How can love be interpreted simply?
Love is a fickle beast, arduous to tame
Love cannot be measured, seldom clearly
Love is mysterious, having no name
Love comes in various different forms
None of them clear enough to comprehend
Love is like a fire, blazing, bright and warm,
Love is like iron, and can never bend
Love is both a blessing and a burden
It leaves us yearning and begging for more
The heart is fragile, treated by surgeons
Love is a curious thing, opening doors
A man cannot be stopped, if struck by love
Love is love, from depths below to above
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ReplyDeleteHello Wordsmith,
ReplyDeleteAnother good effort this week, but unfortunately, some of the same issues from the last task remain. On the second line, for example, I keep reading eleven syllables, and on the seventh unless I squish 'fire' into one (because usually I'd say it like fi-er).
Other than that, you seem to have got the pentametre sorted pretty well. Next step: making it iambic. This really enhances the readability of a sonnet. Sentences naturally have a rhythm and you have to figure out a way to make it work for you rather than trying to force your words into it.
I'll use the last line as an example. The way the stresses should be read like this:
love IS love, FROM depths BE-low TO a-BOVE.
Unfortunately, this jars with the natural rhythm of the sentence. If I read it aloud separately from the sonnet, I want to add the stresses in this way:
LOVE is LOVE, from DEPTHS be-LOW to a-BOVE.
As you can see, only "above" is the same in each way.
Have you tried Mr Savage's Excel idea from a couple of tasks ago? I feel like that could really help you bump up your work to the next level.
Good luck with the next task, with a little more work I hope that you'll be rewarded with a really great poem!
Frances
hi,
ReplyDeleteLots of promising images here. I think you'd benefit from concentrating on one or two of the strongest.
My favorite line is "The heart is fragile, treated by surgeons" I was so disappointed when you didn't expand on this. A comparison between the physical heart and the emotional one could be a compact powerful sonnet. Try to go deeper and deeper into one or two, no, ONE strong idea/image.
For instance, "Love comes in various different forms" is redundant and doesn't really say much.
You vary to good effect similes "Love is like" and metaphors "Love is". This just about keeps the word Love from getting repetitive.
Lots to like here (though the meter, the form is still a ways away....) My best advice at this point is to focus your intelligence and vision on the specifics of your genuinely interesting ideas and images.
michael