a kind of sonnet

[Jeffrey Gibson]

When I have risen early from my bed
to force myself to best the day’s surmise,
I find my mood is ragged, hollow, shred.
I hate dawn’s rosy fingers at sunrise.

I’d rather stay all twined within my sheets --
For you are there. And leaving you behind
when staying promises delights aesthetes
would die to taste and revel in supine
is foolishness, and like to wrath the gods
for spurning their good gift to me that’s you.
But duty calls and duty wants its aching due
so sore a thing its burden is; the bloody sod.
And so I grumble up myself to face anew
another day far from the nesting of
your arms, far from the rest you bring to me
when I, within their fold, am made to see
how blissful life can be, how it’s enough,
not wealth, or fame, to lift me up to glee.
But then I think of how you wait for my return,
and I can glibly say to duty then,
O burn and burn, you bleeding wanker, burn!

[billy]

what rhyme scheme are you using jeff?
the first quatrain is abab
then it goes. cdcfghhi or g and then i start to get lost. so for me the rhyme scheme is distracting.

the meter is perfect iamb i think (i'm shite at meter) but with so many lines i'd have liked to have seen a few variations on a few of them.
it would have made it more comfortable and a just a little less forced.
it's a good effort. i'm one of those smiley happy bastards when i awake but my kids are like the 1st person of the poem so i can relate to it.
overall it does have a staid wordiness about it and i'm not sure that helps the write.
thanks for the read.

When I have risen early from my bed
to force myself to best the day’s surmise, when you use two of something, in this case [to] i'd suggest changing one so as to not weaken the line. a suggestion would be[and force,] or [and forced] the tense still works i think and would be easy to change if not.
I find my mood is ragged, hollow, shred.
I hate dawn’s rosy fingers at sunrise.

I’d rather stay all twined within my sheets --
For you are there. And leaving you behind seem arbitrary to use a period?
when staying promises delights aesthetes
would die to taste and revel in supine
is foolishness, and like to wrath the gods
for spurning their good gift to me that’s you.
But duty calls and duty wants its aching due a suggestion would be [when] instead of [but]
so sore a thing its burden is; the bloody sod.
And so I grumble up myself to face anew
another day far from the nesting of
your arms, far from the rest you bring to me
when I, within their fold, am made to see
how blissful life can be, how it’s enough,
not wealth, or fame, to lift me up to glee.
But then I think of how you wait for my return,
and I can glibly say to duty then,
O burn and burn, you bleeding wanker, burn! love the last line, anything with wanker in, works well for me .

[milo]

When I have risen early from my bed
to force myself to best the day’s surmise,
I find my mood is ragged, hollow, shred.
I hate dawn’s rosy fingers at sunrise.

I’d rather stay all twined within my sheets --
For you are there. And leaving you behind
when staying promises delights aesthetes
would die to taste and revel in supine
is foolishness, and like to wrath the gods
for spurning their good gift to me that’s you.
But duty calls and duty wants its aching due
so sore a thing its burden is; the bloody sod.
And so I grumble up myself to face anew
another day far from the nesting of
your arms, far from the rest you bring to me
when I, within their fold, am made to see
how blissful life can be, how it’s enough,
not wealth, or fame, to lift me up to glee.
But then I think of how you wait for my return,
and I can glibly say to duty then,
O burn and burn, you bleeding wanker, burn!

The practice forum is really about whether you met the rules or not and as I don't know the rules of this form you have here it is tough to say whether you accomp,ished them. Some lines have six feet and some have four, there are some grammar errors and sunrise is a trochee not an iamb. In addition there is a lot of obvious padding, tortured phrases and some awkwardness as well.

I could probably be more help and maybe even attempt one of my own if you posted the rules first as is the normal practice in the practice forum.

[Erthona]

Jeffrey,

If by "kind of a Sonnet", you mean, sort of like a sonnet, then sure, but it still must be judged as a sonnet, as "kind of a Sonnet" is not really an established form. I am assuming you meant for it to be judge as a sonnet,and the "kind of" was simply your acknowledgment that you knew it did not successfully replicate that form in several areas. So I will critique it as a sonnet.

