brand new poet, be gentle

[PsychicMice]

Man has a gift unique to only him
his pride, his joy, and hefty skill of hymn.
May a man called civil be acquit,
by glove of king his hand cruelly fit.

For mans' ego should surely have no bounds
contested by no species he's yet found.
wherefore his modesty damned by brothers,
man must believe he outgrows his mother.

Perhaps we will be forever throned,
our lives a pause among this grand empire.
By our just doom we evermore postpone,
our corpse addage to one vicious pyre.

My country's home company to the stars
In my life confined, stole safe so far

[Grace]

Man has a gift unique to only him
his pride, his joy, and hefty skill of hymn. ( "hefty skill of hymn" - not sure what this means)
May a man called civil be acquit,
by glove of king his hand cruelly fit.

For mans' ego should surely have no bounds  (? ? Hmph!)
contested by no species he's yet found.
wherefore his modesty damned by brothers,
man must believe he outgrows his mother.

Perhaps we will be forever throned,
our lives a pause among this grand empire.
By our just doom we evermore postpone,
our corpse addage to one vicious pyre.

My country's home company to the stars
In my life confined, stole safe so far

Hi, thanks for posting this. Is the title of the poem "brand new poet, be gentle"?  If not (!), then I'm thinking (as a reader) "this needs a title". It would help clarify for me what the poem is about.

I've read the poem aloud a few times. I think it helps to do that and listen for the rhythm and how it flows or doesn't flow.  For example, if you listen to the first stanza, the last line "by glove of king his hand cruelly fit" feels like too many syllables between hand and fit.

The poem speaks of king, country, grand empires and funeral pyres. I was looking for some golden nuggets
of eternal wisdom.  I stumbled a bit on lines I couldn't make sense of e.g the last one, "in my life confined, stole safe so far".

I don't know if this has been gentle, but I enjoyed the read . :-)  Grace

[Observer]

After a few readings, I think that the main point of criticism I have is your somewhat unusual use of enjambment. If you didn't know, it is the term given to parts of a poem where one line follows straight into the next without pause. Due to the lack of punctuation at the end of the first, fifth, and thirteenth lines, I found that reading the poem aloud caused the rhythm to be thrown off a little. I'm not sure if you intended to use enjambment or not, but considering you are otherwise sticking quite solidly to the sonnet form I would suggest adding punctuation such as commas to the ends of the fifth and thirteenth lines. A colon would work quite well for the first line too, and add some interesting punctuation.
Otherwise, I enjoyed reading it. I thought that some of the rhymes you've been able to create work very well without being forced, such as "him" and "hymn".

[Todd]

Hello PsychicMice, 

Welcome to the site! I don't do gentle very well, but let me try to give you some feedback that might help. There are moments in this poem where you are clearly strangling the meaning to make a rhyme work. Line 1/Line 2, Line 3/Line 4. You have a few areas in stanza 2 where you're trying to rhyme plural words with singular words and it isn't working well.  Then in the last stanza you switch to a new rhyme scheme entirely. So, there are issues. The biggest one you should look at probably is to focus on what you're trying to convey without rhyming, write it out, and then see if you can say it with rhyme in an unforced way.

Again good luck with it.

Best,

Todd

Man has a gift unique to only him
his pride, his joy, and hefty skill of hymn.
May a man called civil be acquit,
by glove of king his hand cruelly fit.

For mans' ego should surely have no bounds
contested by no species he's yet found.
wherefore his modesty damned by brothers,
man must believe he outgrows his mother.

Perhaps we will be forever throned,
our lives a pause among this grand empire.
By our just doom we evermore postpone,
our corpse addage to one vicious pyre.

My country's home company to the stars
In my life confined, stole safe so far

[staciamberdawn]

Hi

First and foremost i really like your word choices it really does bring a royal and grand feeling to the piece.
I do take issue with line 9-12 as the rhyme scheme is different that the others and then in the last stanza, as mentioned before there is a completely different flow.

I think this is a great building block and with some adjustments and additions it could be very lovely