Ranger12 May 2006

Devotional poems are difficult to write. They're like love poems except that they won't get someone into bed with you. Therefore, if they're for public reading, they have to be superb. A good start would be making it not your prayer. If it's for public reading, the reader is going to want to be able to include theirself in the reading. Usually that means following the golden rule of poetry: 'Show, don't tell'. It also means following the second golden rule of poetry: 'Never rhyme "love/above/dove" in anything'. Seriously. You will not find a more overused rhyme in the English language, and readers want innovation, not more of the same. Using the 'love/above' rhyme twice in one poem is bordering on being a criminal offence.

General points over, now to the poem itself. Well firstly it's fairly obvious that this is something you're pretty passionate about: that is a good start. However, the content doesn't live up to this. For one thing, you use 'I' 8 times, 'me' 5 times, and 'my' 5 times in 20 lines (that's assuming I counted right; not a certainty). That isn't conducive to letting the reader give it their own 'personal' reading. Cut down on pronoun usage in poetry as much as possible, otherwise not only does it limit the reader, but it also gets repetitive.
I have to admit that I didn't work out the rhyme scheme at first (rhymes aren't my strong point) but on a second reading I saw the reversal and symmetry; that was good, although it would have been better with more variety in the middle - 'new' and 'renew' suggests you were struggling a little. Also, 'I want a heart that is new' doesn't really sound very poetic. To make it more interesting you could go along the lines of 'I seek a heart [do you really want a new heart though?] renewed' (I know you've already used 'renew', but I don't want to tell you which words to write).

Umm...I can't really think of much at the moment so I'll leave it there rather than risk getting something spectacularly wrong and making an arse of myself. Welcome to poemranker, and I hope these suggestions are useful.