I finally finished is today! This is a continuation of the series of poems I started with Beautifully Broken. Like that one, this is another 3-part sonnet. And again, Blogger is being poopy about formatting. Imagine the "Torn to Pieces" section is flush on the left side. And that there is only one line of space between the title and the body.
Linked while Being Torn to Pieces
Beauty cannot triumph always
stay untarnished be whole and gold
forever, yet we travel this road
together as the steady stays
masts and ropes until it hazes
-crack- will be torn where this now old
break burns my eye, glazes, folds
soul, so charring shuts out the blaze
becomes scarring that spreads without
and now I lose control and when
what I wanted extinguished, what
was always mine dissolves, the clout
it's no longer carried within
mine -never was- never could be.
Sorry I haven't commented on this yet. I read it a while ago, but I decided that I would comment when I had time to do a proper job of it . . . and then forgot. Here we go!
ReplyDeleteAs with the other poem, I really like this format and I think you do a good job of writing a poem that can be read three different ways (once across, twice down each column) to get very different results. Let's do impressions first.
If you read the whole thing across like, it seems to be about the impermanence of beauty in this world. The way that everything dissolves over time and it's hard for us to really declare ownership.
The first column seems to be about the personal cost of losing things over time (specifically beauty.) The second column (on the right) seems to be about guarding against loss, especially the line "triumph always be whole and gold" though it seems that even guarding against loss that "the clout carried within" is still lost.
I really love some of these individual phrases, and I think the strength of this piece relies on the individual phrases being able to stick out while also linking to each other in interesting ways.
"Whole and gold" is my favorite, I also like "masts and ropes" there's some really nice playing with constants and vowels going on here. (Consonance and assonance? Damn, it's been a while since I've been in a poetry class now. Sadness!)
I love "Beauty cannot/stay untarnished" and also "until it hazes/where this now old/eye glazes, folds". The line "eye, glazes, folds" works particularly well because of the way it successfully interacts with the pieces around it.
I also like "mine -never was-" which I'm a sucker for because there ARE HYPHENS ARE THE WORDS! That's a strange thing to like, but oh well.
There's really one phrase that really stuck out to be as being discordant. "Together as" which is in the fourth line of the first column works well with "the steady stays" but not with the line above it. Something about "forever yet we/together as/masts and ropes" doesn't feel right about me. I think because there's a halting pace for all three of them and when you halt three times in a row it feels jarring (whereas reading them other ways they're followed by smoother lines.)
Other than that, it looks good to me. It's interesting. Keep it up!