I Believe Hell Must Be Beautiful

Let me start by saying that this piece was absolutely gorgeous. The idea of being lost somewhere in the wilderness is used often in poetry. It's truly rare when it's done well, but you've definitely achieved that here.

I like that you start the poem with "When we ran out of water," as it really puts an urgency there that draws the reader in. By adding the distance you are from the end of the trail and how elusive that end seems, you increase that feeling of desperation, frustration, and exhaustion. It helped to set the tone and the setting of the poem immediately. However, I would suggest adding a comma after "upwards" and changing "We would believe" to "We believed" just to improve the flow and readability. You might also want to have "It felt longer." be its own line to add some more emphasis on that feeling of desperation, but that's up to you!

The second stanza brings a strange sense of relief with it as you go from talking about the futility of reaching the end of the trail to the beautiful scenery you imagine you're missing. It provides a good contrast while still holding to the theme, which is difficult to pull off. Furthermore, you provide some gorgeous imagery that I could see perfectly in my mind's eye. My only criticisms here are that you don't need to capitalize the first letter after the semicolons you use...capitalization's only needed after a full stop. I also feel that "as they fluttered into view--" might be better off with a period at the end before you launch into your final stanza. I can see how they would connect. However, I think that the statement is stronger with a more defined end. Again, these are just my opinions! If you like it as is, don't change it!

I thoroughly enjoyed the closing of the piece. It tied everything together brilliantly and put a whole new spin on hell for me. So often it's thought of as fire, brimstone, and torture...not taking beauty for granted. The originality of this was highly impressive! Hell is an idea that's as old as religion itself; it is ridiculously hard to be original with it! And, once again, you do very well with really setting the scene for the reader and making them empathize with the speaker. The suggestions I have for this stanza tie into the ones I made for the previous one. "This must be hell:" might read better as "This must be hell--" or "This must be hell;" since it's too connected to the next idea presented to stand on its own with a period. The colon would work fine, but I feel that a semi-colon or dash would add some more power to the line.

All in all, this was a fantastic poem. I adored it! Wonderful job.