I see the same problems I see with lots of sonnets. It is just very difficult to write five feet of iambs in English line upon line, without at some point reversing the syntax: "to force myself to best the day’s surmise". It is also quite common to flip over into trochee ( aesthetes: es-theet), which I think is more a more natural foot for English. There is also a lot of filler in the form of "and", but", "for" and so on: "And so I grumble...", instead of "I grumble...". In terms of rhyme I am unsure if you are attempting to rhyme
of" with "enough", but I am certain "then" is not rhymed with anything. This appears to be in the form of an Elizabethan for the first two quatrains, with the standard abab rhyme pattern, but then you seem to drop into a Petrarchan in the third quatrain with the abba rhyme pattern. After that, it becomes...confusing.
Of course it is much too long for a sonnet, at least any I am aware of, but then I don't keep up with such things as sonnets are not really my cup of tea, but I would estimate about seven lines too long, of which I am sure you are aware.
Stylistically, I can't say I am much in favor of breaking a sentence in the middle of the line, of course that is mainly preference.
I think one must admire anyone trying to rhyme "aesthetes", but some of your other rhymes seem forced, causing the line to be forced into an unaesthetic phrase: "I find my mood is ragged, hollow, shred". Generally I think an article would at least precede "shred", but then you would need to drop either "hollow" or "ragged", and still you would be one syllable short.
Other things just seem like brain farts such as:
"And so I grumble up myself to face anew", which if you dropped the "And so", which should not be there anyway, you have a perfectly good five foot line. That is not to say it is a perfectly good line, but I don't think adding the "And so" makes any difference one way or another in that regards.

Certainly sonnets are a wonderful practice exercise, and probably any poet should be conversant with them. Leanne is, as far as I know, the resident guru on sonnets; she opens her mouth and a sonnet flows out as naturally as most of us asking for a glass of water. I would speak some on your word choices "wanker"??? As this is not in "serious work shopping" I will halt here.

Best of luck with this unnatural beast (not your poem, I mean the sonnet).

dale

When I have risen early from my bed
to force myself to best the day’s surmise,
I find my mood is ragged, hollow, shred.
I hate dawn’s rosy fingers at sunrise.

I’d rather stay all twined within my sheets --
For you are there. And leaving you behind
when staying promises delights aesthetes (foot of trochee?)
would die to taste and revel in supine

is foolishness, and like to wrath the gods
for spurning their good gift to me that’s you.
But duty calls and duty wants its aching due (six too long)
so sore a thing its burden is; the bloody sod.

And so I grumble up myself to face anew (six feet)
another day far from the nesting of
your arms, far from the rest you bring to me
when I, within their fold, am made to see

how blissful life can be, how it’s enough,
not wealth, or fame, to lift me up to glee.
But then I think of how you wait for my return, (six too long)
and I can glibly say to duty then,
O burn and burn, you bleeding wanker, burn!

[Jeffrey Gibson]

And so I grumble up myself to face anew (six feet)

But then I think of how you wait for my return, (six too long)

Correct me if I am wrong, but Alexandrines were used by Spencer and other Elisabethan sonnet writers, if not by Shakespeare (who does use them in his blank verse. So, strictly speaking, they are not an actual violation of the sonnet form.

But you are correct about this piece's length. My real purpose though was to see how well I could maintain writing iambically.

Jeffrey

[milo]

And so I grumble up myself to face anew (six feet)

But then I think of how you wait for my return, (six too long)

Correct me if I am wrong, but Alexandrines were used by Spencer and other Elisabethan sonnet writers, if not by Shakespeare (who does use them in his blank verse. So, strictly speaking, they are not an actual violation of the sonnet form.

But you are correct about this piece's length. My real purpose though was to see how well I could maintain writing iambically.

Jeffrey

Even if the errant lines were plain old hexameter/tetrameter instead of alexandrines (which they are) you could still write a sonnet with them. Fixed forms tend to have a fixed meter. As you've said, this isn't a fixed form just rambling in quasi-ip. I have moved it to fun. I would change the title to ramblings in quasi-iambic if I was you, but that's just me.

[Jeffrey Gibson]

Even if the errant lines were plain old hexameter/tetrameter instead of alexandrines (which they are) you could still write a sonnet with them. Fixed forms tend to have a fixed meter. As you've said, this isn't a fixed form just rambling in quasi-ip. I have moved it to fun. I would change the title to ramblings in quasi-iambic if I was you, but that's just me.

Sounds good to me.

Jeffrey

[Erthona]

"Correct me if I am wrong, but Alexandrines were used by Spencer and other Elizabethan sonnet writers"

There is a Spenserian stanza that is composed of eight lines of pentameter, and one line Alexandrine, but it was not a sonnet. I think there have been some modern attempts to compose a sonnet entirely of Alexandrines, but it is completely composed of them, it does not alternate. As far as I know, by the middle Elizabethan period the use of Alexandrines had mostly fallen out of use. They may be or have been used in French poetry, even in Sonnets, but that is French and this is English.

But as I said, Leanne is the resident sonnet guru, so she could be more definitive than I.

