Never have i been so heart broken in my life.
I don't know I loved her with all my heart.
We were so close I thought wed never part.
That beautiful women she was my wife.
She fell pregnant we said wed name him Bart.
In the fair we met in a bumper cart.
When we rowed I'd threaten her with a knife.
She owes me back my hundred dollar hat.
I think of her she makes me cry and weep.
When she she left I snacked making myself fat.
When we parted it made Bart have to choose.
Every time we fought she'd call me a creep.
She stole my money to buy high heel shoes
I said is this the end of me and you
Hi frizzy,
ReplyDeleteAn untitled sonnet – you’ve left your emotion a bit of a mystery! ‘Heart break’, maybe? Anyway, let’s get down to it!
First things first; there’s a few grammatical errors in this sonnet which you need to pick up on – lowercase ‘I’ on line one, ‘women’ (instead of ‘woman’) on line four, ‘wed’ (instead of ‘we’d’) on lines three and five, a repeated ‘she’ on line ten. They’re easily corrected errors, but they really do effect how the reader receives your work.
The sonnet is a tough nut to crack. There’s a lot of rules to follow (number of line, rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter), as well as concentrating on the actual content, the ideas! You’ve still got a way to go until you do crack this nut, but a lot of others are in the same boat. I’m going to go through the formal rules, and see how you’ve handled them, and where you can improve:
The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is ABABCDCDEFEFGG – in other words, every other line rhymes apart from the last two, which rhyme with each other. You do use rhyme, but it doesn’t stick to these rules; for example, line one should rhyme with line three. You do well to use rhyme, but at times it does seem forced; ‘bumper cart’ as opposed to bumper car, the son called ‘Bart’. But you do seem to have a head for rhyming words, so you can work on the rhyme scheme next time.
Task 29 gave you some good practice at iambic pentameter, and there’s some well-balanced lines here; I couple in particular I’ve picked out are line 14, and line 8 (reminds me a of a Dylan song, which can only be a good thing) However, it’s not an easy form, and you’ve still got to work at it. The first line has two too many syllables, for example – but most of your deviations from iambic pentameter are more technical than that! For example, for line 7 iambic pentameter would demand ‘threaten’ to be stressed ‘threat-EN’ – not how it would normally sound. There are a few other examples of this, such as ‘part-ED’ on line 11, ‘preg-NANT’ on line 5. Stresses (for me, anyway!) aren’t always that obvious when you’re in the middle of writing something. Speak the words aloud, listen carefully to how they are naturally stressed in speech, and this will help.
Let’s take a look at the content of your verse. I really like how this has a narrative to it – it tells the reader a story. Being told to write a poem about an abstract emotion can lead that poem to be entirely abstract itself – to not be rooted in the real, to have nothing physical that the reader can relate to. But your poem is full of physicality, of concrete verbs. As I mentioned before, some of your rhymes are a bit forced, which undermines the poignancy of the sonnet. The narrative is also a bit jumbled – not a bad thing in itself, but it means the poem lacks drive and ends somewhat abruptly. However, I really like the use of specific, concrete details (‘hundred dollar hat’) and the ambiguous mix of emotions (love and violence) Pair your poetic content with tighter poetic form and it’ll be a really good bit of work :)
hello frizzy!
ReplyDeletea lot of what sarah c has said might be echoed in mine so i might just keep this short to avoid being repetitive, she's already picked up that the rhyme pattern isn't what was requested so i won't bother reexplaining that to you!
one immediate thing that you need to watch out for is your use of apostrophes, it's 'we'd' or 'she'd', it's just that if you don't put these in you could write a new word entirely, like 'wed' or 'shed'.
anyway, lines i think are good and some of them really are in perfect iambic pentameter, an improvement on last time!
'she owes me back my hundred dollar hat', this is perfect. original too. 'we were so close i thought we'd never part', also iambic. "i think of her..." good as well. the last sentence is also in perfect iambic pentameter.
a quick comment, some of the other sentences were good, it's just you were occasionally one too many feet out but this is a common mistake to do.
well done on the rhyming couplet!
your sonnet is very definite, it's a good account of what happened. if it was a story or a different style of poetry it definitely would have been fine!
so i think you might want to go revise the stress patterns of your lines and also read through what sarah c has to say because she makes some really valid points on how you could improve your writing!
Hi frizzy,
ReplyDeleteSince issues related to the sonnet and iambic pentameter have already been covered, I will take a closer look at the content of your poem.
The details you give in this poem are awesome. I, like the other moderators, am in love with the "hundred dollar hat" line. It's such a revealing line because it tells us about both the speaker of the poem and the woman it's about. I like "She stole my money to buy high heel shoes" for the same reason - it gives me an insight into the woman's character because it's a unique, specific incident. I also love the image of the couple meeting at a fair on the bumper carts (is it meant to be cars? or is it carts?). In fact, it's such an awesome image that if you're willing to do some serious revision, I'd like this to be among the first lines.
Because what you have here is a story. It's not a linear story - we are told the story out of order. I can't tell if this format was a conscious decision (perhaps to write in stream of consciousness?) or if it was just how the poem appeared on the paper. In any case, I would ask you to consider what you think is the best way to structure this story. Should things be told in order, starting with meeting at the fair and ending with the aftermath of their break-up? Or should memories be scattered as they are now? Whatever feels best to you.
Keep up the good work!
Maria
Hello there,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing your work. You've had quite a bit of feedback already, so I'll keep this short.
Obviously you've still got some way to go before you master the sonnet as a poetic form. Don't be disheartened, though. It really does take time and practice. I'm studying for a PhD, and I still slip up when I'm trying to write poetry! Keep at it, and I'm sure you'll be able to produce something great.
Do watch out for spelling errors and typos, though. They can be very distracting, and make the poem look a little slap-dash.
Helen