Ave Maria Confession

[Emily]

One by one, deep in depression
Hundreds of girls, perfect procession
Forgive them Father for their transgression
It’s only been a week since their last confession
And they’re stressing
Obsessing, they’re not possessing
The key to peace you were expressing
Thoughts were dark, disturbing, distressing
Addressing the mess the Brothers were blessing
left on their own, searching and guessing
There’s no God, that would warrant that
A hug, kiss, caress, grab and slap
“Be a good girl, lay down flat, the Savior loves you…”
And all of that
Not a day goes past, hearts don’t bleed
Guaranteed
Brought Hell to St. Mary’s, they’d
School those girls in getting laid
With grooming built, in high speed
All bad seeds were made to read…
‘The Hail Mary’ and ‘Apostle's Creed’
Strokes of hair from tender eleven
‘Our Father who art in heaven…’
They repeat his words or Blame and Shame
‘Hallowed be Thy name…’
Some tried to run, denounced as scum
‘Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done…’
Not worthy, feelings deaden
‘On Earth as it is in Heaven…’
And legs do spread
‘Give us this day, our daily bread…’
for Faith, Spit and Viruses
‘forgive us for our trespasses…’
They commenced what they sensed with a thrust
‘as we forgive those who trespass against us…’
Shedding their private frustration
Not heeding nor needing salvation
‘and lead us not into temptation…’
Quiver in the Cathedral
‘but deliver us from evil…’
Time and time again
‘Amen’















http://rapbattles.com/forum/showthread.php?481428-143
http://rapbattles.com/forum/showthre...-Story-Niccolo

[ILLunatic]

ATTENTION Emilyinthepool,

This automated notification is a friendly reminder for you to provide (2) links to other member submissions that you left adequate feedback to.

[Split Eight]

Okay, I liked how you addressed misogyny and misdirection in the Church. I mean, personally, I think that religion and sex sre two of the most overused tropes in internet rap stories. They both tend to be incredibly visceral and spiritual experiences, and are easily sensationalized even by a heavy-handed writer. That said, you did alright with this. I don't have any criticism for your approach, because how can you criticize the reasons behind someone's writing when you don't know them?

The first thing that came to my attention was a little bit of ambiguity in your direction. The insertion of several religious phrases and commands mixing with the sexual imagery could
1- be, literally, a church or school where girls are abused by their mentors
2- a metaphor how young women are treated in general by religious officials and religious doctrine

The verse mostly focuses on the sexual abuse itself, without lead-in or accessory details. (I'll come back to this later)

I think, with the line about St. Mary's, that this is the first one. In general, I thought your connections between the abuse and the prayers/ traditions were sharp and creative. The negative side of this prolonged description of the abuse, is that it made the abuse seem rote, repetitive, and casual... and without any insight on the abuse's affects (you'd have to focus on something ELSE to see how the abuse affects it) the verse becomes a kind of "look at what happened this one time" with not much else for the reader to digest.

Moreover, describing abuse as sort of a mundane happening without any written emotive response from the instructors, students, or outside observers further desensitizes the main focus of your verse. It came off as mechanical.

These two things together make the verse almost seem like a grim spectacle in a freakshow, know what I mean? This may very well have been your intent- I just always think conscious writing is more thought-provoking and puts writing talents to better use. Suddenly, there is more at play than imagery, or baseline reactions like fear, sadness, happiness, or disgust.

Complex emotions are tapped when you create a world or atmosphere. When you write to create a world with a living environment, you can only broach the surface with your descriptions... Mention something in passing. It seems counter-intuitive. But by opening unexplored avenues in your writing, you create an aura of deeper significance that often spiderwebs out to affect your whole verse. In fact, this is essentially the "groundwork" for conscious writing- the main subject is usually a subtle mechanism that *pop* kicks open at the end of the story, bringing all the motion to a pointed close, like a pop-up story book as the stands behind each character click open when it lies flat, open to the last page.

So, say you wrote this verse to realize how deeply misogynistic religion is. You want to highlight the woman-hating, sexually-perverted undertones that YOU can see leaping to the surface every day.

