Breakdown of "More Than Thin Air"

In this blogpost I talk about the poem "More Than Thin Air" that I wrote. You can find that poem here: http://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2021/06/more-than-thin-air.html

So I kind of just did my own thing for the poem; it isn't any offical poem format. Each line is 7 syllables with each duplet being its own rhyming pair. Except the 3rd and the 6th (the last duplet in each half (each half, as you can probably tell, is kind of its own time period. More on that later)) are very similar to one another.

I feel like it's easier to write poems about sad or confusing things than it is to write ones about happy things. Maybe that isn't true; after all, this is one of the first actual poems I've written and worked hard on, but that's what it feels like currently.

The line "Quandries to an open sky" popped into my head, and I really liked it, so I started to write a poem about prayer. But, as mentioned in the above paragraph, it seemed so much easier to write about sad things. Problem is, I freakin' love prayer. But I didn't always.

And so I had the idea to make half of the poem about how I felt about prayer in the past and the other half about my relationship with prayer now. That's were the basis of this poem spawned from.

"Rise no more than the ceiling" is in reference to a topic one of my favorite companions, Elder Townsend, and I talked about. The same discussions is also what the title "More Than Thin Air" came from.

Sometimes, when you prayer, it feels like your words are just hitting the ceiling and not going any further. It feels like it isn't even making it close to heaven or God.

Similar idea, sometimes it feels as though you are just speaking to thin air. Of course, the poems ending is the opposite of that feeling. Thus the title, "More Than Thin Air". I almost called it "Thick Air" just to be clever, but decided against that idea, haha.

I really really liked the line "Now those thoughts feel so foreign" as a transition line between the two periods of time. The problem I found, though, is it's kind of hard to rhyme with 'foreign'. I didn't like the idea of taking of the 'g' in an 'ing' word, so I tried many other different lines, and eventually shafted the "now those thoughts feel so foreign" line. I tried to use a word that would rhyme easier, but didn't like any of those, so I went back to the original.

'Alein' was a good word I found. But, of course, the idea was that prayer was not alein, so I reflected that in the line. I then didn't want to use the word 'prayer' again, so I searched for a one syllable replacement by searching in the bible dictionary/topical guide and such (pretty much the closest thing I have to a thesaures on my mission, haha). I found the word 'cry' from Alma 34 and I liked it.

The line "revelation I receive" actually come from my givethanks post I did about prayer on Facebook.

I want to say, that that first half of the poem is 100% true. A good chunk of the time, prayer felt very empty to me. Like the poem says, I still had faith that God was there, but it was hard to feel so in my prayer.

I remember when I got my Patriarchal Blessing, there's a line that references me knowing the power of prayer. I wasn't so sure about that part, haha. The patriarch asked me after giving me my blessing if anything in it surprised me. I said yes. I was thinking of that line.

But now those thoughts feel so foreign! I love prayer. And I know that line in my Patriarchal Blessing has come to fruition.

There is so much that could be written and perhaps will be written. I'll cut myself off there for today, though. I think my poem says what I want to say pretty darn well anyway, so you'll just have to read that again :)