Monsoon
Wet rain will come to bless wet lands again,
The men are occupied securing land,
Now after annual work should clouds attain,
Monsoon reveals its wet, watery hand.
Worn out, the farmers need a hand with fields,
The farmers need some help with crops and trees,
The villagers make shelters as their shields,
When unprotected, seek mercy on knees.
We celebrate because we'll have fresh crops,
We'll sing and dance and worship our great God,
Anticipated when the rain will drop,
The clouds will burst like all the peas in pods.
It's time for the monsoon the come once more,
And time to end our great long year of bore!
Drought
A hot, dry drought falls over the wet lands,
It seems as though the water will vanish,
As drought his parched and arid hand,
The villagers prepare to be famished.
The crops will drain and might become useless,
the villager will thirst for rain and clouds,
The youngsters suffer much from this dryness,
And long for drink and a very moist ground.
The sun bores down with heat on the dry place,
The people wonder when they will be quenched,
The thirst of people is shown on their faces,
And hung in the air, starved dead bodies' stench.
When drought will draw his dry and arid hand,
Chaos and dullness will sweep through the land.
You’ve got a really beautiful and definitive style of writing, out of all the ones I read, yours stood out the most. Your style feels very earthy, almost as if an old tale is being told. The imagery stands out and seems real, and you’ve obviously taken the time to pick words and phrases that work well. You’ve got the rhythm and rhyme down perfectly, so well done.
ReplyDeleteThe language used fits brilliantly, with religious undertones being linked with the monsoon and the brilliance of the rain. I love the line’The villagers make shelters as their shields, when unprotected, seek mercy on knees.’ There’s almost a war going on in these lines. Don’t be afraid to be more liberal with the fullstops though. The image of the clouds bursting like pea pods is wonderful!
The last line does seem like a bit of a let down after all that beautiful imagery though, all this intense imagery and then year has been *boring*?!
Drought again has a great lexical field of ‘thirst’, ‘sun’, ‘dryness’, everything you need to start to feel thirsty yourself. The image of the villagers thirsting for rain and clouds is pure brilliance. The repetition of Drought’s arid hand is great, (although if you’re personifying drought, make it Drought with a capital).
All in all, brilliant, well done!
Hi - I'm Robert and am one of your moderators.
ReplyDeleteI agree that your writing style does grab the attention - upon first reading monsoon it did feel like an old tale being told. This is because you have really mastered the rhythm of the sonnet form.
The idea of clouds bursting like pea pods when it rains is wonderful - makes me wish I'd thought of that. I'm torn about whether you should change "bore" in the last line - in a way it does seem a flat end to such a vivid poem but then it also emphasises the sense of anticipation that is prevalent throughout the poem. If you want to change it, if you feel it's fine as it is then leave it.
With "Drought" I think you've missed a word in line 3 as it doesn't really make sense. I would look at changing "long" in line 8 to yearn or crave or even burn for as it would heighten the sense of desperation and need in the poem. Also take out "with heat" in line 9 as it's not needed as the hotness is already made clear from the fact that the sun is boring down and it also allows the poem to flow better. Otherwise this sonnet does create some brilliant and vivid imagery.
All in all I think you did really well in this task and I was impressed by the way in which you pursued a different concept to those of the other users. Keep up the good work.
Hello Sharad and welcome to wordvoodoo...and what an amazingly promising first attempt...which makes me feel somewhat redundant and obsolete as I now have nothing to write.
ReplyDeleteVirtually all of the writers for wordvoodoo are highly imaginative, which means that on the creative side of things we moderators have little to do other than give them a helpful push in the right direction towards harnessing their creative powers even more than before. It is the technical side of writing, however, that we spend most of our time with, as it is hard to master and therefore many wordvoodoo students need a little help. So therefore what impresses me most about your poetry is that you have pretty much mastered it already.
Alongside your maturity with techical writing, your maturity with creative writing does not disappoint either, as you have chosen an intriguing subject matter with a huge amount of creative mileage.
Another amazing skill of yours is that your poetry never seems too confessional or personal...there is no sense of the unwelcome author in your work. My fellow moderators have already pointed out how your work is reminiscent of an old story...but I would go further than this and say that it reminds me of some sort long-lost, millenia-old, ancient scroll, or some sort of race-memory, as there is an age-old maturity and wisdom to your style of writing, and it feels like a whole culture is writing and narrating it, rather than just one person.
Therefore all that remains for me to speak is THAT sentence, 'And time to end our great long year of bore!'...with all the respect in the world for my fellow moderator Robert and obviously no offence to him...but I'm afraid I have to side quite strongly with Andi on this one.
I would dislike the line wherever you put it...but to put it at the very end of an excellent poem like this almost destroys the entire effect of the previous 13 lines...with just that one line. The line taken by itself is fine...the problem is that it just doesn't fit in with the other lines...it belongs in a completely different poem. The line talks of these events being boring...and yet the previous 13 lines talked of these events with reverence and awe. The line is clearly the aimiable joke of one man...and yet the previous lines seemed to be the shared experiences of a whole nation. The first 13 lines could have been taken from an ancient scroll...line 14 certainly couldn't have been.
With fairness to Robert, this line would probably work very well in another poem...I just feel that it is seriously detrimental to this one.
But anyways, amazing job...one weak line out of 28 is pretty damn good for a first attempt at anything in my book, and I look forward to your next offering,
Eoghan 'did I just over-react?' Lavery