Dear Monica,
Thanks for all the praise. I can't say in the least that I'm fortunate enough to be a multilingual Swiss, but my luck is in grounded in the fact that I was raised learning three languages, one of them which I no longer remember (Yiddish) and the other two (Hebrew, English) of completely different grammatical structures. Of course, my academic speciality is not language at all.
Spirit in poems is very important. The core of poetry, if the argument doesn't exist (again, the spirit doesn't have to be "spiritual" in the emotional sense, the poem just needs some form of a theme) then the poem is just an empty shell. But my approach to poetry (as my "metrical" prefix will imply) is that ideally you learn the mathematics of technique and labour in the manual, routine stuff, until you have a native go to it and you can start focusing on emotion with little concern to your technique.
It's like learning a language. Get the grammar right, something that will require you to annoyingly analyse sentences' syntax and read all those pointless, uninteresting clauses, and THEN, when you've got technique settled into your system - you can start talking freely and contentfully. Again - that's my ideology, not everyone's.
The important thing is that your poems make your readers and you happy. I am yet to review your writings, but rest assured I will - at some stage or another. I do need to post some of my own stuff on here, though... But my English is far from perfect, as almost anyone will tell you that my registers are a little "bouncy". Of course, for a foreigner that would be more difficult to notice, just like the Italian "scuza" and "scuzi" mean the same to me, but there's a lot I have to improve. I'm 16, and don't spend my entire life talking in English, so... Well, you know.
Keep writing about Jesus and your love to the religion; it's a noble aim. I, sadly enough, am not at a level of writing religious poetry, especially in English, but all that will come in good time. I should write a poem about the Jewish-Christian relations, which is a topic in my history major, maybe showing how so much of the fighting about the Jews killing Jesus is hypocritical and/or ironic - even pointless these days. But that's another religious issue... E-mail me if you want a debate.
I'll be looking out for your writings. Take care!
Jonathan
