Love My Soul.. the Hendecasyllabic Challenge

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LoveBug

Moderator

Member Elite

since 2000-01-08

Posts 4697

0 posted 2006-08-05 01:17 AM

This is the result of peer pressure. I wouldn't usually post something like this.. I don't really like the content that much at all, but I hate to see this challenge die. I think it's a neat form. I hope more people give it a try.. although I doubt this will be much incentive! hah! But maybe it'll make you less afraid

----

Love my soul, though its' sweetness has gone down and
Sapped down low by the grime of life, surrounded
Sunk, black, scarred… can you see past all the callous
Walls and see how I long for one to know me?
Good brave one, that is all that can sustain me
Work hard through all the things that others burned here
Tramp on through and you know that, deep behind the
False mask here, I'm not strong or independent
Please come in, break me down and shine the light in

Music pours over the sense
And in a funny way
Music sees more than I..it remembers better...
I have forgotten all the rest-Anne Sexton

Dr.Moose1
Member Elite

since 1999-09-05

Posts 3448
Bewilderment , USA

1 posted 2006-08-07 06:36 PM

Lovebug,
Thought provoking. I won't offer more than that as I'm not really sure of what I'm doing. I believe your meter to be correct.
Doc

Munda
Member Elite

since 1999-10-08

Posts 3544
The Hague, The Netherlands

2 posted 2006-08-13 04:24 PM

And I have no idea if your meter is correct or not. LOL But I do like what you write and how you write it!

Brian James
Member

since 2005-06-26

Posts 147
Winnipeg

3 posted 2006-08-16 04:55 PM

Erica,

You're a little upset that I haven't said much about this poem, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that I'm a little torn.

First and definitely foremost, I absolutely love your adaptation of the form.  You appear to have not only instantly mastered it, but thematically interpreted it as well.  The way your poem focuses on a kind of downward motion (one person describing how they have been made less than what they once were) works fantastically with your constantly falling hendecasyllabic line, which appears to start at a strong point (the spondee) and then suddenly topple and tumble downward into a gradually steadier falling rhythm.

For me, I have to say that the conclusion of the poem is too sudden, and sounds entirely insincere.  I was talking to Carly about it, and she agrees that it would work better if the last line of this poem were actually the first line of a second stanza which explores "break me down and shine the light in," perhaps using the same depth of imagery you used in what might be the first "stanza."

I'm honestly looking forward to seeing where this is taken.  This is one of the best poems I've read from you in a while, mostly because it's a little more decorated and imaginative than what you usually write.  I hope you think more about what you could do with this.

Thanks for taking up my challenge, and I'm sorry it took me a while to really put my thoughts into any useful form.

Brian

"To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form."
~Robert Frost

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