Monday, 6 July 2009
Daylight and Darkness
Daylight
I sit upon the sand and think about
The sun and happiness that daylight brings.
And how it carries daydreams throught the clouds
So here, you'll find I am again, i sing.
The birds and men amongst me overhear
All of my thoughts and hopes that Earth will store
For me, the light is everything that's near
I need help to discover something more.
Like loving such another as myself
To stop becoming enemies with me,
And earning that love, respect to help my health
This is what makes me realise and see.
Transform the way i crave the magic of light,
To make my heart feel day instead of night.
Darkness
Like darkness, danger lurks at these very feet
And turns into a fear inside my heart.
I have to find a method out, to flee
But also, peril is comforting to start
A friendship and a sense of meaning of dusk
and helps to know your fears and demons too.
I like the way that shadows light up rugs
And love the way it shines a glow on you.
How, wonders i, why you force me into this,
A grip and prison i am trapped within.
How could you make me feel like this, so quick?
I can be strong and won't let you succeed.
It's me, not you, and i am here, so leave
Please take your evilness, but please return.
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Hi Negative Coastrider.
ReplyDeleteI love these poems; you’ve shown how sonnets can really work, as this has such a great rhythm and flow to it, and the rhymes don’t draw attention to themselves, which is the telling of a good sonnet. Because you’ve got the stresses (iambs) right, it does have the feel of a heartbeat, which I believe is why Shakespeare favours the iamb in his writing, and in your sonnet this emphasises the deep issues you’re writing about. It’s quite Hamlet-esque!
In a few places though, you’ve got eleven syllables rather than ten, which does break the flow a bit. For example, the penultimate line in Daylight and the first, fourth, fifth and ninth lines in Darkness. So just watch out for this. You could easily trim these lines so that they do have the correct number of syllables.
I love how you’ve put your own spin on light and darkness, bringing out the negative of the light, with the moral responsibility that comes with it, “like loving such another as myself”, and the burden of trying to keep the daylight, “I crave the magic of light”, and also the positive of the darkness, how it helps you to “know your fears and demons”, and the excitement of unravelling the mysteries of the darkness.
In both of your sonnets you have captured a subtle change in mood after the eighth line, which works well. This is really hard to do, but you’ve managed to heighten the emotions in the last six lines of both sonnets, and make them more personal, which really makes them moving.
Well done, and I'm really looking forward to reading some more of your work soon.
Negative coastrider, hi there. I’m Jonathan, one of your moderators for this year.
ReplyDeleteThese two sonnets are very good responses to the task you were set. They (by and large) get the rhyme and meter right, they flow nicely and take an interesting approach to their subject matters.
Both poems start well. The first three lines of ‘Daylight’ are wonderfully clear and expressive, with good use of enjambment. I like the repetition of ‘day’ in lines 2 and 3, though both times as part of a longer word. And I love the daylight ‘[carrying] daydreams through the clouds’. It makes me want to be on a beach, daydreaming, right now. The fourth line wraps up the opening well, but is a bit complicated – lots of chopped up clauses, and the punctuation isn’t quite right (it should either be ‘So here you’ll find me again’ or ‘So here, you’ll find, I am again’) and the ‘I sing’ seems like it’s just there to make up the syllables!
Things get a little cloudy in the middle of this poem. I was confused by the birds and men ‘amongst me’: should that be ‘around me’? And the description of the light as ‘everything that’s near’ is a big vague, when at the start of the poem the movement and action of the daylight (bringing daydreams) was precise. Also the repetition of ‘help’ in lines 8 and 11 seems unfortunate. It works well in 8, but line 11 is a bit fuzzy, throwing lots of ideas around (‘respect to help my health’) without them ever really being tethered down.
‘Darkness’, again starts well, and flows really nicely for three lines (especially if you replace ‘very’ with ‘my’ in the first line!) before things get tangled up. ‘Peril is comforting to start/A friendship and a sense of meaning of dusk’ doesn’t quite make sense, and the syntax of the following line is a bit out, too. I’d say you should either have ‘It helps to know your fears and demons too’ as a complete phrase, or ‘And it [i.e. peril] helps you know your fears and demons too’. Either way, I really like how you bring out the positive sides to darkness in the middle of this poem, in the ‘fears and demons’ line, and the shadows lighting up the rugs.
The line that most needs a closer look at, in my book, is 9. The ‘wonders I’ is just silly, and having ‘how’ and ‘why’ in the same line confuses things, too. Couldn’t you just have ‘I wonder how you force me into this’? Also, at the end of ‘Darkness’ you lose control of the rhyming, which until then had been very good. I particularly like your use of half-rhymes (about/cloud, myself/health, feet/flee, dusk/rugs). Confident use of half-rhymes shows evidence of a real ear for poetry: for how words sound, and what they can do.
Above all, you show a good grasp of rhythm, of how to make your ideas flow across lines. This is promising stuff, and I look forward to working with you in future tasks.
Hi NegativeCoastrider - I'm Robert your other moderator. I'm not sure how much I can add to the other comments but I think you offered a good response to the task set.
ReplyDeleteI like how you play with the concept of light and dark - altering perceptions of them as you go along in the sonnet. I was intrigued by the idea that "peril is comforting to start a friendship" - I can't decide whether that's the case or not. Although as your other moderator mentioned the syntax of those lines is out of place.
The only real quibble I had with "Daylight" was the use of "transform". As a word it's not particularly expressive and I am sure you could easily find better words to use that don't seem quite so technical. The "crave" is a powerful word and really heightens the energy of the sonnet and gives it a certain urgency that wasn't really present at the start of the sonnet.
Though I wouldn't use "evilness" as a word itself - again I'm sure you could find something much more expressive - I really loved the idea of wanting to flee the darkness but at the same time urging it to return as if you can't live with it but equally cannot live without it. This is a good concept and one I'm sure many can identify with and relate to whatever darkness they find in their own lives.
All in all I was impressed by your sonnets and the way you build up ideas and play them off against one another. I think you show real promise