Dale

[Leanne]

No I can't, Dale. You're correct in that ultimate Alexandrines were used by sonnet writers such as Spenser and other Elizabethans including Shakespeare -- but not in sonnets. The ultimate line does have caesuras as a good dodecasyllabic line should. The arguments here are all good reasons why this is no kind of sonnet, though I feel this is bogging down in semantics just a little too much. I have issues with the syntax and the meter but as criticism has been so poorly received in the past, I find that I am not of a mind to critique. This is probably just as well, since it's been moved to the "For Fun" forum and it wouldn't hurt to treat it as the lighthearted piece that it is from now on.

[Jeffrey Gibson]

No I can't, Dale. You're correct in that ultimate Alexandrines were used by sonnet writers such as Spenser and other Elizabethans including Shakespeare -- but not in sonnets.

SONNET. X.
VNRIGHTEOUS Lord of loue what law is this,
That me thou makest thus tormented be:
the whiles she lordeth in licentious blisse
of her freewill, scorning both thee and me.
See how the Tyrannesse doth ioy to see
the huge massacres which her eyes do make:
and humbled harts brings captiues vnto thee,
that thou of them mayst mightie vengeance take.
But her proud hart doe thou a little shake,
and that high look, with which she doth comptroll
all this worlds pride bow to a baser make,
and al her faults in thy black booke enroll.
That I may laugh at her in equall sort,
as she doth laugh at me & makes my pain her sport.

SONNET. XLV.
LEAUE lady in your glasse of christall clene,
Your goodly selfe for euermore to vew:
and in my selfe, my inward selfe I meane,
most liuely lyke behold your semblant trew.
Within my hart, though hardly it can shew,
thing so diuine to vew of earthly eye:
the fayre Idea of your celestiall hew,
and euery part remaines immortally:
And were it not that, through your cruelty,
with sorrow dimmed and deformd it were:
the goodly ymage of your visnomy,
clearer then christall would therein appere.
But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
remoue the cause by which your fayre beames darkned be.

[milo]

No I can't, Dale. You're correct in that ultimate Alexandrines were used by sonnet writers such as Spenser and other Elizabethans including Shakespeare -- but not in sonnets.

SONNET. X.
VNRIGHTEOUS Lord of loue what law is this,
That me thou makest thus tormented be:
the whiles she lordeth in licentious blisse
of her freewill, scorning both thee and me.
See how the Tyrannesse doth ioy to see
the huge massacres which her eyes do make:
and humbled harts brings captiues vnto thee,
that thou of them mayst mightie vengeance take.
But her proud hart doe thou a little shake,
and that high look, with which she doth comptroll
all this worlds pride bow to a baser make,
and al her faults in thy black booke enroll.
That I may laugh at her in equall sort,
as she doth laugh at me & makes my pain her sport.

SONNET. XLV.
LEAUE lady in your glasse of christall clene,
Your goodly selfe for euermore to vew:
and in my selfe, my inward selfe I meane,
most liuely lyke behold your semblant trew.
Within my hart, though hardly it can shew,
thing so diuine to vew of earthly eye:
the fayre Idea of your celestiall hew,
and euery part remaines immortally:
And were it not that, through your cruelty,
with sorrow dimmed and deformd it were:
the goodly ymage of your visnomy,
clearer then christall would therein appere.
But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
remoue the cause by which your fayre beames darkned be.

Ones of them has an alexandrine (I will let you figure out which) as the penultimate line and one has hexameter as the penultimate line.

This is different than randomly sprinkling hexameter and tetrameter willy-nilly throughout your ill-thought, grammatically errant somewhat metric verse but, once again, i will let you figure that part out as well.

Still, it is tough to play they "never" game as I have written a sonnet with 15 lines in variable meter that is still pretty much a sonnet.

What you wrote is not.

[billy]

i've written a one line sonnet before now, it had 70 feet in it

i called it, 6 football teams with a few subs

[Erthona]

Also the rhyme pattern here is that of an Elizabethan sonnet, but I see what you are saying, he is more interested in being right, than in learning anything, and from the look of his "sonnet" that is the tack he has taken throughout his life.

And Jeffery, if you are holding that up as the type of sonnet you are attempting to imitate, then you are as far off that mark as you are with an Elizabethan sonnet.

Regardless, I have no need to waste my time on dilettantes.

Dale

[Jeffrey Gibson]

Also the rhyme pattern here is that of an Elizabethan sonnet, but I see what you are saying, he is more interested in being right, than in learning anything, and from the look of his "sonnet" that is the tack he has taken throughout his life.

Not at all, even ignoring the ad hominem. All I was doing was providing evidence from Spenser himself that the claim that Spencer did not use Alexandrines in his sonnets was at least questionable.

See too what is said on the matter by Harry Stuart Vedder Jones in in his The Spenser Handbook:

http://tinyurl.com/qfokgh2

I trust that disputing claims is acceptable here.

