Thread: Honor Hoped For

The earnest painful longing of desired encouragement
that these earthbound mortal moments
may yet produce harvests of eternal significance:

Trudge through the swamp of repeated pitiful failures,
march on through the thick restraining overgrowth
that the thorny branches of this stage of life not divert the journey.
Be strong in faithful perserverance towards the open, warm, and nourishing pastures of our intended destiny.

May the forthcoming recollections of this age bring humble honor.
May each failure yield repentant and learned fruits of steady growth.
May each day's labor be prudently invested in the continual sowing of righteousness and grace in abundance.

Amidst the ever present cursed burden of this age that would detain the soul in ignorant denial or flight,
hold to such pursuits of honor, yielding peace and life to the beloved of heart.

Welcome, JBlanton. I love your message, and while I found your wording poetic, your line breaks need to be shortened to avoid seeming overly prosaic. The caps every line save L3 in S1 are distracting and the colon at the end of S1 really should be a period. I simply adore the imagery of S2. I was not too fond of every line in S3 beginning with may, a little rewording may be in order there. I will break the first stanza for you, although it's fine if you hate it and ignore me. Here goes:

The earnest painful longing
of desired encouragement
that these earthbound
mortal moments
may yet produce harvests
of eternal significance.

Of course, you could go for longer lines, you may find this too choppy to suit your own taste, your piece, your choice. I enjoyed this, and hope this helps.

Best,
Lisa

Thank you so much for your feedback, Lisa. By the way, you are the very first person that has ever reviewed and commented on any of my poems, so I really appreciate it!

The caps comment makes a lot of sense to me.

But I'm stuck on a few of your other points, and, as I have had no formal training or education in poetry, I would really like to better understand what you were thinking/feeling. I think perhaps I may overly value structure and logic, but I'm not sure on anything really. Mainly a few questions:
- Can you describe why you thought the flow of the poem would be improved by breaking it up into smaller groups of phrases?
- The first stanza introduces the thought, but are you saying that the colon is redundant or too explicit?

Actually, as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I am probably asking too much, so I'll stop with that. Please forgive me if I overstep propriety in responding to what you have freely offered. Thanks again for the much appreciated detailed feedback. (And nice to electronically meet you!)

'Tis a great honor to be the very first to have commented on your work and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance also. Ask as many questions as you need to, but please, hon, keep in mind that what I said is my opinion only, and I am only one person, others may disagree. Like you, I had no formal education or training in poetry, everything I now know, I learned here. I'll give you the standard advice offered to all beginners, READ, as much as you can, of published works and the pieces here. It really works wonders, I know, it's how I learned. Be sure to also read the replies and after a while it all starts sinking in. I think I may have jumped the gun a bit with suggesting you shorten your line length, longer lines are fine also, I prefer shorter ones, but again I am only one person. But the three lines stretching across the page are visually displeasing and scream prose, at least to me. Those three, you should break in half. If you are content with the others that's fine. Line breaks are used to make readers pause, to reflect or what have you, we use them as tools for our pieces to be read as we would like them to be. As for caps, using them every line is old school, some prefer them. Most, however, use them only at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns as they can result in unwelcome pauses which disrupt your flow. It is our habit to recognize a cap as the beginning of a new thought. As for that colon, it's a little bit of both. Your introductory stanza is the same as an opening paragraph, I think a period is sufficient. Punctuation is not my greatest strength, so if I'm incorrect, I hope someone comes along to correct me. If I can be of any further assistance, please don't be shy to inquire, we are here to help one another in our never ending pursuit of poetic perfection. Which I've come to believe may be a myth. There's always room for improvement in any given piece. Again, welcome aboard.

Best,
Lisa

Great advice from Lisa, JBlanton. It may be the oldest advice given to all who want to write poetry, but it is still the best piece you can take when you're starting out. Read lots of poetry, and all kinds of different poets. Your brain will begin to learn without you even being aware of it. Things will start to seem 'wrong' or 'right' to you because you are developing an ear for rhythm and flow and meter. Don't be discouraged, we are all still learning here and try to help each other out when we have anything to offer.