Faith
We know with all our hearts that this is love
we celerbrate its everpresent joy
our faiths reminds us of a special dove
it's for girls and boys for all to enjoy
that would like to rest on a shoulder
who are mis-understood lonely teens
who are now quickly becoming older
and becoming aggressive and more mean
is faith the everlasting thing thats true
am I in what people say is the path
it's for old but what about the new
I believed once and all people did was laughed
I understand that it might be from God
and for that reason i now nod
Doubt
I wonder if my faith is still the truth
so listen to the words I tell you dear
the words I say aren't just for the young youth
who are immune to having any fear
for faith is only two thousand years old
so is it available for the new
also remember that we are now bold
I wonder if my faith is what is true
Evolution comes in us with a creep
into our gullible minds by night
onwards and up shall it finally leap
I wonder if my faith is what is right
no listen to the words when i say no
my mind is empty I just don't know
Spooky21, hi there, I’m Jonathan, one of your moderators for this year, and I’d like to start by saying, Wow, they’ve certainly thrown you all in at the deep end with this one. Sonnets are tough.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your two poems – they are a complex and thoughtful response to the task at hand. You’ve got the rhyme scheme licked (although ‘no’/’know’ at the end of ‘Doubt’ is a bit of a cheat) and you mostly have the rhythm down, too. So well done for that.
In terms of the content, you have done well to write about faith and doubt not just as abstract concepts, but by relating them to life in the UK today. I particularly like the lines in ‘Faith – ‘who are misunderstood lonely teens/who are now quickly becoming older/and becoming aggressive and more mean’ – that show not what faith is, but why it’s needed.
That said, the two poems are not strongly enough differentiated for my liking. A lot of ‘Faith’ reads like it could be part of ‘Doubt’ - ‘Is faith the everlasting thing that’s true/am I in what people say is the path/it’s for old but what about the new’. Same thing with the powerful line ‘I believed once and all people did was laughed’ (although the meter’s out on that one – it could be shifted about to make ‘Once I believed but people only laughed’).
This ambiguity makes ‘Faith’ an interesting poem in itself, but it weakens the two of them as a pair – the two poems should be coming from opposite places, and the complexity should come from the way they face off against each other and interact.
That means that ‘Doubt’ reads a bit like a continuation of ‘Faith’, rather than an answer to it. In this poem, the use of repetition is an effective device (‘I wonder if my faith is what is true’/’I wonder if my faith is what is right’). Of course, it helps that these two are perfect examples of the iambic pentameter, as requested!
As mentioned above, you don’t always get the meter quite right. Most of these slip-ups could be easily remedied by simply reading the poem out loud to yourself. Three examples: change the fourth line of ‘Faith’ to ‘It is for girls and boys to all enjoy’ and see how much better it flows; note the added ‘and’ in this line: ‘who are misunderstood and lonely teens’; and the added ‘the’ in ‘it’s for the old but what about the new’.
Smaller points after that: punctuation – there are lots of questions in your poems (I like that, a questioning mind is a lively mind) but no question marks. Why. (Why?) Also, check your apostrophes in ‘it’s’ and ‘that’s’, and a computer spell check would have picked out ‘celerbrate’ as wrong. All small points, but the more you concentrate on the little things, the easier the big things will get.
All in all, a solid and exciting beginning. The lesson to take away – read your poetry out loud. Two reasons: it sounds best that way, and it’s the best way to spot mistakes in rhythm and rhyme.
I enjoy the concept that Faith and Doubt are opposites. Or is Faith the cure for Doubt. JesusChild used Atheism as the opposite to Faith, so it’s great you’ve got your own take on what these two concepts mean to each other.
ReplyDeleteGood understanding of the rhythm and rhyme scheme, well done. Do be careful with spelling, e.g ‘Celebrate’ instead of ‘Celerbrate’. Also, ‘misunderstood’ doesn’t need a hyphen.
You’ve got a great story going on here, with some brilliant imagery. The idea of a dove as religious joy, and as the children become misunderstood teenagers they lose their faith because there’s nothing there for them, it’s absolutely brilliant.
But it’s let down by the fact that you didn’t use any punctuation. Without full stops, commas and capital letters at the beginning of each line, the poem really just falls into sounding like iambic pentameter, dum di dum di dum. It lollops along and you lose the beauty and cleverness of the lines into the rhythm.
I really like the introduction of God right at the end, because you can have faith without believing in God, but the last line seemed a bit of a disappointing ending to such a great poem.
A similar thing with Doubt- hauntingly beautiful lines. But NO Punctuation! It would be *so* much better with punctuation! I love the idea that the perspective of someone doubting has to be someone who has faith already. Very very clever.
It also addresses the youth you mentioned in the first poem, from an older perspective ‘So listen to the words I tell you dear’. Really love it, very clever to be addressing the first poem and the reader.
Also the idea of evolution creeping in, then leaping farther and higher is brilliant.
You’ve got real talent with words- just be sure to punctuate next time!
thank you for commenting and will take this in for my next project u critical analysis has been very usefull deeply apriciated
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