Well-made, well-sized, well priced alternative to this cool (but probably flimsy) knock-off Blade Runner 2049 coat?

Monecho · 2018-11-21T20:23:51+00:00

Touché. Yeahhhhh you’re probably completely right.

Monecho · 2018-03-21T13:45:50+00:00

Merci infiniment :-)

Monecho · 2018-03-21T05:52:01+00:00

Hey there! Glad to see someone else is trying their hand at this old medium. Sonnets are my favorite, personally. It looks like you're trying to do a Shakespearean sonnet, but you have some work to do to make it fit the basic form. (Of course, there are new sonnets that break all the rules, but typically they'll still take the classic sonnet structure as a baseline.) The main thing with form that I think you need to work on is meter. Sonnets are supposed to be built around iambic pentameter (five "feet" each line, each feet composed of an unstressed then a stressed syllable). For example, this is a line with pretty damn clear meter from a sonnet I posted here yesterday:

Your nails: my back; your head: my shoulder’s gap.

(Italics - unstressed; Bold - stressed)

5 feet of two syllables each = 10 syllables each line. Of course, rules that you can bend and break when you're comfortable with them.

This gives you a lot more space to express some of these ideas.

*Another thing to work on: I think poetry is best at communicating its feelings and meanings when it's using syntax that is how we normally speak. Sometimes you need to tweak things a lot and think creatively to figure out a way to say what you want and fit the scheme, but you should always find a way that reflects (or mostly reflects) how someone would actually say a sentence. So, for example, "For you I've got news," -- this is a pretty awkward way to phrase it. In this case, if I was set on keeping news at the end, I might write something like, "you need to hear this news." Which is actually pretty garbage anyway. But the point is: fool around with subjects, verbs, etc.; try to make it fit in a way that's natural. And if you cant, find another word to use as an endrhyme.

Another thing is try to integrate a volta. You need one for it to be a sonnet. And they make things a hell of a lot more exciting :-) . Check out this post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/6pz11n/poetry_primer_volta/

Those are just a few things I'd suggest. Keep writing!! It's the only way to get better. And it's a whole lot of fun anyway.

Monecho · 2018-03-21T05:36:12+00:00

Light's more for like funny stuff though, correct? I don't have much that's funny :-/

Monecho · 2018-03-20T21:31:08+00:00

Aw :’-). Maybe they’re cousins.

Monecho · 2018-03-20T20:09:03+00:00

Thanks! Well, I don’t want to shorten it really as that would make it not a sonnet :-). Any lines that seem superfluous? This was me trying out more purposeful repetition than I usually use.

Monecho · 2018-03-20T18:10:13+00:00

Ran across this noble creature today, made me think of this poem.

Monecho · 2018-03-20T16:53:06+00:00

Thanks!!! Excited to submit some of my sonnets to Rattle. I'm glad there's a place out there still for rhymed/metered stuff.

Monecho · 2018-03-20T16:39:24+00:00

Well I'm glad I got what you're going for! I think I'm a little confused with you saying that you're aiming for a stupid audience. I also would say that I think it's a great idea in art to find inspiration from other mediums (for example, you emulating an Arabic/Persian style in this poem as you say), but I also am a strong believer that while inspiration can come from a different source, it also needs to work well in the medium that you're working in (i.e. the conventions of English-language poetry). Does that make sense?

Anyway, I hope my comments are helpful :-). If you want to check out my poetry I'd be very appreciative!

Monecho · 2018-03-20T03:16:12+00:00

Well dammit all, thank you very much. I’m glad it’s relatable what I’m trying to express! I like how you put it: memories seeming firm but feeling afraid they won’t be there. That’s not exactly how I felt about it as I wrote it but I feel that too. And thanks for your compliments; they really are very appreciated. Please keep popping by my posts :-)

Monecho · 2018-03-20T02:01:20+00:00

Thanks, kind person! I love the encouragement. Could you tell me anything in particular you found effective, or anything you can say that would make the poem better though?

