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By Katanga
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11 September 2008 |
I've tried to work the other way from 'Spiders', starting with ten syllables and reducing to one as a sort of steady decline towards the grave (!).
I've also tried to keep it iambic, with unstressed final syllables (feminine endings) on the lines with 9, 7, 5 and 3 syllables.
I'd like to know if it works? All a bit artificial, I'm afraid, but fun!
Cheers!
JohnX
My Life
When I was born I had my life ahead
of me with many roads untravelled.
In youth I loved till my heart bled,
the threads of time unravelled.
As now I face old age,
upon reflection,
I change my stage
direction
to "Drop!"
Stop.
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Its Great!
Written by BenC (11 comments posted) 11th September 2008 | | Wow, great poem! Very thoughtful. |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 11th September 2008 | | I'm not too fond of line breaks that cut right through constituents in poetry. Yet apart from that, it's a nice poem. |
Written by Phil (6963 comments posted) 11th September 2008 | Transition from line 1 to 2 and 7 to 8 seemed a little clumsy in rhythm. It is an interesting experiment. The rhythm built in chunks successfully (except where mentioned - and that could be my reading.)
Liked the end particularly.
Phil | Maus and Phil . . .
Written by Katanga (1515 comments posted) 11th September 2008 | . . . Sorry that you don't like the 'line breaks' or 'transitions'. I hope the below justifies what I have done to some extent?
Please read the below and comment back to me . . .
Enjambment (also spelled enjambement) is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. It is to be contrasted with end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line, and caesura, in which the linguistic unit ends mid-line. The term is directly borrowed from the French enjambement, meaning "straddling" or "bestriding". See also "line breaks".
The following lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (c. 1611) are heavily enjambed:
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.
Meaning flows as the lines progress, and the reader’s eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like “flow-of-thought” with a sensation of urgency or disorder.
If you've read this far . . . Yo Ho! John XXX
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Written by johniebg (553 comments posted) 14th September 2008 | Not being a fan of poetry I was disappointed when this was not an essay. But I did enjoy this. It hung together well and the decreasing line lengths gave it an additional quality.
Were you Talisker in another life? |
Written by Rioka (8 comments posted) 18th September 2008 | I like the idea of the shortening lines to mirror a shortening life, and the poem doesn't seem contrived like some do when the focus is on form.
The only problem with the enjambement is that it might stop the reader from noticing the shortening lines so much, but it does make the poem flow better.
Anyway, nice work. -Rachel |
Written by Veronica_Milvus (751 comments posted) 18th September 2008 | how did this end up in "shorts"
a pome, surely? shortened, definitely, but not a short. |
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