Beautiful rhythm for a tragic poem, and the broken-up lines reinforcing the theme is a nice touch. I love this too much despite (or perhaps because of?) it being so heart-rending.
Thanks Jess! I agonised over the line breaks, because there's several ways you could scan it but I mainly see it as two lines of trochaic octameter, with the second line shortened by a foot, but the substack phone app doesn't like long lines and will justify the text which sort of adds line breaks anyway, so I went with dividing it into four line stanzas. I suppose by "breaking up" the line it continued the "broken" theme!
Thank you Mark, I suppose it is ekphrastic, but only incidentally. I didn't have a predetermined idea or scene in mind when I began, but with a poem like this the process is more like improvisation, where I'll begin with one or two structural principles and see where it takes me. I started with the word "broken" as a sort of monorhyme, repeating it over again in different positions within the metre to drive the rhythm forward, and it wasn't until I wrote the line that turns on "broke/and" that the scene began to unfold and I discovered the narrative of the poem. As the poem unfolded, I think the goal became to elicit an emotion by creating a stark contrast between the homely language and the tragic thematic material.
Nice work, having the last line of a stanza not rhyme, when there are other rhymes in each stanza, always has a powerful effect for me.
Agreed, I think it can help to maintain the readers attention by subverting their expectation for another rhyme.
And this one it’s more pronounced, on the use of “God” In the third stanza. https://open.substack.com/pub/codyilardo/p/rabboni?r=1q8ur0&utm_medium=ios
I am still fairly new to the poetry world, so it’s not for some sophisticated reason, but I find myself using this unexpected no-rhyme a lot.
https://open.substack.com/pub/codyilardo/p/beginning-of-months?r=1q8ur0&utm_medium=ios
Like in my poem here. Most of the poem already isn’t in rhyme, but the 2nd to last couplet sets up an expectation for one.
For sure, I'll often do what feels right and find a reason for why it does later.
Beautiful rhythm for a tragic poem, and the broken-up lines reinforcing the theme is a nice touch. I love this too much despite (or perhaps because of?) it being so heart-rending.
Thanks Jess! I agonised over the line breaks, because there's several ways you could scan it but I mainly see it as two lines of trochaic octameter, with the second line shortened by a foot, but the substack phone app doesn't like long lines and will justify the text which sort of adds line breaks anyway, so I went with dividing it into four line stanzas. I suppose by "breaking up" the line it continued the "broken" theme!
Evocative and tragically rhythmic. Is this Ekphrasis?
Thank you Mark, I suppose it is ekphrastic, but only incidentally. I didn't have a predetermined idea or scene in mind when I began, but with a poem like this the process is more like improvisation, where I'll begin with one or two structural principles and see where it takes me. I started with the word "broken" as a sort of monorhyme, repeating it over again in different positions within the metre to drive the rhythm forward, and it wasn't until I wrote the line that turns on "broke/and" that the scene began to unfold and I discovered the narrative of the poem. As the poem unfolded, I think the goal became to elicit an emotion by creating a stark contrast between the homely language and the tragic thematic material.
I love it when a poem reveals itself to the writer. Well done, and thank you for the explanation.
That was sad....I hope you can write something about healing. Maybe that might help?
Now I'm sad 😢😅
Well then the poem did it's work. 🙏