In my creative writing class we're supposed to hand in a sonnet tomorrow. As much as sonnets suck, I wrote one about being gay/gay rights. I'm definitely not sharing with the class so I don't really know where else to ask for opinions on my shitty-ass poetic skills. So, without further ado: Inequality My river has changed direction Flowing up when the others’ flow down I with no one made the connection My mind chained me to the ground A desperate plea to escape this hell Trapped, stranded, nowhere to run They do what they can to divide, expel Before we’re shot down, one by one They don’t get we can’t change, that we’re not clones We’re in this together, we’re in this alone. Feel free to tell me it sucks in a nice way But seriously, any help would be appreciated because I'm not really a poet...
I love sonnets because they force you to adjust the way you think about putting words together. A well-written sonnet is a marvelous piece of art. That said though, the pure technical aspects of yours are fairly far off, at least assuming it's a Shakespearean sonnet. Did your teacher go over meter and what iambs are? A good example is a line from John Gillespie Magee Jr. and the sonnet he wrote called "High Flight", with my red apostrophes for emphasis marks: And danced' the skies' on laugh'ter-sil'vered wings'; Do you recognize the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables? It goes "unstressed, stressed" five times for a rolling sort of rhythm (that is nigh impossible to convey over the internet X.X). Each pair of syllables is called an iamb. Put five of them together for "iambic pentameter." This is how Shakespeare arranged his poems. But outside of the academic junk, I like the poem hehe. It does have some superb imagery and conveys the powerful feelings that come from being discriminated against for being gay.
He did go over it, and I didn't pay much attention to it partly because he didn't stress it and partly because I didn't care. xD I'm not much of poem person and am eager for the unit to be over.
Ah, it;s odd we both posted poems that have the word river in them, moments apart! Nice to see poetry about. And you're not a bad poet! Like anything, you just have to keep at it. I've not written in 'form', and use open/free verse, so I can't offer any suggestions there. But the one thing to consider is perhaps a version where you expand the images/themes relating to the river, to add visuals.
first let us all recognize the delightful name and avatar the OP has...terrific second...there is nothing bad here OP. What you have here feels genuine and authentic and that in my opinion is where prose should come from. to the poem itself, I like it
Four years later and I finally understand this now. My teacher in 9th grade LITERALLY, with no exaggeration, spent 2 minutes briefly going over iambic pentameters. Anyways, away from that, us artists/writers are always so painfully modest about our work. As far as technique goes, you're asking the wrong person here. But, I like the words you used and the extended metaphor heheh
