Crystalline grief bequeathed to winter's sky.
Enamored huntsman turned her maiden eye.
Her favor spied by dawn's omniscient light
Set love adrift, from waves to starry night.
I'm trying to wrap my head around iambic pentameter with this one... discipline is hard. 
Any tips/insight, greatly appreciated.
Purely regarding the meter, it mostly fits. The only glaring problem is the word 'crystalline.' Unfortunately, this happens to be your very first word, which set the rest off for me. I had no idea it was meant to be iambic pentameter until I read the bottom. I would normally say it as KRIS - tuh - line or KRIS - tuh - LINE, but the iambic meter calls for kris - TUH - line. One syllable words usually can be stressed or unstressed without issue, but there are times you wouldn't want to change the natural stress of one syllable words. I can say more on this later.
Crystalline grief bequeathed to winter's sky.
Enamored huntsmen turned her maiden eye.
Her favor spied by dawn's omniscient light
Set love adrift, from waves to starry night.
"Crystalline grief" would indicate a fragile grief, that is to say either one that is not very strong or possibly not very true. If we just stick with "fragile" the first line reads
Fragile grief passed on to a winter's sky.
So while the words may be pretty, not much in terms of sensible information is "passed on". :)
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In terms of IP, if that is what you were shooting for, you can see by the accent marks that are normal for these words there is no way to get IP out of this line as there are four unaccented or neutral syllables all together. This is not withstanding that the first syllable is accented making the first two syllables a foot of trochee, but "Crystalline" is generally read as a foot of dactyl. Even allowing "grief" to be accented, that still is three and a half foot of trochee.
Crys-tal-line grief be-queathed to win-ter's sky.
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E-nam-ored hunts-men turned her maid-en eye.
This seems to be in IP, but why "maiden" instead of "maiden's" after all the eye does belong to the girl, making it possessive? One also must wonder how many "huntsmen" there are? Did you mean "huntsman"?
The lack of a direct object "the" makes the line seems ungainly. People who like to write in IP will advise you that it is more than just getting the right syllables accented, it also has to read naturally. This line does not.
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Her fav-or spied by dawn's om-nis-cient light
Giving "dawn" the power of omnipotence period, but within this context makes no sense at all. If one wishes to personify "dawn" fine, although personally I would go with Eos as the personification is already built in, but even being a goddess, she is not omnipotent.
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Set love adrift, from waves to starry night. IP
Even if you mean "light waves" to "starry night" (borders on cliche) the line still does not inform the reader of much.
Oh well I've gone over long for this forum. Still I would be remiss not give give the nod to the mythology that is trying to play out here, or at least seems to be. Diana "ancient Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity." Wiki, underline mine.
The Huntsman would be her vassal so to speak, although some would say that is a stretch. She is a maiden as she is chaste, and of course she is the moon goddess.
Best,
dale
Dale-
Gah, the spelling error! Thanks for catching that, apologies.
The poem is in reference to one of the Orion death myths. So the huntsmAn, is Orion. Apollo (dawn in line 3, but you're right, not omnipotent and sun god not dawn. Important distinction, oh overlapping Romans messing with my imagery) noticed Diana favoring Orion and worried for her chastity. Apollo challenged her to hit a black silhouette on the waves, which she did, not knowing it was Orion. At her grief, he was placed among the stars. (reference line 1, and 4) So crystalline is meant to allude to the stars...reflective little jewels they are. There is something catching about their fragility as well though isn't there...
A million thank you's for the bolded accents, immensely helpful.
Useless Blueprint--Thanks for the feedback, I'd love to hear more about stresses in iambic. I have to admit, I'm not overly confident that I'm grasping changing the natural stress and when that would be ok/not ok.
(02-17-2016, 02:42 AM)nikkisto Wrote: [ -> ]Crystalline grief bequeathed to winter's sky. stars are frequently compared with crystals, so I get where you're coming from, but 'crystalline grief' makes no sense. technically speaking, crystalline grief isn't brittle - a diamond is a crystal, for example. it's not clear what aspect (there's a pun for you) of a crystal can represent grief - fracture planes, lattice structures, reflectivity, etc.
'Astral grief' would be more appropriate, though ugly.
Enamored huntsman turned her maiden eye.
Her favor spied by dawn's omniscient light surely it wasn't her favour? she set the dogs on her. also, the light is not omniscient, merely illuminating.
Set love adrift, from waves to starry night. the waves of the pool that she was bathing in? even if so, why waves? weak association with the myth.
I'm trying to wrap my head around iambic pentameter with this one... discipline is hard. Any tips/insight, greatly appreciated.
I think the meter's ok except for 'omniscient' light - which reads as 11 syllables ('scient' can be read as 2 or 3 because of the 2 vowels)