Time that flies like a desperate bird, recklessly;
Carelessly; hence aiming to find her essential
Prey. Since she wants it. She needs it. Her life is it.
And that jigsaw of success is her potential.
Eyes drowned; lost in the telescope of her own fate,
But not seeing the right painting she wants painted,
Drives her to ultimately re- route paths life hold.
A portrait her soul desires is untainted.
The enchanting orb – a mirror of distorted
Lies. Manipulating the mind: a delusion
For the weak: a mirage for distinct failure.
That fool’s paradise is a world of confusion.
Her bed of roses, now in bloom, lies in the dark,
While they wait for their sombre sky of grey to clear.
Once the sunlight has taken off its coat of cold,
They know that their time to fully flourish is near.
A symphony of irregular heartbeats pound
On her soul.Is this the key to open that door?
It’s sublimely vandalised with gold elation,
And responds to your wishes in which you implore . . .
Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry STARDUST that no one has commented yet. Please don't assume it's lack of talent on your part - I'm excited every fortnight to read your poems. My comment is coming VERY shortly, I promise.
ReplyDeleteI apologize that it's late! Keep up the AMAZING work.
I gather that my iambic pentameter isn't the greatest; I honestly don't feel I have grasped the understanding of this technique. It wasn't explained to me as thoroughy as I had hoped, due to my late arrival in Word Voodoo. I hope you can explain to me as best you can what makes a syllable stressed or unstressed.(It's very confusing and I find that I twist the rules to make the anapest or sonnet suit me!)I'm certain I will be marginally better at tasks if I at least can adapt my writing to such a major skill in poetry: which happens to be the iambic pentameter. It is vital that I end 2008 with a hold on iambs and feet because we will be starting a brand new task in the new year, and I fear I will be in the same situation the next time poetry becomes a topic in Word Voodoo. I would be incredibly grateful if you could drop me a full explanation - this will enable me to put your advice into good use some time in the near future.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your support,
STARDUST.
STARDUST,
ReplyDeleteAgain, so sorry for the lateness, I promise it won’t happen again.
I’m still impressed with your writing; it’s very mature and, well, impressive. The diction, as always, is amazing. The words you choose are appropriate and add meaning, as words should, to the poem.
It’s a great attempt at the anapest scheme, but hopefully mastering the sonnet has helped. You almost always stick to the 12 syllable rule, the only exception is to your line “For the weak: a mirage for distinct failure”. The fact that you were separating the line may have confused the 12 syllable rule, but all the rest looks perfect. You appear to be pretty comfortable with the syllable stresses too, I’m sure that’s the hardest part. I didn’t even understand the anapest rules until I read the information for this task, so be proud that you’ve submitted a great attempt.
I love “Lies. Manipulating the mind: a delusion / For the weak: a mirage for distinct failure”. I love the use of enjambment and I love what it says. I also adore “It’s sublimely vanadalised with gold elation” – it’s creative, original and I love the sort of paradox of vandalise and gold elation, two things with entirely opposite connotations.
The only line I would look at, just because the wording doesn’t flow as well, is “Drives her to ultimately re- route paths life hold.” Adding an “s” to hold will do the trick I think
Wonderful job again. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday and you keep writing poetry!
Genevieve
I only saw your post as I was finished writing mine. But, if you want a good explanation, read Mr. Savage's at the beginning of the tasks (I think before task 28). I'm not trying to dodge responsibility from explaining, but I didn't even fully understand the sonnet or anapest before reading his explanations.
ReplyDeleteThe stresses though, are in the words and syllables. If you read your poem out loud, it is often much easier to grasp, because you naturally stress or emphasize the word where it's meant to be stressed.
That might be even more confusing, and I really can't stress enough that Mr. Savage's explanation is gold.
I hope it helps. Feel free to ask anything.
This has so many of the ingredients of superb poetry (and poetic writing in general): brilliant use of caesura, enjambement, alliteration and a wonderfully rich vocabulary which, in turn, enables some startlingly original imagery too. That the anapestic rhythm is causing you difficulty is no surprise, given your newness to the blog, and it is something you and I can conquer in school before the next wordvoodoo poetry task (which may not even be until September, and certainly not until the Summer Term). In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than read lots of the other students' attempts (and the comments thereon), cross-referencing to my original explanation as genevievew says.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with Task 34! :)
I’m really sorry about the extreme lateness of this reply, a number of reasons have put me behind in work and I’m just trying to catch up.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really moving poem. I love your choice of emotive words, each seem to carry a whole poem in themselves. I feel that your imagery is perhaps a little clichéd, such as fools paradise and bed of roses. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to use them somewhat originally. I feel that your metaphor around “bed of roses” works quite nicely, as you really see it through. Just be careful not to use ideas that have already been exhausted by previous poets.
I can see that you are struggling with the anapaestic meter, I think if you open your poem with a strong anapaestic line, it is easy for the rhythm to follow as anapaest is such a strong rhythm.
I think the easiest way to think about stresses is not to think about them consciously. Read the poem without thinking about stresses, and see where you put emphasis on the words when reading naturally. Taking your first line,
TIME that FLIES like a DESperate BIRD.
You start with a strong word that requires emphasis when speaking it. The next word doesn’t seem to need a stress in comparison, however FLIES is a strong word too. When you get into a rhythm, you tend to skip over them lightly until you reach the next strong word. I always find it easiest to say words that I think require a stress loudly, and the ones that don’t quietly. Then you can tell if you the rhythm fits. Sorry if this is a very clumsy way of explaining, but its how I get my head around meter. I’d recommend reading back over the task instructions to try to understand the rules of anapaest a little more.
Meter aside, I really enjoyed this poem, I think it draws the reader in as it is not straightforward: it requires a bit of work to understand the metaphors and diction. I think that some of the best poems are those that you have to read a couple of times to appreciate, and this is what you have managed to create. I especially like the line about which painting she wanted to see, it is true that we often see a different story unfolding in our lives to the one we tried to write ourselves into.