THE ART OF POETRY
ENG 221

Dr. David B. Axelrod

  Copyright (c) 2002-2007 David B. Axelrod

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MORE HELP WITH SONNETS

LEARNING THE REQUIRED METER

You should already have read the lesson on sonnets at the link: http://www.poetrydoctor.org/sonnet.htm

YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO REVISE until you get the meter right! It may take you some time but clearly, you need to give this your serious attention!

Given that for most of the history of literature in the English language, poems were written in a set meter, I don't feel you have studied the Art of Poetry, and learned your lessons well unless you can master the simplest of set meters, the iambic form.

It's said that English has a natural flow which is iambic!

It's said   that Eng lish has a nat ural flow which is i am bic! There! How hard was that?

The Bold was meant to highlight sylables [I think you are getting the idea] with stresses.

Granted, some people may have a tin ear, but if you read words aloud--if you listen to where the accents fall in sentences and conversations--then those are the stresses. Arranging the words so the accents follow a regular pattern is an art in poetry.

Suppose I capitalize and make bold face each syllable with a stress. A sonnet should be five regular "feet" of iambic pentameter. For example

"DO not GO genTLE?" DYLan HAD it WRONG.  That's the first line in iambic pentameter of a poem of mine widely published and in my book

RANDOM BEAUTY. You can tap it out. Each line is regularly iambic, un-stresed and stress syllable, five times each line...

NEAR DEATH

(a sonnet for Aaron Kramer)

"Do not go gentle?" Dylan missed the mark;

as if we all must think of death as dark.

I think that death's more gentle than a birth.
I've seen a light that glows beyond the earth;

but not a heaven, not Elysian Fields.

One needn't find salvation; rather, yield

to that same light that little children miss

in nurseries where doting parents kiss

their fears away indulgently.  But why?

Suppose it isn't fear that makes kids cry

but yearning for the pre-birth light they left.

Then go, good journeyman, gently cleft.

Greet death as quietly as candles burn.

From light you came. To light you shall return

Here's how your lines are arranged:

College has just started again for me.

Most of my classes I will take online.
This way I hope I won't fall so behind.
I'm a mother to four children you see. So you see, sometimes you come close but close doesn't win you the prize! Still you are working at it. I give you credit. Then there is the question of making good rhymes. Good rhymes are those which say what you mean smoothly. They add to the meaning. Less good or even bad rhymes are the rhymes you make because you had to rhyme. Doing so can even interrupt the what you are trying to say. You bend the sentences, strain the syntax to make it rhyme.
A great student is what I want to be.
Must make sure I plan my day so it's fine.
The grades that I earn I own they're mine.
A good educations always the key.
Finding time is sure to be a challenge.
But being the best I can I'll manage.
Scoring an A can put me on the top.
Doing good and making the grade don't stop.
Wishing high to the stars and to the moon.
A graduate I'm sure to be real soon.

To your credit you got a lot right. 14 lines, an established rhyme scheme. Some passages of iambic verse if not regular pentameter.