Sonnet, for Class, Please critique

[Countess]

some in bed with virtue breed good deeds, (a)
And those with lusty vice beget their shame (b)
True love’s a double dealer , to both it heeds (a)
And bends it’s breaking will to new refrain, (b)
From out of wicked ill flows a paean ( c)
To bridge two souls with dulcet notes of grace. (d)

And you, son, art music out of season (c )
A scherzo symphony of love in faith (d)
The tuner’s instrument, whose octaved forks (e)
Beat, blow, bend this discordant, broken heart (f)
Into pitch. Let then, my soul be aptly torqued,(e)
And by your love, I’ll sing a softer part(f)
Lest in a solo voce I am found, (g)
And in accceso coda I am drowned.(g)

I wrote this with a migraine. Forgive me for my absence - I'm taking two grad courses in SS and they're killing me, more than last semester, especially considering I'm working 32 hours a week as well.

I'd appreciate suggestions, etc.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's an astonishing achievement and would be in any case even if it hadn't been governed by the sonnet's requirements, even without which the richness of the language, the seemingly archaic words that fit so well, would be cause enough for celebration!

I wonder if you intended this line


Beat, blow, bend this discordant, broken heart

to echo or remind us of Donne's "Batter my heart, three-personned God..." (by no means a bad poem in its own right!)

Welcome back, migraine be gone!

[Countess]

Thanks, Prince. You know your opinion means a great deal to me. I was wondering if I've been so corrupted by Joyce as to become incoherent myself (yes, Ulysses and Shakespeare at once, which is like the taste of Goody's headache powder mingled with teramisu (mssp).

Regarding "Batter my heart" - a great irony, if you consider it was the main text of last semester's thesis. BUT, beat, blow and bend are also associated with jazz - a conflation of the musical imagery - the spontaneous vibration, improvisation of jazz (my son) that brings my soul in tune.

I'm tired and my head hurts. To bed with me.


It's an astonishing achievement and would be in any case even if it hadn't been governed by the sonnet's requirements, even without which the richness of the language, the seemingly archaic words that fit so well, would be cause enough for celebration!

I wonder if you intended this line



to echo or remind us of Donne's "Batter my heart, three-personned God..." (by no means a bad poem in its own right!)

Welcome back, migraine be gone!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Prince. You know your opinion means a great deal to me. I was wondering if I've been so corrupted by Joyce as to become incoherent myself (yes, Ulysses and Shakespeare at once, which is like the taste of Goody's headache powder mingled with teramisu (mssp).

Regarding "Batter my heart" - a great irony, if you consider it was the main text of last semester's thesis. BUT, beat, blow and bend are also associated with jazz - a conflation of the musical imagery - the spontaneous vibration, improvisation of jazz (my son) that brings my soul in tune.

I'm tired and my head hurts. To bed with me.

How am I to take that last sentence!

[blank|verse]

Hi Countess,

It's a good effort - I like the music theme, although feel the sonnet is too staccato at times, when it needs to be more legato, if you will.

Here are my suggestions, which you are free to ignore, of course:

Line 1 is missing an initial stress or beat, therefore becomes a line of trochaic, not iambic pentameter. You can have this, if you can justify it, but to me it seems iambic would work better.


True love’s a double dealer , to both it heeds

I think 'True love's a double dealer: both it heeds' works better without losing any sense of meaning, and removes the extra jarring beat.


From out of wicked ill flows a paean

... 'there flows a paean' perhaps? Otherwise you have a weak stress falling where the strong stress should be at the line's end. You can overstep a normal blank verse line with an extra syllable ['To be, or not to be - that is the question' being the most famous example] because it's the strong stresses that make the line.

And, likewise, to match the two rhyming lines...


And you, son, art music out of season

'And you, my son...' perhaps? This also fits the iambic pattern better and helps the slightly weak paean / season rhyme.

I don't see why you have a break in the sonnet at line 6. For me, the volta comes in the traditional place for a Shakespearean sonnet, at line 13. If you want line breaks, maybe after every quatrain?


Beat, blow, bend this discordant, broken heart
Into pitch.

Aside from reminding me of King Lear's 'Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!' for me the enjambment jars, as it is the only example in an otherwise end-stopped poem. Nice breaking of the metre here to reflect the emotion of what's being expressed, though.


Into pitch. Let then, my soul be aptly torqued,

The whole line has an extra beat. The word 'into' is a phyrric foot, so is paricularly weak, especially contrasted with the strong stresses of the previous line. I'm afraid I failed to think of an alternative here!


And by your love, I’ll sing a softer part

Nice. The best line of the poem, in fact.


accceso coda

I don't know what one of those is, but I would guess the first word isn't spelt with three 'c's?

I hope you're not too sorry you asked now. Good luck with it in class.

[Monamy]

loved the classy atmosphere this piece of art gave me, it sure is well-written!
The forth line, however, doesn't end like the second one (Shame and Refrain), only the vowel sound is the same, though they end in a different consonant (letter).

Would replacing Refrain with Reframe or Frame do the trick? unless it changes the desired meaning, I think you should change it. There are some similar issues, but other than that, it's all perfect to my ears :) Oh, by the way, I'm kinda new here, and would be delighted to read more... though I'm not much of a poet myself :p

[MorpheusSandman]

I love music and I love when people can work music metaphors well into poetry like you did. I can forgive some of the formal faux pas (did you intend them?) when the piece is good enough and I think yours is.

[Countess]

Thanks, everyone, for comments and suggestions. Apparently I'm the only one who attempted iambic pentameter - most wrote theirs in free verse. I used Shakespeare's sonnets as a guideline and found where he occasionally broke out of iambic pentameter - so I didn't feel I was violating any rules by doing so myself.

Blnk Verse - 3 of your suggestions I'll take; adding "my" to "son" makes 11 syllables, so that's out. Accesso coda - accesso means "firey" and coda "the end" of a musical section - so I'm drowning (ironically) in a firey end.

Now I'm going to make those changes afore I forget. Relative to what others submitted, I think mine was pretty good - but ya never know what hidden talent lies in your classmates! Better to try too hard than assume too much!