Have you seen Him?
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Posted Mar 23, 2017, 8:40 PM UTC · edited
2012
The form works fine for me. It still reads like a villanelle and the couplet at the end works well (definitely your strongest lines). I especially like the subtle change of "I lost my god and am looking between." at the end.
I would rework the other two lines of the last stanza. I like the play of gleam and grey, but the lines themselves feel forced. Also "them reams and reams" sounds incorrect though I may be reading it wrong. Otherwise this is a really strong work.
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The slight alteration works great :) and more than that, it works with the subject of the poem; a search that goes on and on, the way the lines and rhymes repeat again and again. I also love the images of sun, fire, burning, gleaming, the same type of image but slightly different with each repeat, again like the repeated lines of the poem. A wonderful piece!
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Why is god male?
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There's a gender default that takes place not only in a lot of languages, but seems to fall under pre-existing description methods of religion. Especially in Christian faith, the Holy Trinity causes us to default to the masculine pronouns of He/His/Him.
That being said, I don't the main argument here is that God is a man. I think a very different question is being asked here, and the writer uses "him" as a means of creating a target for his questions.
Think of it this way. In French, when referencing an "it", the word "il" (usually meant as he, with elle meaning she) is used as a substitute.
For example: "Il a marché au parc." means: "He walked to the park." While "Il fait très chaud ici" means: "It is very hot in here."
Sometimes in language we use gendered words as a means of referencing an object, but don't necessarily say that the object itself is of a male or female gender. This, in my opinion, is understandable when trying to define or reference a God that it thought to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely outside of our understanding. Does that make sense?
Hope this helped!
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What an excellent explanation, thank you. I know it was beside the point, but I just wanted to poke around because the subject was there to be discussed. I hadn't thought of it in terms of language - the way you've expressed it here. I'd only ever thought that it was a patriarchal projection onto religious education, rather than just another way to say "it".
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Oh shit this is one snazzy villanelle! In it I saw a couple of glimpses of my own relationship with divinity: sensing it in nature, losing it to the sterile pages of the holy and unholy books, seeing it in the passage of time and age and how all this existence-stuff is so full of the divine. My favorite bit is I thought it hell that burns, but it now seems/the search can take (too long) a burning toll.
I definitely think the first refrain works great at the beginning of each stanza instead of the end; and that one period added to the first refrain when on the last stanza really adds a punch to it!
I see that you reworked the "reams, reams" phrase, it had something to it that made it hard to parse. Which means the only piece of feedback I have is another thing I noticed when I read it earlier: I think the word is "extol"?
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^^^psst! you changed it to "extole" but ^you ^should ^drop ^^the ^^final ^^"e"
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Aw shucks, it in turn means a lot that you say that! :D
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Bookishness .. I never heard that till Now. I may add that for the future ! This theme is one i play with every other second thank u for sharing !!
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This was really good! The ending lines of
Have you seen him? His hands look like sunbeams.
flowed really nicely, and became a favorite part of the poem for me. (There was something really satisfying about them). Though I think my appreciation of what you wrote extends not only from the words themselves but the meaning behind them. There is a lot of contrast between light and dark here, and I feel like you successfully embody the image that a lot of us have of God. We live in a world that holds neither black and white, but a lot of gray. Because of this, how can we imagine a God that only is supposed to be only in the white, but created a world so dark? I think this could not only lead to a deeper question of what God really is like but offers a new image of a God doesn't fit into the pre-existing image that the worlds presents for us. I think we all internally want to see this new image of God too.
Have you seen him? His hands look like sunbeams.
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I kinda wanted it to read like a lost dog poster
It totally does! That was my first thought on reading :)
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I really enjoyed this. I loved the repetition that you used, as I think it really helped to tie the verses together. However, there were some parts were you used a bit older phrasing than what I felt the rest of the poem called for, which kind of threw me off a bit. Otherwise, I think you did a great job!
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