A Glorious Freedom

[nibbed]

Nibbed,

Ordinarily, I'm full of my own opinions -especially on religious poems, but I think I have to humble myself and agree with the other responses.  I particularly liked Lizzie's advice.  A little bit of narrative structure opens the door to all this imagery.  There are famous exceptions to this rule.  Dean Young's "Arts of Camouflage" starts out pretty weird, and then slowly becomes more concrete --he admits, at the end, that the whole start of the poem was made up.
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedC...boardid=55&threadid=1391

I think your poem would benefit from Lizzie's advice.  Tony Hoagland's poem, "Personal," is a modest example of this.  The poem starts with some concrete dialogue, and moves toward more imagery at the end --he was the dog barking and barking to get someone's attention.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrym...tail/52646

Regarding your sense of poetry expressing religious themes --yes, I go with you all the way.  Vassar Miller is one of my favorite poets.  I don't think topics are ever trite.  Love poems have been written, ad infinitum, with new successes every day.  The trick with poetry is to be as schmaltzy or as didactic as you please, but with a more miraculous voice --make us see what danger love dared, or smell the exhaust of war, balance carefully on thin strips of rhythm and rhyme, or break apart grass roots and politics to feed the five thousand.

But nevertheless, I agree with most of the criticism in this thread.  Your imagery, especially at the start, seems too disconnected from the theme.  I also agree that the "false guilt" theme is not adequately voiced in the poem, and that none of us, as readers, had an idea about it until you related the narrative.  I think that's part of why Caleb got into trouble commenting about this, trying to figure where it was going.  Is "false guilt" when you take the blame for someone else --ie. Christ's sacrifice?  Religion is heavily laced with its own images and meanings, and can create a bit of a rat's nest with haphazard allusions, images, and metaphors.  It's the same reason I chafe against irreverent religious references in poems, because that critical imagery rarely seeks the richness that one finds in religion, and the allusions to great stories are often slight.  Unfortunately, as we often see, that sword cuts both ways, and I would have to say that religious poems are necessarily more difficult, requiring the aid of narratives, handling images more carefully, and often leaning on the structure of form poems to keep them more closely wound about a theme.

And we shouldn't forget that, while John Milton's most successful portrayal was the character of Satan, his least successful was the character of God in "Paradise Lost."  Critics agree that, while Milton was brilliant, God is simply the most difficult character to achieve in writing.  So it's a difficult task.

In short, it's hard to imagine a religious poem without imagery --reaching for the divine may require every tool at the writers disposal.  Many poems descend into repetition to mark the limits of language in dealing with the constancy and rhythm of the subject, "And miles to go before I sleep," or "Holy, holy, holy..."

One particular note I see is the enjambment in the second stanza.  It almost makes "pressing" sound like a tense-shift.  I had to read that line a few times.  I assume the image is one of a glass-harp being played in the mind.  The odd tense of "pressing" the stem and edge, and "climbing" all move us away from the musical image.  Once you have this musical image, then I think you can take off about stems, edges, fingers, and how it rises into the mind.  --But then, don't drop it.  Connect it to this feeling of false guilt.  Move the two together, give us a similarity.  Maybe this guilt is spiraling up a staircase or something.  We need to know --is this all random scenery around the theme, or is this a specific image of what the theme is like?  Right now it seems more like disjointed scenery.

Anyway, I love that you take your poems with you into the BIG stuff.  Poems aren't shy like that.  Keep on rocking!

Hi underthewronghat

Thank you for your comment on my poem. I completely understand where everyone seems to be going. It will be difficult to revise it much more. It was written during a time of spiritual conflict, a battle of the mind. It will serve some usefulness, I suppose. I now use it as a reminder to truth. Sometimes when we feel we are up against a Goliath, we need a sling and stones to remind us of the true power. I guess it is very personal and not popular because others may not face this similar battle. It is indeed a faith based poem, and such conflicts have been shared with others of my faith, and so its obscurity will only ever fit to that one very small particular audience. Thank you, I will indeed examine your links. Thank you so much for your thoroughly wonderful critique!