richa9 Feb 2005

I understand that you have become somewhat hypersensitive during your time spent on poemranker. I know you had a previous alias and am glad you came back after facing a lot of Dark_Angel the lesser's twatishness. However I think you have become too defensive to accept criticism. The bible quotes I did not pick up on, but I think that they should really have been in quotes. The criticism I make is one of didacticism, to make grand statements in poetry is not done. The poet must at least first build up her argument so that the conclusion follows on logically. Otherwise it just looks like you are hiding behind a poem to make unsubstantiated claims. If the narrator is the one making the claims such as 'watered down make believers' and 'sin makes a sham of our faith' then it is up to the narrator to elucidate. Otherwise make the narrator the one responding to them. I get no sense of the poet in this poem, the sardonic voice, to seperate her from the fundamentalism she is trying to rail against. The other criticism which is part of the first one is your lack of discipline. That you have these feelings is not enough, you must craft them, deconstruct, show. For instance that bad things happen is a decent reason for not believing in an interventionalist God, don't tell me that, I have heard it all before. Tell me something interesting, something that as a piece of intellectual enquiry is yours.