing reminds me some what of the Apostle Paul, John, and probably also Peter would write. It reads like a prayer. It might be too personal of a question to ask, but what do you mean by 'victim souls'? I really enjoyed reading this - thank you for posting this!

Hey there, DoubleRiders, 'Tato here for a review.


I just wanted to say, I know that death is hard to deal with. Your piece speaks VOLUMES!!!! I love the line that says "And when it comes to our time to immerse into His vast ocean of love, Show us to the place where together we can adore Him with all those already above." While your writing style is simple, it is not bland. It is extravagant! I guess there is nothing here for me to critique. I will just say GREAT job, and keep up the FANTASTIC work. i look forward to reading more pieces by you! Happy Writings! And again, good job!:D 'Tato out.