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poetry
2nd
Draft
Published on:
September 1, 9:43pmWord Count:
27Last Edited:
September 2, 8:49amWork Description
An experiment in limiting myself by rather arbitrary rules of form. Not sure what to make of it.
Edit:
Okay, I figure it would be a good idea to include the rules I had set down for myself before writing this.
no rules about meter,
but each verse has to be one syllable shorter than the previous verse,
and the last word of each verse rhymes with the first syllable of the previous verse.
In schematic:
Axxxxxx
BxxxxA
CxxxB
DxxC
ExD
FE
F
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Page: 1
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Bind your soul in rhyme and meter.
With your words images find.
Verse and stanza forthwith
Freely do disperse.
Found inside thee,
Dealt in sound:
Heartfelt
Art.
Page: 1



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Hurrah for constrained writing exercises!
I'll do this line-by-line:
This is a great first line. It firmly establishes a nice meter, and has pretty evocative imagery, too.
Unfortunately, I took a running leap off the end of the line and immediately smashed face-first into a wall.
The wall being the fact that the meter stops rather abruptly after "With your words". Now I'm not saying that a lack of meter is bad per se. Obviously in a poem of this form you're going to have to do away with it eventually (There are very few forms of meter that work on one syllable lines). However, it always bugs me when a poem starts out with rollicking meter and then just unceremoniously dumps it a line or two later.
This keeps the meter around a little longer, but the problem would be finding an unstressed one-syllable synonym for "find". Alternately, do away with the meter at the beginning of the line, and not half-way through it. That will let the reader know straight off they can stop expecting it, and they won't stumble when it's taken away.
This line didn't do anything for me. "Forthwith what?" I was left wondering. I am well aware that it mentions it in the next line, but all the other lines basically stand alone. This one needing support made me stumble.
Perhaps something more like:
That's not really all that great, but I hope it gets my idea across.
Despite the archaism, I loved this. It flows really well, brings back a bit of meter and rhythm, and I love "dealt in sound". Maybe put some puncuation after "heartfelt", though.
Nice work!