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Critical Analysis #2
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chopsticks
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since 2007-10-02
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0 posted 2008-07-24 10:25 AM



Tell me dear poet what do you hear ?
When you listen,  with the ground to your ear
Do you hear poetry that is spoken so right
Or do you hear something that is quite a fright

Well I have listened and the things I have heard .
Are quite disturbing and stuff for a bird
But, I’ll keep on searching for that desert rose ,
Even when the scent hurts my delicate nose .

Now this is not a sonnet,
And I know you can tell,
But if I wanted to write one
I could do it quite well.

But I’m happy to go down the track ,
And do what I do and never look back.
.



© Copyright 2008 My brother John. - All Rights Reserved
moonbeam
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1 posted 2008-07-24 05:36 PM


Trite and light.  Metrically odd.  To my ear much of S1 and especially S2 is straining for a dactylic stress pattern, and then quite frankly it's a bit of a mish mash.  If you going to rhyme it would help you to study metrics.  Iambic pentameter (the "natural rhythm" of English) would be a good place to start, and lots has been written about it in this very forum.

The piece has other problems.  "Birds" and "desert roses" for instance make sudden transitory appearances for what appear to me to be no other reason other than to make a rhyme.  This "poetic error" is normally called "forced rhyme" - rhyme used for the sake of it.  It generally leads to borderline nonsense writing.  In this instance you've done quite well - it's not nonsense, just puzzling.

Check the spelling of "sent".

As for the message, I guess you are partly at least saying that you'll do your own thing, plough your own furrow etc etc.  This particular furrow doesn't work to well IMHO.

M

chopsticks
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since 2007-10-02
Posts 888
The US,
2 posted 2008-07-24 06:29 PM


Moonbeam, thanks for pointing out some things, some right some wrong .

Have you never heard of the poetic expression “Many rose has bloomed unseen out in the

desert” . That was not a forced rhyme. Maybe you are just to young to ever have heard

that expression. I won’t even try to explain bird crap to you , you may be to young for that

too.

Moonbeam, here is the quote I was using for my forced rhyme.


Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
- Thomas Gray





[This message has been edited by chopsticks (07-24-2008 08:37 PM).]

moonbeam
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3 posted 2008-07-25 05:09 AM


Literary or other allusion is a perfectly acceptable device Chopsticks.  And "desert roses" appear in many genres of art and entertainment.  That wasn't my point really.  The thing I was trying to say, not very coherently perhaps, is that in your poem the allusions seem to be thrown in randomly more for the sake of rhyme than anything else.  The "bird crap" illustrates what I'm trying to say.  As a stand alone "allusion" it doesn't work.  I may be missing something and perhaps there is some connection in literature or elsewhere between birds and desert roses or birds and putting your ear to the ground of which I am unaware. But right now all I'm seeing is a reference to a bird, and whether in a literal, slang or colloquial sense it matters not - it's too obscure, too disconnected to work IMO. Anyway perhaps we are getting too heavy about this poem, it is after all just a lighthearted piece of doggerel? Yes?

Moi too young?!  Ah mes petites Chopsticks, j'espère être éternellement jeune  

M

chopsticks
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since 2007-10-02
Posts 888
The US,
4 posted 2008-07-25 08:01 AM


“ That wasn't my point really”

Mademoiselle, I have  your point .


moonbeam
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5 posted 2008-07-25 08:28 AM


Bon!
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