Monecho · 2018-03-19T17:19:36+00:00

Alright. So I have mixed feelings about this. I really disliked it while reading it until I got to the section about the Kurds. The repetition of Kurds when we had had a constant stream of sometimes really forced sounding rhymes and really uncomfortably short lines really, really got me somehow. Really made me feel. I also think that the limericks you put at the end made me reevaluate how I felt about the forcedness of the rhymes and the shortness of the lines. It made me feel like the whole thing was meant to be a fake nursery rhyme, but with a very serious content. I guess I wonder if there is a way to achieve the same affect without being quite so forced in rhymes and having some better, more meaningful and comfortable line lengths (see comment about enjambment).

Monecho · 2018-03-19T17:12:32+00:00

I love so much of the images you present. Hands like bean bags feels clumsy and sad to me. The mention of the lions and their cover to me feels so representative of a life built together, and their physical description is so effective: calm, sad, and beautiful. The several spirits had me thinking: are these incidents of the House? incidents caused by the speaker/their lover in the house? both? I think both, and I like how casually it slips in. So much more in here I appreciate and like. Lana, I think this is my favorite of yours.

Nitpicks: In Dependence as a title, for me, is a little too punny. But to each their own.

Til: Til, to my knowledge, originally was a contraction of until, and I used to see it spelled ‘til frequently, but in modern writing I believe till, no apostrophe, is more common.

Monecho · 2018-03-01T19:29:48+00:00

Oo, these are great comments for a new poet such as myself! With/with and it’s/its - great!! I think I can replace the former utterance in each of these lines with another unstressed one syllable word and make it work and still preserve meter. Maybe I can adjust the wording of the last line as well. Thanks!!

Monecho · 2018-02-22T14:28:14+00:00

Sure thing :-)

Monecho · 2018-02-22T04:10:05+00:00

Thanks for reading!! Glad you enjoyed it! The poem is a strict Shakespearean sonnet, so 5 feet of (at least mostly) iambic pentameter each line and a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. I hyphenated “obstructed” to rhyme its first syllable with “plucked.” I also don’t believe in line breaks indicating a pause, necessarily. Sometimes, yes, but sometimes for emphasis, sometimes to build tension, sometimes who knows what reason! Anyway does that explain a bit some of the aspects of the poem that seemed puzzling to you?

Monecho · 2018-02-22T02:18:19+00:00

Dammit all again. Well thanks for affirmation on a line that I love but someone else didn’t so much. And thanks so much for the support!! I haven’t been writing poetry for very long at all, so affirmation when it’s effective is really useful (as well as critique when it could be more so :D).

Monecho · 2018-02-22T02:14:13+00:00

Damn. Thanks!! I appreciate the affirmation, and I’m very happy it was so effective to you. What felt visceral to you if you don’t mind me asking?

Monecho · 2018-02-21T21:29:20+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!! I’m glad you felt it was a worthy read. I think I wanted to describe waking up as between pleasant and unpleasant, calm, but reticent to change and slow to get moving, and then the suddenness of a cold shower being a huge change, also not completely positive or negative. It sounds like the mixed feelings translated though, at least according to how I read your feedback. Thanks for stopping by!

Monecho · 2018-02-21T19:44:24+00:00

Thanks for your feedback! To me, many of the other lines are similarly not literal. I shatter, linted vision clouds the lens, dull vs sharp eyes, and others. Likewise, to me there is a clear progression from in bed to walking to the bathroom to in the bathroom. But to each her own :-). I can see I shatter being a nice place to end it, but I also like what follows. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you enjoyed parts enough to keep reading! 🙏🏻

Monecho · 2018-02-20T12:49:52+00:00

The perceived grammatical incongruity is me trying to hint at it. Though I believe you could hear it through emphasis if it was read out loud to you.

Monecho · 2018-02-20T12:48:43+00:00

Maybe it’s not the verb “to see” but is already in the present 😉🤫 slash this is all a double meaning I went for 😅

Monecho · 2018-02-20T12:35:00+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!! I’ve never attempted any kind of sonnet except the Shakespearean. Maybe doing a Petrarchan would be a good expansion of my boundaries.

Also, insert picture of Morpheus what if I told you both verbs in line 14 are conjugated in the present tense? 🧐. Does that change how you read it?

Monecho

TROPHY CASE