Really, you want to allude to this, but never come outright and say it until the time is right.



As a conscious writing, what this verse lacks is build-up, suspense, revelatory details or themes. I only go to these lengths to show you this, because some parts of your verse are examples of great figurative language that many conscious writers never quite grasp. Maybe, these literary techniques are well-honed. I think you should put them to good work.

"They commenced what they sensed with a thrust
‘as we forgive those who trespass against us…’"

like that^. the wording is a tad clunky on the first line but that's a cool connection.

What if you did this: instead of writing about the school, write about a girl named Mary who is the victim of abuse. Maybe once or twice, make it realistic. Give her a family, give her wants and desires. Her life doesn't revolve around this abuse, but it is still heavily affected by it.

TWO LINES OF THE PRAYER

then maybe four or six lines of her life that somehow connect metaphorically to those lines, like you did up there^. Your creative interpretation of how the prayer stands true in her life. Again, it doesn't have to all be about ABUSE even though that's the main point. It just has to be true to your characters and your world, and yes- true to the message you're trying to send.


Then continue that way throughout the rest of the prayer.

CLIFF NOTES
Aspects of your writing are really good, but I think your storytelling approach is too blunt and direct. I think your ideas and writing techniques would work much better in a 'framework' where the story you tell is flow outward from your writing, rather than simply being written down as a big block of actions and descriptions.

Sorry if this isnt what u wanted for feed. I got your poetry drops on a much more direct tip

[Emily]

@Split Eight , thank you so much for your mega feed. I appreciate it. Thanks for your advice also, I will definitely take it on board and try to apply some of those lessons.
I was trying to show a 'mundane, uniform pattern' approach to the sexual abuse at this school.
St. Marys.
Trying to show that it's nothing out of the ordinary, a run of the mill thing.
I purposely didn't zoom in on the emotions of the girls or the priests, instead making the whole thing look totally normal to the College.
As normal as filling in paper work. Expected.
Trying to filter in the abuse, line by line, while the prayer was said.
But I hear you loud and clear, and thank you again for feeding this piece : )

[Nigma]

You created a cool theme, perspective, character voice with the old english wording, thought that was dope. Felt this touched on all the basic components of a solid topical and was on the cusp of being quite good. Felt you could have done a bit more to generate initial interest with the opener. The ended worked for me with the poetic approach you took. Aside from that the only critique I could put forth is just having more literary devices throughout the verse turning average lines into more than that. A new spin on something thats been done before, but worth the read. Good stuff

[Zen the Dude]

Emily, don't listen to @Split Eight . He cray.

Jk.

Right as I started reading it the rhyming in such a quick succession became a little overwhelming (which is really ironic coming from me). The 'sion" rhymes just seemed to blur together, especially with the lines being so short. It was cool honestly, but maybe a little too much. Maybe.

The second thing I noticed was "And all of that." Giving that it's own separate line took away allot of the flow that you had just built up in the previous lines in my opinion.

I know I focused only on the negative things in this lol. I'll try to give more in depth feed later when I'm home, but all in all this was good despite a few hiccups here and there.

[Nicasso]

This was overall strong writing I actually enjoyed it. I feel it prolly would've worked out better if you used this in poetry, it would have been perfect, would've definitely got a better response from people. The old English wording would have played out strong as HELL, with a poetic approach. The flow was decent, a few lines caused ,me to have to re read to get back on track flow wise, the line Zen mentioned. Other than that I liked the concept I don't agree with split yeah its used a lot but I feel you went in a different direction then what others have done, it still felt fresh to me in my opinion. Your story telling is what makes you the writer you are, I think what he was saying is maybe try something a little more compacted or twist things up. I hope this feed is understandable cause I'm high as FUCK right now so sorry if its not. Now please return the favor on my new OM or Poem.

[143]

I love this. I love progression in your vocab usage and still retaining that personal emotinal feel. This is one of your best work by far. The only thing I would recommend is mixing more multies in the drop with the vocabularic complexity to take it a notch further. Other than that. Dopeness.