Young Writers Society

Hey there albert.

There's a lot of parts of this poem that are bothering me but I think I’ll start by dealing with the rhyme scheme. I think this might have been labeled as lyrical (way back whenever) because a lot of the basis for the poem was functioning on the rhyme scheme. With how much you were depending on that aspect to work out, I’m really wondering why it didn’t go that far and wasn’t consistent when you came to some of the hiccups. I see no reason for them to be purposeful so from my perspective it mainly looks like a big mistake, which is hurting the poem far more than helping it.

Each time I ride your waters, memories fill my cup.
Though my wife was taken by your fearful might,
I stay brave and loyal, for this is an ocean's rite.

In the first stanza, this out of place word is: cup. It’s hard enough to fit your word choice into the theme but there’s absolutely no way to connect it to the rhyme. I saw a heavy use of forced rhyme in the second stanza, but I’m letting that slide for a bit. There was obviously a lot of effort put into making this poem coherent. So for the most part, going mainly from the content standpoint, it does pull that off. It’s just the style and formatting that throw me off so far that the other parts of the poem aren’t really visible.

This is one of the most frequent problems I come across and in your case the technical details probably won’t take that much work. Looking at everything going on in the content, I think it’s definitely a good start. The next big issue is on the imagery which has a very religious tilt to it and I don’t think that’s what you were going for. Some parts of it are sounding purposeful but the other part is coming back down to unfortunate word choice. At least from my standpoint.

Blessed waters, my sole provider! These songs I sing everyday.

Like this line sounds purposeful to me and it probably is based on everything I've studied religious imagery. I am half wondering if you wanted "sole" versus "soul" because both would work for the references to a god.

Day by day I need not fear,
for your hands offer fish a plenty.

This one is also purposeful but I don't like how the two types of imagery mix. That kind of makes me question some parts of the message? There's an overall lack on consistency with all the different elements going on here.

So I guess that's all that I have to say for now.
Happy October!