They grow like infants; mature like adults,
Yet never seem to age as gracefully
as people do. At end with no results:
they waste and wither away so sadly.
Their petals represent soft beauty; Jade
floating in crystal water - blue. In all
true reality, the flowers do fade.
All imperfections revealed as they fall
off their stems, leaving nothing but a blank
canvas of no meaning - just a stem on
the ground. As if to say the jade had sank
and drowned in uneternal beauty: gone.
Forever gone! A moment we should dread
Really and trully, the flower is dead!
Hi sugadust,
ReplyDeleteOnce again, a really good sonnet! In Mr. Savage’s outline for intermediate writers, he flagged up the need for significance in the final syllable of each line, and for the rhyme to serve the writer. As in the previous task, I think you manage to do both these things wonderfully. The last words/syllables are all key words to the meaning of the sonnet (fade, blank, gone…), and the all/fall rhyme is particularly summative of ‘Flowers’. Focusing the sonnet in this way really exploits the full potential of the form, making form=meaning.
You often use the iambic pentameter form very well, but there deviations from it that you need to look out for. To highlight some: on line one, mature is stressed ‘ma-TURE’, the start of line seven is stressed ‘TRUE re-AL-i-TY’, and the start of line nine, ‘OFF their STEMS’. ‘At end’, on line three, is slightly clunky grammar, which seems to be there merely to fit the iambic pentameter. I would recommend reading your work aloud, exaggerating the even stresses, and seeing if they fit. You clearly can write lovely lines of iambic pentameter, though – line two is a fittingly ‘graceful[ly]’ example!
As you have such a good grasp of the form, I’ll now move onto your content and your poetic ideas. As with task 30, I’m really impressed by your work. I particularly like how line one seems to set up a simple, straightforward metaphor – “oh, right, flowers equal people” – but then flips this in the second line. It makes your symbolism more ambiguous and more complex – and this means the reader has to WORK to create meaning, drawing them into the poem. Fantastic! You then use the metaphor as grounds to play around with and develop ideas – about the meaningfulness of life, art, objects of beauty. It seems quite Shakespearean to me – especially that somehow comfortingly familiar final rhyming couplet.
There are a couple of alterations you can make, however. Crystal water is a cliché (you know, “it’s crystal clear”) which can be altered. ‘Represent’ and ‘as if to say’ are slightly awkward; I can see their use in making this sonnet (partially) a reflection on the creative process, but they also seems a bit obsolete. You can just say ‘their petals are soft beauty’, ‘the jade had sank…’, etc. In poetry, EVERY WORD must count. Heck, every punctuation mark must count! You want to strip out any “filler”, in poetry; don’t ‘as if to say’, just SAY!
You’ve got a deft, delicate hand with the sonnet form. There is still room for formal improvement, but you have such natural ability in terms of your content – none of it seems forced or clever-clever, the meaning of the poem develops organically – that I think that you can now comfortably take the step up to ‘advanced’. Very well done.
hey there,
ReplyDeletesarah's made a lot of useful comments here already, i just want to say that i am very impressed by this sonnet, it's definitely past beginner standard so i'm glad you've opted for Intermediate, but even then you're so close to advanced level as well! the one thing i've noticed that i think is a bit of a no no is that you havent included the volte, by which i mean the octave sestet split as explicitly asked, and this is a bit of a problem. true, your sonnet does change tone half way through but another requirement was to be in control of the structre, to make it work for you, and unfortunatly you haven't done this here :(
however, i am very very impressed by your control of iambic pentameter, i have 3 sentences that seem to stumble slightly, 7,8, and 10, but apart from that, this is a super sonnet. if someone read this who didnt know about sonnets, it would be a perfectly controlled, also contemporary, and intelligent poem because you've used the poetic devices you've been practising in the past few weeks and you've got the right number of feet.
very well done, i don't have much more to say, just read sarah's comments and i'm sure if there's yet another sonnet task you'll pass with flying colours, you've come a long way :)
Hey,
ReplyDeleteYou've been really ambitious with caesurae here, and this is something you should be really proud of: your poem has beautiful moments where you forget it's a sonnet at all because it sounds so natural in its pauses in speech. I really like the phrase "uneternal beauty", too - it's taking something established and turning it on its head, which is something that good poets will often do.
A few moments where the rhythm isn't quite right, but as Sarah has highlighted these already, I'll offer an alternative for line 6/7 - how about "in all/reality will every flower fade"? Have a think.
Well done - very "speech-like" poetry.
Take care,
Penny