They said love was forever enchanting;
unique. Yet some refuse to listen. Laugh,
they might. One day small birds will stop; not sing.
For love is not a cliche type of craft
in which you may indulge in each and all
demonic fantasy. Resistance is
left dormant, love and lust stand still. So tall.
A love like this may be eternal bliss.
Soon joy and passion melt away, enclosed
In broken hearts, oblivious, soon all
love turns to hate as pessimists supposed.
Is love a dream just waiting for your call?
Yet when reality destroys all hope,
it soon begins to wither, just like soap.
SO sorry for the late task. I've been having email issues which Mr Savage knows about. Sorry once again!
Hello there! Good to read another of your sonnets, and to see how well you’ve grasped the technical demands of the form. You’ve now got a natural, easy grasp on caesura and enjambment, and the iambic pentameter is pretty much there. However, your first line starts with the emphasis of ‘THEY said LOVE’ (‘love’ often demands to be emphasised!) – as such, this isn’t iambic. I’d also question line eight (which I’d be tempted to stress ‘MAY be’) Aside from, this your iambic pentameter is near perfect – very good work! If in future you want to root out those last few stress problems yourself, I’d recommend setting your nearly finished poem aside from a bit – sleep/eat/see friends/watch TV – and then when you come back to it you’ll be less accustomed to its cadences. As such, when you read it aloud, emphasising the even stresses, any errors should be more apparent (although, considering how far you’ve come, there won’t be many to spot!)
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the rhyme scheme of the sonnet, it works well, with nothing seeming forced until that final couplet. The thing is, I really do like the image of ‘begins to wither, just like soap’; it’s domestic and physical and relatable. But the fact that the rest of the poem is so much rooted in ABSTRACT notions and lexis means it really sticks out, and the rhyme jarrs.
There are some nice lines, here – ‘Is love a dream just waiting for your call?’ could seem sentimental, but I think it communicates an idea simply and elegantly, and has a nice ring to it (which makes it sound like a winning song lyric!). I like ‘love is not a cliché type of craft’. Love is THE sonnet topic; some people might think, “oh, another poem about love”. So it’s good that you’re reclaiming it – and in such defiant, straight forward terms!
However, I think the push of your meaning gets lost. The emotion this poem traces doesn’t develop in an arc – it zig zags. We go from, ‘love was forever enchanting’, to ‘small birds will stop; not sing’, to ‘A love like this may be eternal bliss’, to ‘soon joy and passion melt away’, and so on. There’s no cogent argument or clear development, and as such the reader gets lost (for another example, see the fragment of ‘So tall’ on line seven – I don’t get what this is related to) I think another reason the reader becomes a bit lost is that this poem is almost entirely written in abstract language. ‘Love is not a cliché type of craft’; but you choose words that have been used and abused so much that their meaning has been diluted and even lost. ‘Love’, ‘bliss’, ‘joy’, ‘passion’; what do these words MEAN? I can’t see them, I can’t feel them. And THAT’S where I think this sonnet could be improved; if you animated these concepts, showing the reader them rather than telling them. It’s why the ‘wither, just like soap’ image words for me (it’s so physical and strong), and why it feels so dislocated from the rest of the poem. Try and root your language in actualities, even when talking about abstract concepts. It’ll make for writing that is more relatable for the reader, and that will make the poem stand out from the pack.
This is technically fantastic. You do have a talent for striking imagery and well chosen details (as seen in ‘Pessimism’), and I’d like to see this come to the fore in your work.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all - this is, as Sarah says, wonderful on a technical level - the rhythm is great, the caesurae deft and the enjambement smooth. Well done - a difficult feat! Particularly the ambitious line break of line 6 - it's tricky to end a line on a "weak" word like "is", but in your poem it fits nicely.
A couple of moments that need a little improvement, I think: the phrase "so tall" seems to me to be a bit of a space-filler/rhyme enabler, because it's not really needed. I understand the sense of "standing tall", but this has connotations of pride or courage, and I'm not sure that you really meant to invest "love" and "lust" with these qualities...
I'd want a semicolon after "oblivious" in line 10, too, just as a side-note.
The last image is lovely - so fresh (literally!) and charming.
Well done - looking forward to the next one.
Penny