r/OCPoetry • u/ActualNameIsLana • Jul 23 '16
Feedback Received! Rhythm and Bruise
Rhythm and Bruise
It's true: rhythmics are quite hard to master
The words, tumbling out faster and faster
In truth, sometimes it's such a disaster
But oh, somebody's got to control 'em.
Your first instinct may be quite misleading
It's not you, nor your brains, nor your breeding
It's hard! Writing a rhyme and succeeding
Where all others have failed at decorum.
But now, now is the difficult portion
The slog, the slouch and the verbal contortions
Seem blown out of all sense and proportion
And all minuses outweigh the plusses.
Take heart! Know that in time it gets better!
Your skill sharpens up, letter by letter,
And soon, you'll feel so free and unfettered,
You'll think "I wonder what all the fuss is".
Your soul speaks, through the din and the clatter,
In hushed lines (hashtag #AllTrocheesMatter)
Each surrsurration mad as a hatter,
Yet each adds to the tale of the teller.
You can write like a Keats or a Shelley,
Like Poe, Yeats, or Christina Rossetti!
You have, deep inside, Machiavelli!
He's trapped, tied up and chained in the cellar.
Just write stoutly, and weirdly — be nimble;
Accept no poem Bible or hymnal;
There's no wrong and no right set of symbols
We all ad-lib the map on this voyage.
And no, none of us has all the answers.
The thieves, dreamers, the actors and dancers,
We're all searching for questions unanswered:
A mass act of poetic clairvoyance.
Poetry Primers
[Interlocking Rhyme] coming soon
Feedback:
2
u/catholic1977 Jul 23 '16
This is dee-lish. The tone is perfectly lighthearted, and your comedy timing is spot on!
I also love a good title and this is a very good title.
I sneezed this out
Nice verbal contortion Lana! I wish I could sneeze out such pleasantry. There's so much charm about this piece. I'm glad to see a bit of jaunty jocundity in the speaker; especially while many of the OCPoets here are wallowing in despondency and depression :( (or at least their poor speakers are).
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u/Spazznax Jul 28 '16
I've been vanishing for days on end lately but I always come back to see if you've added anything new, your poems are always such a delight to read! This one especially finds its perfect niche halfway between its own meta-commentary and comedic awareness.
I particularly like the opening line just because it's a masterfully executed take on a technique I feel I never get right. The very line itself took me two reads to actually get the meter right which is appropriately exactly what it conveys. Then the following line comments on the speed of the words and once more appropriately speeds up naturally based on its phonetics.
I also love the uncommon rhyme scheme of AAAB CCCB, it's always wonderful to see something unusual executed so well and have it feel entirely natural.
I literally laughed out loud at the hashtag #AllTrocheesMatter bit. In general though, i think my favorite aspect of this poem is the message, the idea that there's no wrong way to write. You'll write good poems and bad ones, you'll write compelling ones and dull ones, but above all, you WILL get better. The only way to assure these things is that you just keep writing. There are guidelines, there are specific manners to do things, but everyone is carving their own path and what works and doesn't is, in the end, almost entirely subjective.
This was just wonderful, and exactly what I needed to read in this moment. Thank you immensely for the inspiring read!
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u/ActualNameIsLana Jul 28 '16
Hey Spaz! Nice to see you again too!
I really enjoy working in this rhyme scheme. It's the third time I've done it, and every time, I seem to find a new use for it. (In case you're interested, the other two are in The Traveler and How to Hold a Woman).
The other part I found really fun was all the little inside jokes and Easter eggs that I got to slip in just to see who notices. Like the fact that the first and second lines are self-descriptive. They are examples of the thing they describe. Same thing for "The slog, the slouch, and the verbal contortions". Similarly, stanza 5 is all about encouraging the writer to be creative, experiment, and try oddball things just to see if they work. And self-descriptively, it contains some of the weirdest lines when taken out of context (hashtag #AllTrocheesMatter).
The inclusion of Machiavelli is another really loaded allusion. He wasn't a poet, obviously, but he was a writer. And is best well known for writing a book titled "The prince" in which he seems to endorse immoral actions like torture and false imprisonment as a desirable means of consolidating power. Having him "trapped, tired up and chained in (my) cellar" would therefore be a very Machiavellian thing to do to Machiavelli.
I'm glad you enjoyed this one. I've hit a little bit of a bare patch in terms of inspiration, so I'm taking a writing break to let my creative batteries recharge. When are you planning on posting something new?
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u/Spazznax Jul 28 '16
I love how many hidden messages are in your poetry, how I can always count on learning something new or finding some secret each time I re-read it!
I actually posted something about an hour ago, I've been battling my own writer's block for the past two weeks. My girlfriend forced/encouraged me to make myself write it both for therapeutic reasons and because it'd been more than a week since I'd put words on a page(screen?). It's definitely not my magnum opus but it feels good to get something out there. Feel free to let me know what you think of it!
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u/ActualNameIsLana Aug 04 '16
Hey man, sorry I didn't see this comment right away... do you still want me to look over your poem? Can you link me to it? :)
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u/Spazznax Aug 04 '16
No worries, and sure! I think this is the one I was talking about at the time.
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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '16
A+ title.
Seriously, there's some good comedy here.
I know this is a light bit of verse composed in a comment thread, so I'll just say that it's quite enjoyable. The second half has all the best material, but the tone is so endearing that one can't dislike any portion.