my ode to pet semetary

[loki456]

just finished watching steven kings pet semetary and felt like a little poem to go with it.

ODE TO THE HOUND
written by loki456

I gagged on a breath one night
as the sound it made gave me a fright
the scampering of something in the attic
made short work of my tempered state

written in the double dactyl now found
warning of that beastly undead ghost hound

on a napkin it was scribbled so faint
as if a blind man had written so quaint

'tickety tockety'
Maximus Caninus
Grossly it lurks from a
casketed bier

Roaming the hallways in,
deathly loom, run in haste.
Necronomication
Creature to fear

Now here I lie in a sweat drenched delight
at the coming of a wretched unholy blight
as the candle flame flickers once more
so shall the gleam in these once alive eyes

[Delta40]

I haven't read or watched Pet Cemetery but I do know that Stephen King once said

'I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk'

your poem has a number of different rhythms which is refreshing but makes the reading less easy for me. It definitely has an eerie feel to it and I'm thankful I do not have an attic....

[loki456]

yeah i wanted to throw a few different meter's around... keep the reader guessing, haha, just like Stephen king.
yeah it was just a fun quick piece. dam double dactyl though caught me off guard, i can usually spit those out fairly quickly - this one took me a bit to do though.

[Delta40]

The double-dactyl is a short verse form invented by the American poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander in 1966. The poem consists of one sentence containing forty-four syllables that are distributed over eight lines and fall into two four-line stanzas. The first three lines of each stanza are dactylic dimeter; the last one is a choriamb. The two stanzas end with a masculine rhyme on the last syllable of the choriamb. The final feature of the form is found in line six of the poem: a single, six-syllable word which is a double-dactyl. The example illustrates the rhythm, rhyme scheme, and other salient features of my favorite form.

Ok. Well, I've learned something new - that there are words in this paragraph that might not be in my Oxford!

[loki456]

hahahaha.... delta that's funny - yeah i first heard ofof the double dactyl in high school - it's a fun meter to play around with, cause you can be mental and make up words!!!

[Delta40]

I thought it was a siamese dinosaur....

[loki456]

haha, lame but funny - i'm a sucker for the corny jokes!!!

[Delta40]

I guess my point is that I had no idea what one was till you mentioned it and a choriamb...dare I google it along with Hexasyllabically....

You've given me thought to actually interest myself in form. Thanks Loki

[loki456]

oh delta if you're able to cut a syllable out of 'hexa..blah blah' you'll have an awesome double dactyl to put as your L7 - good job!!!

yeah a choriamb was a weird one for me too.... to be honest i don't think my L8 is a trochee followed by that damned iamb - hahaha...

glad I inspired you to get interested in form... although, I really like your poems - mine are lame and just a bit of fun. yours actually has some substance to it

[Delta40]

thanks but I don't know the lingo. Silas tried to show me iambic pentameters - part of me gets it and the other says 'bugger it' I sort of want to understand these technical terms but not too much if that makes any sense. We would all probably benefit if we applied ourselves no doubt. atrocious trochee

[loki456]

yeah i tried to make my couplets iambic pentameter - think i failed though - too tired to care. yeah seriously form is ok - but meh, when you write like most of the guys on here - form is a luxury - i sit in awe sometimes at the stuff i read on these forums.

[hillwalker]

Much as I enjoy readling Stephen King - and this book (more than the film - except for the killer 'theme song' over the end credits) - I think you might have done better to avoid the rhyming.

I'm getting a reputation on here as the rhyme-exterminator. It's not that I dislike it -but so many writers get lumbered with it in the opening two lines of a poem then fail to follow up.

In your case, you gave up for L3 and L4 - then decided to try again for lines 5/6/7/8 -

but unsuccessfully, largely because you were forced to use a strange way of expressing yourself :

'scribbled so faint / written so quaint'

'enjoyable this so ain't.'

and when it puts in a brief appearance again in the final verse it seems out of place.....

So, if you are going to use rhyme either be consistent or restrict it to the closing two couplets where it adds impact to the poem as a whole. Scattering it here and there doesn't encourage the reader to press on... it's as if the writer has given up so why should the reader continue?

Also your line breaks need a makeover -

verses 4 and 5 - it's never a good idea to have a line ending in 'a' or 'in'

But an interesting experiment all the same.... what next? An sonnet to 'The Shining' or a cynghanedd to 'Carrie'?

H

[loki456]

ahh the double dactyl strikes again.... it's actually one of the only poems where meter outweighs sensibility... since it's a nonsense/silly rhyming style - so having 'a' and 'in' as endings doesn't matter.

But I agree with you... i was going for a aabc for the first stanza and tried to throw in some iambic pentameter couplets in the middle.

but after reading it again, you are definitely right - does seem i give up on the rhyme at the start.... should have probably left the couplets out and made it a stanza followed by the dactyl and then a couplet at the end to finish it off.

good job on the critique.
thanks H

[loki456]

but like you said... an interesting experiment of a mish mash of forms... didn't work out too well...

[Jassy Melson]

As far as being consistent with rhyme, if the rhyme works use it, if it doesn't don't. The "rule" that rhyme be consistent went out the window a long time ago. Anything goes with poetry now. There are no rules.

[loki456]

yeah i know.... it was just an experiment, playing around with forms and different meter's - glad this is generating so much interest
I agree totally there are 'no' rules - but it's fun to play around with some of the different styles and see if you can mix them up together

I obviously tried and it didn't work out too well...