Red Sonnet

[kafebronz]

Good afternoon,
this is pretty much my first poem in English (I'm not a native speaker), so please be very critical as I have to improve. What does sound weird to you? I know the rythm could be improved, it is not finished I guess.


Your hair does shine like the fire
of the Library of Alexandria
once alive was the Wall of Hadrian
reclaimed now by the heathy mire.
Many a tale is lost on a burnt scroll,
in the end all walls do fall
yet with years gone by new ones soar
perhaps stories can live once more.
And still, after all those years
in my night´s asylum
i still see the blaze on the Egyptian beach
across the glen the ravens screech
and a rusty pilum
my heart tries to pierce.

[Leanne]

The poll has been deleted as they're only a distraction in a critique forum.

For non-native English speakers, syntax (sentence structure) can be difficult to grasp and this is probably your biggest problem throughout this piece. For example, "your hair does shine" would normally be said "your hair shines" -- while occasionally you'll see it written like you've done in a poem, it's most often because people are trying to force words to fit a set meter or rhyme scheme. You have neither, so there's no point.

I see that you've used a few rhymes but they're not in any set structure that I can follow -- certainly not a regulation sonnet pattern -- so I'm going to pretend they're accidental for now.

The lines alternating between Egyptian and Scottish images are odd. I can't work out why those ideas are used -- often it's to represent the nationality of a person or to imbue the character with traits from some long-dead leader/hero, but there's no real indication of that here.

The thing that's probably going to confuse many readers is why you've called this a sonnet. It has 14 lines -- and there the similarity between this and any sonnet ever written ends. There are threads in the Poetry Practice forum that detail sonnet forms if you're not sure what I mean.

I have read sonnets before that have no set meter or rhyme scheme -- in other words, they're "modern" sonnets -- and I'm ok with them being called sonnets for one reason only: they have the distinct two-part conflict and resolution formula of a sonnet. This just doesn't, I'm afraid. My suggestion would be either rework it as a traditional sonnet once you're comfortable with the form or ditch the idea altogether and rewrite it as much looser freeverse.