Messing with the Sonnet
January 16th 2009 22:36
"Grandpa"
He was the liveliest fossil on earth,
Tucking titanic truths away in small
Smiles seething with love for us all;
His dull hide poorly told his worth.
Defying the iron commands of Time,
He crossed the chasm of misspent years,
A stout oak stooping to shake off the rime
And scrape off the remnants of frozen tears
That could not restrain the ironic mirth
only old age could have given him.
He stretched his boughs in the face of the storm
One last time before his weathered form
Broke down and limbs grew frail and eyes went dim.
He died so he could have his final birth.
This poem is indeed about my own grandfather, on my dad's side, who passed away a couple years ago. We were never extremely close, and toward the end his mind started to leave as well as his body; however I still loved him a lot, and his absence put a hole in our family that is still palpably felt to this day. I tried to capture his character, especially toward the end of his life, and I think the imagery and metaphor are apt.
The form of this poem is a very twisted around sonnet. The rhyme scheme is abba cdcd efggfe. I like the scheme of the sestet but with my love of consistency I'll probably make the previous quatrains have a more synchronous rhyme scheme. I wasn't strict about the syllabe parameters of the lines; as long as it flows well, it's not a problem to me. Although, I do like having some semblance of uniformity, at least visually; so I kept the lines somewhat close in length.
The one thing, stylistically, that makes this poem not quite a real sonnet is that there's not really a clear volta; that is, like most sonnets do, there isn't a clear shift in meaning or focus. Except perhaps the very last line, which is unorthodox for sonnets, since most of them usually have the volta beginning in the last stanza or the final couplet, which this poem also doesn't have. But that's fine; it's more reminiscent of a Petrarchan Sonnet, that has an octave (eight line stanza) and a sestet (six line stanza) which rhyme abbaabba cdccdc or something like that.
I love sonnets, but I love messing with them even more. Sonnets, by definition, have 14 lines, a definite and clear rhyme scheme, and are usually written in a specific meter. A lot of sonnets use a conceit, or an extended metaphor, throughout the poem, which is the subject of the poem (like mine is the metaphor of a tree, and in Spenser's sonnet 37 it's the golden hair net) and a volta is usually somewhere in there. The less people follow these guidelines, the less they can claim to have written a sonnet.
Expect more sonnet variations from me in the future. Tomorrow I'll look at another villanelle I wrote, aspects of which I actually don't like...I felt that I made some of the language too formal for the sake of rhyme, but in the villanelle it's tough to change that without completely rewriting the poem, but we'll see. Have a nice night everyone!
He was the liveliest fossil on earth,
Tucking titanic truths away in small
Smiles seething with love for us all;
His dull hide poorly told his worth.
Defying the iron commands of Time,
He crossed the chasm of misspent years,
A stout oak stooping to shake off the rime
And scrape off the remnants of frozen tears
That could not restrain the ironic mirth
only old age could have given him.
He stretched his boughs in the face of the storm
One last time before his weathered form
Broke down and limbs grew frail and eyes went dim.
This poem is indeed about my own grandfather, on my dad's side, who passed away a couple years ago. We were never extremely close, and toward the end his mind started to leave as well as his body; however I still loved him a lot, and his absence put a hole in our family that is still palpably felt to this day. I tried to capture his character, especially toward the end of his life, and I think the imagery and metaphor are apt.
The form of this poem is a very twisted around sonnet. The rhyme scheme is abba cdcd efggfe. I like the scheme of the sestet but with my love of consistency I'll probably make the previous quatrains have a more synchronous rhyme scheme. I wasn't strict about the syllabe parameters of the lines; as long as it flows well, it's not a problem to me. Although, I do like having some semblance of uniformity, at least visually; so I kept the lines somewhat close in length.
The one thing, stylistically, that makes this poem not quite a real sonnet is that there's not really a clear volta; that is, like most sonnets do, there isn't a clear shift in meaning or focus. Except perhaps the very last line, which is unorthodox for sonnets, since most of them usually have the volta beginning in the last stanza or the final couplet, which this poem also doesn't have. But that's fine; it's more reminiscent of a Petrarchan Sonnet, that has an octave (eight line stanza) and a sestet (six line stanza) which rhyme abbaabba cdccdc or something like that.
I love sonnets, but I love messing with them even more. Sonnets, by definition, have 14 lines, a definite and clear rhyme scheme, and are usually written in a specific meter. A lot of sonnets use a conceit, or an extended metaphor, throughout the poem, which is the subject of the poem (like mine is the metaphor of a tree, and in Spenser's sonnet 37 it's the golden hair net) and a volta is usually somewhere in there. The less people follow these guidelines, the less they can claim to have written a sonnet.
Expect more sonnet variations from me in the future. Tomorrow I'll look at another villanelle I wrote, aspects of which I actually don't like...I felt that I made some of the language too formal for the sake of rhyme, but in the villanelle it's tough to change that without completely rewriting the poem, but we'll see. Have a nice night everyone!
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