The sun shines quite strongly in the summer,
The birds sing while spreading their mighty wings,
The scent of divine flowers and lovers,
The feeling between two people can bring.
An unexplainable definition,
In which words cannot seem to interpret,
Adrenaline, working on a mission
With the heart and mind hoping to be worth it.
People fall in love, so keep up ahead,
The goal of life, to have a longtime friend.
Love is in the air, as always is said,
Cliché it may seem but true in the end.
The comfort when you look into their eyes,
The feeling no one can ever despise.
Venice, you are really beginning to get the hang of the iambic pentameter, I think. There are some lines here that get it absolutely spot-on. (“The goal of life…” “The comfort when you look…” – both of those are great, but there are others where the stress falls wrong, sometimes on a word in the middle, sometimes at the end.
ReplyDeleteNote that lines 1 and 3 end with feminine rhymes: “summer” and “lovers” want to have their stress on the first syllable, so if you want to use them in a sonnet, you have to cheat and put an extra syllable in.
I’ve checked with Shakespeare and if he does it then I guess so can you. Here’s an example (Sonnet 102 – see he had a lot of practice!)
My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where
So, to copy this, you’d have to have something like:
The sun shines ever stronger in the summer
The birds sing while they spread their mighty wings
(In terms of imagery, I’m not sure about mighty – the birds that sing the prettiest tend to be the smaller ones – “dainty wings” perhaps?)
The third line is missing a syllable, and stumbles a bit of “divine flowers”, so why not swap the words around to get:
The scent of flowers divine and of the lovers
The fourth line works more or less, though the stress seems to fall wrong on the second syllable of ‘people’ but let’s leave that for the moment. The fifth line, too, is correct in its stresses, but seems clumsy, perhaps because of the long words. (If you look at Shakespeare’s sonnets, they’re full of short words, not long words.) ‘Definition’ and ‘mission’ would, I think, prefer not to have their stresses on the last syllable – DefiNItion and MIssion. So, like the first line, cheat and put in an extra syllable. (Being quick, I’ve cheated again by stealing a syllable from ‘dangerous’)
Here is a run through of the rest of the poem, with me fiddling about with word order to get the stresses right. Have a read and see what you think:
The sun shines ever stronger in the summer
The birds sing while they spread their mighty wings
The scent of flowers divine and of the lovers
The feeling between two people can bring.
A dark and deep and dang’rous definition,
That words seem just too weedy to interpret,
Adrenaline, that’s working on a mission
Their hearts and minds all hoping to be worth it.
Yes, people fall in love - keep up ahead!
The goal of life, to have a longtime friend.
For love is in the air, as it is said,
A cliché, sure, but true right to the end.
The comfort when you look into their eyes,
Is a feeling no one can ever despise.
Hello Venice!
ReplyDeleteThis is a lovely poem. You’ve put in a lot of very powerful imagery and it’s a very optimistic poem, with lots of positive words. At times it does seem a little clichéd, but as you’ve pointed this out in the poem, I’m sure you realise when. It is important to remember that there are other types of love in the world, such as love for family, friends, love for chocolate. Perhaps if you find it hard to write about romantic love, you can write about one of these other things.
The metre is nearly all correct, but sometimes we are forced to change the natural emphasis. This happens in lines 1 and 2 (strong-LY and spread-ING in your poem, STRONG-ly and SPREAD-ing in natural speech). You also fall into the trap of putting a DUM at the beginning of the line (lines 7, 9 and 11). I would try to find a soft word to put in front of these words – on, and, yet, may... words that don’t change the meaning much, but don’t have much of a natural emphasis. You also seem to have problems with using longer words (UN-ex-PLAIN-a-BLE and de-FIN-i-TION). It’s quite hard to use longer words in poems so I would avoid even trying.
Keep at it and I’m sure it’ll fit perfectly!
Kat