lumen
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response 1 of 5:
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Jul 1 21:44 UTC 1999 |
There are some excellent ideas here, and each stanza is well-written,
but some lack cohesion to each other. Actually, I see somewhat of a
pattern-- they begin with a strong, well-expressed idea in the first
line, but they end somewhat on a tentative and unfinished note on the
last. This could work as a personal style, but don't do it on the last
stanza. I am wondering if your poem really ends, or means to go on with
such a sentence in the passive voice.
<lumen has been on a critique kick-- please smile and take my offering
for what it's worth to you>
btw, I forgot to say welcome to the poetry cf, if you're new here.
It's an exciting place and we'll help you grow and improve with the best
help we can give :)
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flem
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response 3 of 5:
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Jul 20 15:40 UTC 1999 |
Writing metered poetry is hard; making it rhyme is harder. It tends to
come out feeling unfinished until you work really hard on it. There is
hope, however.
As for *helpful* ideas, the first stanza bothers me. It seems a little
more obviously unfinished than the rest. Here's how I would rework it,
and why. As always, you are free to ignore any or all of it.
I stand before her outer gate,
Afraid to enter my unknown.
I look ahead: a lonely fate
Of sadness, where I slowly drown.
Okay, here's why. I changed "the" to "her" in the first line and "the"
to "my" in the second because the word "the" is unnecessary filler, IMO.
In metered poetry, you have very strictly regulated space to get your
point across, and every word counts. "her" and "my" are my attempt at
shedding some light on where the gate leads from and where the unknown
is in this poem; it's entirely possible that they are too blunt, too
unsubtle, but I couldn't think of anything else off the top of my head
(and really it's your job to add nuance to the poem, not mine). I added
the word "outer" to the first line because it had only three feet (one
"foot" being an iamb, a duh-DUH rhythm, which seems to be the meter you
use most of the time. Most people do.) and the other lines in the
stanza all had four feet. This isn't strictly necessary; a lot of great
poetry has been written with lines of mixed length (John Donne comes to
mind), but it's harder. Besides, I thought the first line could use
some flavour. "outer" may not be the right word here, but again, that's
your job, not mine. :)
I changed "to" to a colon in the third line, for a couple of reasons.
First, it makes the rhythm slightly better, to my mind. It stays within
the iambic meter, which there seems to be no good reason for leaving,
here. Second, it causes a slight pause, signalling both visually and
rhythmically that the rest of the stanza contains what you see when you
look ahead. Note that while I've added punctuation to the ends of the
rest of the lines in this stanza, there is no punctuation at the end of
the third line. I did this deliberately because I feel that, while the
end of all other lines in this stanza denotes an end of (or at least a
pause in) a thought, the end of this third line is directly connected to
the beginning of the fourth. Putting no punctuation there not only
signals this fact to the reader, it also is what you would do if you
were writing this out as prose, which is a pretty good guide to
punctuation in poetry, IMO.
In the fourth line, "of" is a connecting word, helping make the
transition between lines three and four smooth. I took out "feeling",
because 1) it breaks the rhythm, having its first syllable accented
instead of the second (and I couldn't think of any one-syllable words to
stick in front of it to fix it), and 2) it's not really necessary to the
thought. We know that sadness is something that you feel. Just about
everything in poetry is something you feel, and the word "feel" is
rarely necessary. Instead, I added the word "slowly" to fill the meter
back in, choosing that word because it makes the drowning image a little
stronger and because of the alliteration with sadness.
(Aside: this connecting lines business is an important device, IMO,
that is often ignored. When writing metered poetry, one of the most
common mistakes is to let it get singsongy: every thought is exactly
one line long, pauses come only at the end of lines, rhyming is
overemphasized, and it sounds like something from Mother Goose. Letting
thoughts run over multiple lines is a good way to avoid this, because it
breaks up the rhythm into more varied, more natural patterns, while
still following good metered form. Shakespeare is an excellent example
of this; he never ends his sentences until he's damn well ready, and it
almost never sounds singsongy.)
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