My first English sonnet, or attempt of at least.

Retaliate


I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand;
this butcher feels so heavy, that's just right.
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned;
my blade of pain, oh please stay sharp all night.

From ages past, why did you torment me,
bulldoze right through me on a street of pain;
a broken arm and smashed up face you see,
because of you i may just be insane.

I know bone and muscles, inside and out;
my job demands it; im a surgeon sir,
I bulked up pal, protein and carbs no doubt,
Oh wait, did I forget to mention her?

Before this blade starts, i should tell you first,
your sister's pregnant; that is even worse.

Hey great first attempt!
The story is fantastic and it has a great ending
(I understood the relevance of the surgeon on my second read through)

Because it is in serious critique I'll take that to mean you dont mind a bit of brutal honesty.

It seems to largely be made of filler words and conjunctions. it looks like half the poem is chaff around the nuggets. To show you what I mean I'll go through and pick what I see are the meaningful bits of each line (Ill do it to the first half so you see what I mean).

If you take these meaningful bits and work out how to express them with less chaff in between you'll be able to fit more descriptive meat in the lines and it wont feel as forced and stilted.

I guess the other thing I noticed is that although you have the interline rhymes working, none of the other words within each line seem to fit together particularly well. "I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand" none of these words seem to roll together particularly poetically. This is also largely due to the high count of filler words though.

(12-19-2012, 01:02 PM)davidbenjamindix Wrote:  My first English sonnet, or attempt of at least.

Retaliate


I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand; cleaver down, shift hand.
this butcher feels so heavy, that's just right. butcher heavy, just right.
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned; bound gagged, planned
my blade of pain, oh please stay sharp all night. blade of pain, sharp night

From ages past, why did you torment me, ages past, torment
bulldoze right through me on a street of pain; bulldoze through me, street of pain
a broken arm and smashed up face you see, broken arm, smashed face
because of you i may just be insane. because of you i'm insane.

I know bone and muscles, inside and out;
my job demands it; im a surgeon sir,
I bulked up pal, protein and carbs no doubt,
Oh wait, did I forget to mention her?

Before this blade starts, i should tell you first,
your sister's pregnant; that is even worse.

look forward to seeing where this goes!
Thanks for the read.

Thank you benthejack. I agree with you completely. There are a ton of filler words, and I'm glad you pointed it out. It is definitely in need of a lot more descriptive meat, and that's what I intend to do. I look forward to working on the revised version. Thanks again for the honesty! It means a lot.

(12-19-2012, 01:02 PM)davidbenjamindix Wrote:  I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand; Is this comma needed?*
this butcher feels so heavy, that's just right.
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned;
my blade of pain, oh please stay sharp all night.

From ages past, why did you torment me, Is this comma needed?
bulldoze right through me on a street of pain;
a broken arm and smashed up face you see,
because of you i may just be insane. "I"

I know bones? and muscles, inside and out; Is this comma needed?
my job demands it; im a surgeon, sir, "I'm"
I bulked up pal, protein and carbs no doubt,
Oh wait, did I forget to mention her?

Before this blade starts, i should tell you first, "I"
your sister's pregnant; that is even worse.

*I'm not the best critic on this site when it comes to technical forms, so you'll have to forgive me if my suggested comma removals impinge on your meter.

An excellent first sonnet, at least in terms of its readability and emotional punch. I enjoyed this. The last couplet is immensely moving and chilling. It's a really effective narrative, taking us on a journey from point A, where I pictured a gruff, balding butcher in a meat locker, to point Z, where I saw a sad, sophisticated surgeon poised with a scalpel over a dotted line. Thank you for the read

solid effort, if this is your first you'll soon get the hang of it
it's a bit to wordy in places, i know from experience that sonnets and other forms can have a preponderance of filler words, it's much easier to find one of those than use non filler words. the end rhymes are okay though first/worse is stretching the term rhyme a bit .
i think one of the problems is the meter.
if you use iambs you won't struggle with lines like
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned;namely the this is all situation.
all tied up tight, strapped down and gagged as planned
which is okay but there's no real image there. and an image is often what the reader needs, so;
all turkey trussed, and apple-gagged as planned of course it can be said in lots of ways, but an image speaks a thousand words.

(12-19-2012, 01:02 PM)davidbenjamindix Wrote:  My first English sonnet, or attempt of at least.

Retaliate


I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand;
this butcher feels so heavy, that's just right.
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned;
my blade of pain, oh please stay sharp all night.

From ages past, why did you torment me,
bulldoze right through me on a street of pain;
a broken arm and smashed up face you see,
because of you i may just be insane.

I know bone and muscles, inside and out;
my job demands it; im a surgeon sir,
I bulked up pal, protein and carbs no doubt,
Oh wait, did I forget to mention her?

Before this blade starts, i should tell you first,
your sister's pregnant; that is even worse.