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If Rhythm Be The Food of Thought
Read now for me the real rhythm, friend,
Hope madly that it hides a precious pearl.
Your ragged lines conceal depth, perhaps;
My meter yet abides and sets its sway.
I cannot try to feel what has no beat,
Nor spurn assured guides, enrapt with form;
Go, squander out your spiel in your haze.
Against chaotic tides, how can I strive?
Why should I thus relent when I command?
I heed a sterner dream within my soul.
No one can sing what's meant, when all's a wreck,
Nor parse your scattered theme from storm-tossed words...
Enough. Curse, plebe or veteran, repent;
Recant vers libre; show your might of mind.
Hope madly that it hides a precious pearl.
Your ragged lines conceal depth, perhaps;
My meter yet abides and sets its sway.
I cannot try to feel what has no beat,
Nor spurn assured guides, enrapt with form;
Go, squander out your spiel in your haze.
Against chaotic tides, how can I strive?
Why should I thus relent when I command?
I heed a sterner dream within my soul.
No one can sing what's meant, when all's a wreck,
Nor parse your scattered theme from storm-tossed words...
Enough. Curse, plebe or veteran, repent;
Recant vers libre; show your might of mind.
I'm usually not a big fan of meta stuff, but I ended up enjoying the subject matter of this one quite a bit. So, kudos for that!
Well, I think that I need to admit that I had quite a bit of trouble parsing the first stanza. All of your lines are about 10 syllables, but outside of that, I couldn't find a prevailing beat pattern, so there's not much of a feeling of structure.
By the time the second stanza comes around, the poem really starts coming into its own, with the alternating beat/stress pattern between the lines. It's satisfying to read, both silently and out loud. So you definitely do end things off on a high note!
Thanks for entering!
Well, I think that I need to admit that I had quite a bit of trouble parsing the first stanza. All of your lines are about 10 syllables, but outside of that, I couldn't find a prevailing beat pattern, so there's not much of a feeling of structure.
By the time the second stanza comes around, the poem really starts coming into its own, with the alternating beat/stress pattern between the lines. It's satisfying to read, both silently and out loud. So you definitely do end things off on a high note!
Thanks for entering!
This is… clever. There's some gritty aftertaste in my mouth because of the syllabic ambiguity with the “-eal” ending; if you read those as disyllabic then you get a straightforward iambic pentameter, but that feels like a sour stretch in a way that the “assurèd” doesn't. “squander out” also feels like an awkward stretch-out; I don't think I've ever seen that phrasal verb before, and “squander” already has the implication of dispersion.
I admit the sentiment expressed is one I've felt before. On occasions when tides of free verse swing through places of poetry, I tend to get a slight sinking feeling and have to put in more effort to read them fairly. I'm reminded of having encountered people who have a distaste for seafood because they could never get it fresh enough—in less constrained verse taken as verse, everything else has to shine and cohere even more to avoid the whole thing collapsing.
The imagery and tone come through quite well, with the back-and-forth of conceptual conflict and what feels like the stock cantankerous viewpoint character throwing down versus the upstarts to keep them from getting too full of themselves.
I see what you did with the acrostic, and also the self-referential allusion both from that and from the first stanza to cheekily hiding the rhymes mid-line. In fact, it's almost too cheeky for me, but only almost, which helps push this toward the upper side of my slate this round.
I admit the sentiment expressed is one I've felt before. On occasions when tides of free verse swing through places of poetry, I tend to get a slight sinking feeling and have to put in more effort to read them fairly. I'm reminded of having encountered people who have a distaste for seafood because they could never get it fresh enough—in less constrained verse taken as verse, everything else has to shine and cohere even more to avoid the whole thing collapsing.
The imagery and tone come through quite well, with the back-and-forth of conceptual conflict and what feels like the stock cantankerous viewpoint character throwing down versus the upstarts to keep them from getting too full of themselves.
I see what you did with the acrostic, and also the self-referential allusion both from that and from the first stanza to cheekily hiding the rhymes mid-line. In fact, it's almost too cheeky for me, but only almost, which helps push this toward the upper side of my slate this round.
An acrostic, huh? It comes close to having a rhythm, too, but it's never quite there. Until the second stanza, that is. It has a regular rhythm.
The word choices are interesting, but I'm not sure I get the meaning. The first stanza seems to be saying the poet needs things like rhyme and rhythm to help convey meaning, and he struggles against those non-requirements. In the second stanza, where the rhythm does become more formal, I get that he's saying it's too easy to throw away those structural requirements, and it's worth putting in the effort to work within them. I think? It's a poem that took me a couple readings to decide I understood it, but I didn't mind rereading it. Rhythm confinements often cause unusual word choices or phrasings (plus the rhymes in the middle of the lines), and the poet keeps using those even in the first stanza, where it's still relatively formless. Ironically, as the rhythm becomes formal, the rhyme starts to go away. It feels like it's getting pushed later in the lines, until in the last pair, one rhyme is on the final word, and the other is nonexistent, shoved out of the line altogether.
The word choices are interesting, but I'm not sure I get the meaning. The first stanza seems to be saying the poet needs things like rhyme and rhythm to help convey meaning, and he struggles against those non-requirements. In the second stanza, where the rhythm does become more formal, I get that he's saying it's too easy to throw away those structural requirements, and it's worth putting in the effort to work within them. I think? It's a poem that took me a couple readings to decide I understood it, but I didn't mind rereading it. Rhythm confinements often cause unusual word choices or phrasings (plus the rhymes in the middle of the lines), and the poet keeps using those even in the first stanza, where it's still relatively formless. Ironically, as the rhythm becomes formal, the rhyme starts to go away. It feels like it's getting pushed later in the lines, until in the last pair, one rhyme is on the final word, and the other is nonexistent, shoved out of the line altogether.
Who knows the ends that scattered words evoke?
A bard transcends by climbing rung by rung.
No words are frayed when set within their ranks,
With thoughts arrayed with forces salient.
A bard transcends by climbing rung by rung.
No words are frayed when set within their ranks,
With thoughts arrayed with forces salient.
>>Bachiavellian, >>Light_Striker, >>Pascoite
If Rhythm Be The Food of Thought
Yes, I was being cheeky with this one; I freely admit that the prompt irritated me. Once I made that passing comment in chat about getting a medal while using rhymes anyway, I really wanted to make it happen. (It seems that Light_Striker was operating on a similar wavelength.)
I'll work on the janky meter in my revision; I was paying too much attention to making the hidden rhymes work.
My thanks to all who helped this little semantic knot to take silver!
If Rhythm Be The Food of Thought
Yes, I was being cheeky with this one; I freely admit that the prompt irritated me. Once I made that passing comment in chat about getting a medal while using rhymes anyway, I really wanted to make it happen. (It seems that Light_Striker was operating on a similar wavelength.)
I'll work on the janky meter in my revision; I was paying too much attention to making the hidden rhymes work.
My thanks to all who helped this little semantic knot to take silver!