This is my first EVER sonnet that i have EVER written so sorry if it's quite lame. :)
Love
I never thought I'd find someone
Who loves me the way you do, and
Looks out for me. You're like the sun
That has risen so high in the sky. Hands
intertwined, we walk with our heads held high
As if we're ready to fight the world, you
And me, together, as one. In the sky
Our future is written, and i see true
Love between you and me. You are my own
Survivor, you're my living proof, that love
Is alive and not dead. Our love has grown
Into something more, as all of the doves
Scatter around in the refreshing breeze
Showing the world what we're really made of.
Hate
Hate. Not a word I use alot, but when
I think of you, it's the only word that
Comes to my mind. You'd beat me around ten
Times when i speak my mind, tell me i'm fat
And starve me so that i become "better".
When you walk into the room, arrogance
Radiates from your body, an answer
Is all you need but you don't have patience.
So i get another beating, wishing
You would fall off the face of the earth but
You don't. I sit there, my body aching
From the pain you've caused me and yet i cut
My wrists, trying to free myself through death
Because I can't take the pain anymore.
First of all – hello! Glad to be moderating you.
ReplyDeleteYou’ve got some good techniques in this pair of sonnets, and some that need a little tweaking. The opposites you’ve picked are a classic, perhaps obvious choice, but you’ve given them fresh enough treatment that the ideas themselves don’t seem clichéd – this is a major feat! You’ve also handled the rhyme deftly (although the last two lines should rhyme, remember) and have used some skilful enjambment and caesurae. I’m thinking particularly here of “Hands / intertwined”, the unusual “you / And me” (which shouldn’t really work, as it separates a flowing phrase, but here it emphasises the separateness as well as the togetherness), and “doves / Scatter” (the line break actually makes the image scatter here, too).
Less successful are the ones where the word on the end looks rather lost; I’m thinking here of “true / Love” (this phrase sounds disjointed when separated), “own / Survivor” and “ten / Times” (In general, the “Hate” poem is better for the enjambment; the phrase “yet I cut / My wrists” uses enjambment to great effect, providing the severance of the line as well as in the image.) On a side note, I really love the tone at the opening of “Hate”: “Not a word I use a lot, but when / I think of you...” is a quietly rage-filled line.
You also need to just watch the metre. It’s so important in a sonnet: you really need to be able to hear the de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM, every single line. It needn’t be heavy-handed, but there must be ten syllables. Sometimes you need extra words: for example, can you hear the difference in “I never could have thought I’d find someone / Who loves me like you do – completely – and / Looks out for me. You’re like the summer sun...” These are regular, iambic pentameter lines – I’m sure you can think of some examples of your own. My advice – and you’ll be hearing this a lot from me, because it really does work! – is always read your work aloud to yourself, just to hear how the stresses fall. It also works for finding out whether dialogue is realistic when we come to prose – if it’s not something someone would say, you find it difficult to say yourself when you read aloud.
Overall, this is really promising; with a little reworking, you’ve got a great pair of complementing sonnets here. Well done.
Penny
Hi there, crazylike_woah. Welcome to WordVooDoo. I understand that you are at a bit of a disadvantage with this first task as most people have had experience writing a sonnet before. It's a tough form to master, and you've done very well for a first effort.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem you seemed to have is getting the iambic pentameter right. This isn't suprising as it is the hardest thing to do when writing a sonnet.
Let's break this down, using examples from your poem.
1) Every line must have 10 syllables.
I nev-er thought I'd find some-one --> 8
Who loves me the way you do, and --> 8
Looks out for me. You're like the sun --> 8
Many of your lines don't quite make it to 10 syllables. This is quite a simple thing notice. Count each line on your fingers. You can tweak them to make them the correct lenght.
2) The iambic rhythm: dee-DUM
The 10 syllables should be stressed like this:
dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM
Easy enought to say... but what does that mean? When we speak, emphasis naturally falls on some words and not on others. Try saying this line from your poem outloud:
Hate. Not a word I use alot, but when
To fit with the iambic rhythm, the first syllable should not have a natural emphasis to it. Here, 'Hate' demands attention. It is a heavy word, always said with emphasis. Therefore it should not be placed here in your line, as really we need a much softer word.
The next part of your line is very good iambic rhythm:
NOT a WORD i USE a LOT, but WHEN
That's prefect! BUT, it needs to fit with the prescribed PATTERN of iambic pentameter. You could revise this line to make it fit. Here is my example:
it's NOT a WORD i USE a LOT but HATE
con-SUMES my THOUGHTS whenEVER i SEE you
Does that make sense? That is without a doubt the hardest part of writing a sonnet.
Often you so very nearly get it spot-on, but I feel this is the thing that needs the most attention.
You've got the rhyming structure perfect, apart from the last two lines, which are meant to rhyme with each other. But that is easy enough to fix.
You've done very well in creating MOOD in your poems. The polar emotions play off each other very effectively, making your words very powerful.
