zodiac9 Dec 2005

Okay, here's the score: I've been trying for ages now to write you some good advice for your poem and I'm tired now and it's driving me crazy. The short of it is, I think you're good and I'm so glad to have you on the site. But I think you need to work a lot harder on the technical side of this poem. Don't misunderstand me, I have no problem with your message or plot. I like it. The telling needs fixing, though. Here are some basic rules that can help guide your rewriting and future writing:

1. Do not use "doth". Especially don't use it just for rhythm, which is what you're using it for.

2. Do not do what we call "inversion"; that is, writing a sentence backwards so you get the rhyming word, usually the verb, last. Some examples of this from your poem are "While this earth with love You save", "The Lord indeed doth promise keep", "Next morning, I, the road did cross", and so on. Obviously, you'd normally say "While you save this earth with love", "The Lord doth keep his promises", and "Next morning, I crossed the road". Yes, it's harder to get the rhyme that way. Poetry writing is hard. Rather than trying to rhyme "love", "promises" and "road" instead, I'd suggest using a technique we call "enjambment" - running the phrase through the end of the line. This way, lines like

Next morning, I, the road did cross
Surprisingly I had a toss

become

Next morning, early, while I crossed
the road I had a frightful toss.

- Or something such. See what I mean? If not, let me know and I'll try again.

3. Pay attention to the grammar and punctuation connecting lines or thoughts. What I'm thinking of is lines like

While this earth with love You save
On us who doth with anger rave

If you write it out as a paragraph you get "While this earth with love you save on us who doth with anger rave." Or, the Lord saves *ON* us. That's not real grammar. It's easy enough to fix, just do like I suggested and write everything out as a paragraph to check. You see pretty quickly that you'd have done better to "for" or "and" instead of "on".

4. What's really going on is that many of your phrases aren't 100% relevant or connected to what you're saying at the time - or rather, you end up fitting them in in a way that's distracting or confusing because you need the rhyme. Sure, they're all connected in that they're about God's love and God really does save all the people who rave and so on, but that make a really untight and confusing poem. Um, I'll say it this way: A lot of your rhymes are too often used to make this a compelling or very precise poem, so there's no reason to fight to keep them. I would start working (and I mean really WORKING) to find new rhymes that don't require distracting or unnecessary ideas, phrases, or grammar inversion. I'm sorry to tell you it's going to be hard, that it'll take a lot of frustration to do well, but I can tell you've got the smarts to pull it off. Don't give up. And don't ignore my advice, please. People are going to tell you this is a great poem. It's a good story and a good Christian message coming from a good heart - I agree. But just like there are people who are only going to look at the story and faith side of this, there need to be people who only look at the grammar and structure side. If you listen to BOTH of us, you're going to come off better. Good luck. If you have any questions, just ask.

zodiac