Let Us Pray

You've done some great things with this piece. I do have a few general suggestions, but first I'd like to point out the strengths.

The quiet language really helps to set the scene. To me there are three key sounds that do this. The first is the rhyme intones/stones. It's a gentle rhyme, and it's not done as a line final rhyme. This prevents the feeling of a square peg squeezing into a round hole that rhymes so often give. The second major sound pair that sets the tone for me is bowed/smoothed. These aren't rhymes precisely, but they have a similar vowel and end the same way. The roundness of the vowel translates directly into the roundness of the bowed spine and of the smooth bead to me. The third chain of sounds that helps to set this soft tone for me is bear/hear/prayer. Again, not rhymes, but something better I think. Sadly the last two turn out to be problematic to me when I move to content, as I'll explain below. Depending on your dialect of English (does South African English drop final 'r' sounds?) these sounds come closer or further together. English vowels next to an 'r' are almost always diphthongs, and in this case (again depending on your speech) they will all have one of the vowels in common with the other. The effect is pleasing to the ear even if the reader doesn't know why.

Another wonderful sound strategy you've employed that I thought I'd point out (mostly because I'm a nerd like this, and if I don't do it, no one else ever will) is the alternation of rounded vowels and flat vowels within lines in the first and second stanzas. You do it in the third full stanza (sort of), but it's not as powerful because the sounds are separated by too much other stuff. Specifically, say these words as pairs: priest/intones, silent/stones, bowed/silence, fingers/worry, smoothed/beads. Notice that in one word your lips don't round at all, and in the other (thanks in part to our friend "w") it does? To me this gives a sense of uncertainty to the piece. From the tone and the back and forth see saw of the sounds, I don't know where the narrator's faith lies. Which brings me to the content portion of my criticism.

Religious pieces run the risk of using the same words over and over and in time they lose their impact. You use many words that are overused in religious contexts. I don't think that this could have been helped, but it means you have to work really hard to do something different. Consider how often each of the following words has been used in religious writing: priest, mass, angels, [heads] bowed, rosary, Saints, prayer. The vocabulary works against you in this poem. That isn't to say it's hopeless. Quite the opposite. You've done a great job with some rather dull tools. I think that it is for this reason that I feel the ending needs a little bit more punch. I wanted the narrator to be forced to make more of a decision. You've set a rather ambiguous stage up until the very end. To me, 'hear my prayer' could really mean anything or nothing. I really wanted to see a crisis of faith, and to have it resolved - one way or the other - in the final line.

This isn't to say by any means that I want you to take a hacksaw to the poem and completely retool it. I would say consider a new final line, or perhaps the addition of a line or two before the current final line. You've got a good poem here my friend, I just think that it deserves to reach out and make me feel it a bit more.

I hope that this critique helps you. I love your poetry, and I hope to watch you grow as a poet for a long time to come.

*Mahi-Fish