I love the natural images and the feeling of elation you evoke in the first sonnet. Using words like 'sun', 'sky', 'doves', 'grow' - they all add to the emotion. However, always think carefully about your word choices. I thought that the word 'refreshing' to describe the breeze was perhaps not powerful enough in relation to the rest of the language used.
Overall, this is a good first effort. The images are strong, the language is effective, but you need to work on the iambic rhythms.
ps. 'A lot' is two words! It's my pet peeve to see it written as one.
Thanks for the advice! I'm sure i'll be looking back at them the next time i'm writing a sonnet.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason that these sonnets are pretty messed up is because I got really fed up with them (after writing about 10 drafts, then scrunching them all up and throwing them in the bin, it does get quite annoying). It was also partly because i left it to the last couple of days, and that isn't enough for me to come up with a presentable pair of sonnets.
Anyway, thanks to both of you, I really appriciate it.
crazylike_woah
I personally feel that the second sonnet is the less successful of the two. One reason is that there is much less imagery in this sonnet, although the one example of the nature imagery that pervaded the first sonnet is one of the more effective moments here, 'wishing / You would fall off the face of the earth'. Also is the fact that this sonnet is not as general and ambiguous as the last one; in this you are basically relating a series of events. As my fellow moderators have also noted, it still succeeds on account of its mood and intensity, but it still comes across as somewhat blatant and naked with little room for the readers imagination. There is certainly some ambiguity; for example the fact that you don't state the name or identity of the abusive narratee is a very sinister touch, and I do appreciate that it needs a certain blatent nakedness to produce the uncomfortable and disturbing mood you're going for; I just feel it needs more imagery and more ambiguity; give the reader a chance to do more than just react with a sense of shock.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the technical aspects of this sonnet, again the rhyme is pretty much spot on aside from the absense of a rhyming couplet, and even with the pentameter, you are spot on with the amount of syllables (10 in each line) but you still need alot of work on WHERE you put the stresses, examples being line 10, in which you stress THE and BUT but fail to stress the infinitely more important EARTH, while throughout the sonnet you consistently stress unimportant syllables such as the -ING syllable in words such as 'wishing', 'aching', and 'trying'.
But overall, these are a fantastic first attempt and show a huge amount of promise; you just need to work on your technical writing, but as long as you have the creative flair, which you have shown here in spades, then that's already much more than half the battle,
Well done,
Eoghan
Hello crazy...or...like...or woah, whichever you'd rather I call you. Welcome to wordvoodoo, and for your first sonnet ever, this piece was pretty damn good.
ReplyDeleteYour 'Love' sonnet manages to be sweet, sincere and touching without being saccharine or nauseating. The poem also manages, rather surprisingly to deal with big, somewhat cliched, set-pieces such as the comparison between love and 'sun', 'heads held high', and 'ready to fight the world', without COMING ACROSS as cliched or melodramatic, and I think the reason you succeed here is because, while the words may be melodramatic, the tone of your poem is not; it is calm; refined; certain; and therefore acts as a perfect counterpoint to the more melodramatic wording of the poem.
What I also love about the poem is your choice of imagery, as you have gone for a gentle strain of the nature motif, and it is very effective. Admittedly the imagery in the octave could afford to be a little more original, as 'sun' and 'sky' are quite oft-used images, although I do think 'In the sky / Our future is written' is a very pretty image. In the sestet, however, your imagery becomes more varied and consequently more effective, and the final sentence really does sum up the nature of the poem very simply, and very effectively.
Indeed I feel the sestet is just generally more effective than the octave due to being more original and engaging, with 'You are my own / Survivor, you're my living proof, that love / Is alive and not dead' being possibly the defining moment of the poem, firstly due to love being personified in the narratee, and secondly the comparison between love and survival is refreshing as it is not as cliched as many other comparisons you could have chosen.
As my fellow moderators have noted, however, you do need to work on the more technical aspects ofsonnet writing, but as they have also pointed out, these are hard to master so for a first sonnet you've made a damn good stab at it.
Regarding rhyme, you're pretty much spot on here except for the last two lines, known as the rhyming couplet, which therefore need to rhyme (think Shakespeare...as well as everyone else who's ever done it). What you really need to work on, therefore, is your iambic pentameter. Lines 1, 2, and 3 are two syllables too short. Line 4 has the right number of syllables, but the -EN in 'risen' is stressed when the RIS- should be stressed, and similarly THE is stressed when SKY is a far more prominant word; in line 6 most of the less significant words are stressed rather than the more significant ones, such as TO and THE when words like FIGHT and WORLD should be stressed. I also want to make special mention of lines 9 and 10. Firstly line 9 is indicative of just how important the pentameter is, as all the most important words here are left unstressed, including LOVE, the title of your poem, and YOU and ME. On the other hand, line 10 is PERFECT iambic pentameter, so if you want a model for how its done, you've already provided yourself with one.