Optimism

[frisbie]

OPTIMISM
ITALIAN SONNET

The writers tools, no more than twenty six
Must be selected with the greatest care
To form a tale or rhyme so very rare
It captures readers searching for a fix.

My feint-lined pad is crammed with verbal gold
An unleashed hidden talent lights the way
With thoughts of fortune driving night and day
If daffs brought wealth this piece is fame just told.

Rejection is no reason for despair
Your talent will, like mine, rise as the sun
I am a modern Keats and do compare
With playwrights on the radio, who run
To daddy, for a whisper in an ear
Not me, an honest battle must be won.

frisbie

[Hawkman]

It is disappointing, though not entirely surprising, that this piece has been rather overlooked. It deserves more than to be ignored.

There is a solid metrical skill being displayed here, really quite well realised, although it is suffering from some sparsely unsympathetic punctuation. The two lines which are most bothersome are the 4th line of the 2nd stanza and the last line. With the first of these, unless you are a daffodil farmer, it just doesn't make much sense in context, as it doesn't flow logically from the preceeding line. Of course, were you to be comparing yourself with Wordsworth then we are being led in the right direction. But the way the overall stanza has been constructed divorces this thought from the whole, because the lines are in the wrong order. If you swap the first and last lines you maintain the rhyme scheme and it reads more logically, so the intent is clearer.

My second complaint, regarding the last line, might be addressed by correcting the punctuation. Remove the comma after daddy and put a full stop at the end of the penultimate line. Gramatically "Not me" should be "Not I," and the indefinite article which follows it divorces the final statement from the preceeding concept, where in the first line of the final stanza you say: "Rejection is no reason for despair" which incidentally, should have a full stop after it. Replacing 'an' with 'this' rounds the piece off coherently.

For the most part, a nicely realised piece of formal verse. Welcome to litnet.

Live and be well - H

[AuntShecky]

Ostensibly follows the prescribed for the Petrarchan sonnet in that it has 14 lines (2 quatrains and a sestet.) The iambic pentameter seems to scan all right, the stresses more or less fall in the right places, and you've got the appropriate rhyme scheme (abba.)

The problem is that the form and content are not inextricably joined, but running parallel to each other; in other words, they're at the stage where they're just dating, not at all united as husband and wife. For instance, the opening lines introduce a motif about the "writer's tools," twenty-six of them to be exact, which seems to me an arbitrary number, none of which is ever mentioned again.

That undeveloped conceit disappears with the second quatrain, which talks about something else only tangentally related, namely the speaker's reputation as a poet. That's not an unheard-of concept, but despite the apparent attempt at wit, the idea doesn't really go anywhere.

l.8--"my feint-lined pad" Okay. We know Shakespeare told us that "the truest poetry is the most feigned", but who or what is the speaker kidding about here: the actual lines of this verse or his (or her) hoped-for reputation as a poet? A poem, especially a sonnet, can be enhanced by a sprinkle of ambiguity, but the connections have to be clear(er).

For instance, "Fortune" can be read two ways, as good luck or as a windfall of cash-- and as such, it's a good double-meaning word choice, but is it really "driving" night and day? What it's driving, one assumes, is the speaker to crank out his verses. Perhaps instead of a participle, "driving" could appear as an adjective in front of "Fortune" without sacrificing the appropriate stress. (Now that I think of it, "night and day" is a nothin' phrase, unless it's employed as an allusion to Cole Porter, which I doubt. I suspect the phrase is there because it fits the rhyme scheme.)

Line 8 doesn't work (pour moi) because of the awkward diction.

The overriding problem in this particular verse comes with the volta, which the preceding lines have not adequately set up. The possibility of "rejection" comes crashing down like that meteor which NASA failed to see coming.

And speaking of surprises, it introduces another newbie: "Your talent". At this late stage, why bring in somebody else?

Still another cameo --"daddy." I don't know what the "radio" business is all about. It seems like a party-crasher from another poem.

The closing line is supposed to be a "punch-line" if you will, bringing on home the theme of the sonnet. Instead we have "honest battle" -- ("honest"-ly, after "feint"?) which, aside from being a hackneyed phrase, doesn't seem to have much connection with verse-writing nor with "optimism."

Even though, I've said all this^^^^^, kudos to you for attempting to write a formal metered verse, rather than following the crowd into the catch-all pool
called "free verse."

I sincerely hope that you will post more of your efforts, as well as weighing in on the work of your fellow LitNutters.

Auntie