And Jeffery, if you are holding that up as the type of sonnet you are attempting to imitate, then you are as far off that mark as you are with an Elizabethan sonnet.

Yes, I certainly would be IF I was attempting to imitate an Elizabethan sonnet in terms of its line and rhyme requirements. But, as I've said before, and as my title indicates, I wasn't. If there is any imitation of the ES in my piece, it was of its meter and its substance -- iambs, a problem stated, a problem developed, a volta.

Not too that I never claimed that I was entirely successful in what I attempted to do.

Regardless, I have no need to waste my time on dilettantes.

And I have no need or wish to be on a site where people grow huffy if it is suggested (let alone if actual evidence is provided which shows) that their claims are not entirely correct and where ad hominem is viewed as an acceptable argument against the validity of what someone says.

How do I unsubscribe?

Jeffrey

[milo]

Also the rhyme pattern here is that of an Elizabethan sonnet, but I see what you are saying, he is more interested in being right, than in learning anything, and from the look of his "sonnet" that is the tack he has taken throughout his life.

Not at all, even ignoring the ad hominem. All I was doing was providing evidence from Spenser himself that the claim that Spencer did not use Alexandrines in his sonnets was at least questionable.

See too what is said on the matter by Harry Stuart Vedder Jones in in his The Spenser Handbook:

http://tinyurl.com/qfokgh2

I trust that disputing claims is acceptable here.

And Jeffery, if you are holding that up as the type of sonnet you are attempting to imitate, then you are as far off that mark as you are with an Elizabethan sonnet.

Yes, I certainly would be IF I was attempting to imitate an Elizabethan sonnet in terms of its line and rhyme requirements. But, as I've said before, and as my title indicates, I wasn't. If there is any imitation of the ES in my piece, it was of its meter and its substance -- iambs, a problem stated, a problem developed, a volta.

Not too that I never claimed that I was entirely successful in what I attempted to do.

Regardless, I have no need to waste my time on dilettantes.

And I have no need or wish to be on a site where people grow huffy if it is suggested (let alone if actual evidence is provided which shows) that their claims are not entirely correct and where ad hominem is viewed as an acceptable argument against the validity of what someone says.

How do I unsubscribe?

Jeffrey

We allow a certain amount of cattiness in the for fun forum, it helps writers develop a thick skin - a prerequisite for workshopping.

I am surprised to see you taking such offense to a pretty milky term (dilettante) especially considering I have seen you post much worse (is English your first language? How much poetry have you read? have you ever had sex?) in the critical forums, I had thought you would be tougher than this but i suppose some can give easier than get.

As for unsubscribing, it is easy, you stop clicking on the little link that says "pigpenpoetry.com" or typing it into your address bar. You might also find it beneficial to clear your browsing history and remove it from your bookmarks.

[Erthona]

"I trust that disputing claims is acceptable here."

Not when they are not germane. It doesn't really matter if you can find an example of an obscure sonnet form that uses Alexandrines or not as your poem is so far removed from that form. Nor do I personally appreciate a person playing coy with such an obscure form so they can pull it out of their back pocket and say see, there is such a thing. As you had this information from the beginning you could have easily shared it, yet you waited until we said there are no sonnets that use Alexandrines (which today is more or less true) before you decided to enlighten us. You are not about improving your poetry, you are not about deepening your understanding of poetry, you are about game playing and scoring points.

"a site where people grow huffy"

I would say a correct, as well as measured response to someone who acts as you do.

Dale

[Leanne]

I'm actually fine with being proved wrong -- that's because I am not the ultimate authority on all things, and enjoy being shown something I didn't already know. I haven't read all of Spenser's work, save The Faerie Queene and a few of his sonnets. Though I like his interlocking quatrains as a sonnet form, I didn't study his writing further because I find him tedious and his subject matter is most objectionable (he was a sycophant and an inciter of religious hatred, but of course we all have hobbies). I have read all of Shakespeare's work, so far as I know, and he didn't use any Alexandrines in sonnets (to my knowledge, but my recollection may be faulty), only in some of the plays. I don't know of any other well-remembered Elizabethan writer to have used the line in a sonnet, though it does occasionally show up in dramatic blank verse -- I think Marlowe might have thrown in a couple, which is probably what really got him killed.

So Jeffrey, despite Spenser's sonnets still bearing no resemblance to your own, you are correct and I thank you for the knowledge.

[billy]

showing an exception to a rule does not prove a point. well it does really but not ones own.
god forbid you enter the pig's arse.

[Erthona]

"I think Marlowe might have thrown in a couple, which is probably what really got him killed."

I have it on the best authority that Spenser had him arrested for blaspheming and he was never heard from again! Well that and using words like "steepy"!


Dale

[Todd]

The only good Spenser is the late Robert Parker's detective.