One Stop Poetry Form – a look at PROSODY
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One Stop Poetry Form – a look at PROSODY
Ok. I looked at a peom I did while go and decided to rewrite it in meter. Which one did I use and did it work?
For the original poem see 'my secret garden'
Here is the rewrite:
Deep within my heart grow flowers
Watered by the soft, sad showers
Of tears shed in happiness
And sometimes shed in shared distress.
These flowers grow in love's soft light
And bloom to show petals so bright,
These are the flowers of friendships
Their honeyed nectar my soul sips.
No two blooms are quite alike,
Some low and soft, some a tall spike,
They may bloom fast then die away
Or grow more strongly every day.
I weed my garden carefully
To ensure that it is kept free
Of doubt and deadly jealousy
That fear will seed so mindlessly.
Sometimes a plant will fade and die
And I may never know just why,
I mourn each gentle bloom that’s lost
To distance or to time’s cold frost.
I dry and store each lost flower
As memories, so their power
Remains within my heart and mind,
The fragrance lovingly enshrined.
Like all gardens, it takes some work
But this is something I won’t shirk,
My friendships mean too much to me
To let them die too easily.
Now this shows you have been thinking hard about what you're writing! I can't thank you enough for taking what I said in the helpful spirit in which it was intended!
ReplyDeleteThat is so beautiful! I will go check out the original one.
ReplyDeleteBlessings
Wow you did take a lot of time with this and on the whole VERY successfully. In some places though, I don't hear what you hear. This stuff is so tricky.. for instance in your first line. If you had read it to me, I'm willing to bet I wouldn't have STOPPED at all, but the first two words (syllables)are /Deep with/ which depending on how I read them are either a trochee (first syllable heavy stress and second syllable lighter stress) or a spondee (two syllables with even stress). While reading you and others linking with one stop I have to shut off my way of speaking and listen to my inner ear as if I were hearing you out there in Britain, Ireland, Wales or places far away from me saying words in a different way, linking together words in a somewhat different way, but at the same time meaning what we mean when we say them in the U.S., the deep South, the heart of Texas. SO...I re-read the first stanza and it scans thus (and I wish I could print bold or do accents. I'll put heavy stresses in all caps)
ReplyDeleteDeep withIN |my HEART|grow flow ERS|
Watered BY| the SOFT,| sad show ERS|
Of tears SHED|in HAP| pi NESS
And some TIMES| shed in SHARED| dis TRESS.|
This makes all your ingredients either iambs or anapests and all your lines here trimeter. I have a pretty hard time even with stretching my
pronunciation getting an anapest out of "Of tears shed" though because I continue to hear tears and shed as both being heavily stressed. But I am happy to acquiesce to you as most of your lines throughout are perfect and only a few cause me to stop and wonder about them. So well done. The meaning was preserved and you found to your joy and sorrow that working in rhythm, rhyme and line length is arduous but gratifying work.
Hehee I second what Gay has just said because she's amazing and I wouldn't dare cross her! I love this piece of free verse, I've more experimented with mine rather than re-write. HAd fun though :)
ReplyDeleteOK. just re-read. I know all those places are Britain. Meant to say England...duh. Also the Australians and Canadians change their stresses; for that matter, even people in Ohio say words in a different manner of speaking than we do here.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful rewrite... can see the efforts put into this. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteActually, I am still struggling with the iambs, trochees and spondees. Possibly because I tend to sing folk songs a lot, I often stress the wrong syllable. I also grew up in Lincolnshire and now live in Coventry. the accents are very different with many things pronounced in different ways.
ReplyDeleteYou rewrote it well, but I remain attached to the original!
ReplyDelete