My first attempt at writing a sonnet

Cafe Society
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Guys…this is my 1st attempt at writing verse, I am not an English language major or anything… am just an enthusiast whose native language is not English. I am afraid I could not stick to the iambic pentametre at a few places…but the rhyme scheme 'abab, cdcd, efef, gg" seems to be ok. I deliberately chose a very “non-poetic” topic… the devastation caused by a super cyclone “Hudhud” in October 2012 to my city Vizag. I attempted to write a sonnet…but, well… may be I took a few “poetic liberties” w.r.t the metre.

Please let me know your honest feedback …whether it has any worth at all or is it just trash ?

Here it goes …

Hudhud

Hell hath wrought all its anger and fury,
On a city so beautiful, lush and green.
Oh Vizag ! Destruction so gory, stripping off all your glory,
Rubble is all that remains, nary a place which is serene.

Not the usual norm, terrible was the storm,
Hudhud thy name, all day wailing, moaning, bawling, tearing.
Cowering, whimpering, wondering whom should I inform,
Wanting a little waning; then clearing, sharing, caring.

Calm and peace, blue sky and bright sunshine !
Devastation all-round despite, what a wonderful respite.
Let’s work hand in hand, now that it is clementine ,
Albeit with a heavy heart, let’s fight with all our might.

Yo Vizag ! it’s our pledge, soon shall ye rise,
Lost glory and even more highs, we assure you shall prise.

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Not a sonnet (at least by the traditional definition) since it’s not in iambic pentameter.

Here is the stress of the first line:

HELL hath WROUGHT all its ANger and FURy

Iambic pentameter always has the same stresses on the second syllable:

is THIS the FACE that LAUNCHED a THOUsand SHIPS?

You have to get the rhythm in your head; once that happens, sonnets are easy.

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Thanks RealityChuck. Appreciate your feedback.

I knew I failed to stick to the iambic pentameter at many places of the poem. I am trying to learn more about this aspect and will try to improve my writing.

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YP, I don’t know anything at all about sonnets, but your imagery and the juxtaposition between the calm and the storm are powerful. Please keep writing. :slight_smile:

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Thx very much Helena. Intend to keep writing, only wish to improve my writing skills further. I guess it takes a bit of practise too !

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Sonnets do not require iambic pentameter. Heck, they might not even require exactly 14 lines. But good sonnets, like all good poetry, has to be organically rooted in language. Poetry isn’t about following a set of rules, or speaking in stilted and/or archaic language to sound dramatic.

My best advice is to read more poetry. Read both free verse and received forms like sonnets. I can also suggest some forums where you will get much more targeted and helpful poetry feedback if you like.

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Hi jsgoddess. Would very much like you to suggest forums where I could get targeted feedback. Thx for reading. Appreciate your gesture.

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neither is Ozymandias

There are many variants on the sonnet form.

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That’s still a pretty traditional-looking sonnet in iambic pentameter, although with a non-traditional rhyme scheme.

But, yes, there are many variants on the sonnet form and you can play with the form. For example, here is Paul Muldoon’s take on the sonnet. It follows the Petrarchan form (ABBA ABBA CDE CDE), but the meter varies markedly throughout.

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I think it’s overall pretty good and you should be proud of your work.

Just a couple of comments:

Yo Vizag! means hi Vizag, what’s up? in very colloquial language, and I don’t think that’s what you intended. Do you mean something more like “Go Vizag”? I would definitely recommend changing this one. It makes me think of Vizag walking down the street and fist-bumping with his homeboys.

This line doesn’t really make sense:

Devastation all-round despite, what a wonderful respite.

It would work better as “devastatation all round despite such a wonderful respite” because despite is a transitive verb.

Respite also means a temporary break from something bad, not a permanent one, but that could be what you intended.

In this line:

Let’s work hand in hand, now that it is clementine,

I’m not sure what you mean by clementine. I suspect you mean clement, as in merciful, but clementine is not the adjective form and is instead the name of a small orange especially popular at Christmas and a woman’s name mostly known from a folk song. It could sort of work because you can mess around with word forms in poetry, but generally it won’t work if it’s the only word whose form you’re messing around with, as it is here.

Also this:

Lost glory and even more highs, we assure you shall prise.

Do you mean you shall prise the lost glory and even more highs out of the former devastation? (Prise, again, is transitive, and it also requires a preposition, usually “out of”). If so, putting the object before the verb is generally fine in poetry, but it sounds a little off as the last line especially with the lack of preposition. Read aloud, it would sound like your city would prize lost glory and even more highs, because grammatically that would fit better.

“Evermore” is a nice poetic way of saying even more, by the way. It also avoids people looking back to ask which highs you were referring to before.

In general, in poetry it’s fine to break the conventions of normal grammar (great poetry does this a lot, actually) but there should always be a reason for doing so and the meaning should still be clear. “Clementine” and “Yo!” I’d avoid because they’re unintentionally comical but the rest, well, it’s up to you, and you did a good job. :slight_smile:

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This place is especially strong in received forms: Eratosphere - - workshop for metrical poetry, free verse, fiction, artwork, translation, discussions - Able Muse

And this place is stronger for free verse: The Poetry Free-for-all?

Leave your ego at the door and have fun.

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Iambic pentameter goes da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

I MET a TRAV ler FROM an AN tiqe LAND

Nope, doesn’t work for me.

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Thank you very much, jsgoddess, for your suggestions. I will visit both the sites mentioned by you and utilise them for learning more and improving my writing skills.

Also my sincere thanks to SciFiSam for his detailed anaysis and suggestions. I get the points mentioned by you. I just wrote what came to me (rather what popped up in my head) without worrying too much about grammar or spelling. But that is no excuse for the lapses ( or a better way of conveying what I intended to).
I was more worried about not sticking to the iambic pentametre. I guess, that (my failure or inability to follow the scansion) makes what I wrote in my first attempt more a free verse than a sonnet.

RealityChuck and pulykamell…thank you for your observations too.

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Not being a student of English literature coupled with the disadvantage of a non-English mother tongue is showing up very vividly in my writing, it seems.

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Yeah, Ozymandias is very clear IP.

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Yeah, he strays a bit, but that is the norm in poetry. You rarely have anything in meter that stays exactly the same throughout. The only poem that comes to mind is Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” which is in perfect (or near-perfect. You can read the “whose woods” as a spondee. The way that Robert Frost reads it, it sounds like a spondee to me. Scansion isn’t scientific, and there can be more than one way to read a line.) And my interpretation is that it was done this way to add to the serene sense of the scene.

As to the OP, I think it’s a good start. I like the attention paid to the sounds of words. What I would like to see, at least for myself as a reader, others may disagree, is more a sense of place. Right now, the descriptions sound like a rather generic juxtaposition of destruction with hope. I’d like more localized, concrete imagery. Something that really evokes Vizag and contrasts ruin/destruction and hope/rebirth in that manner.

But, overall, I think it’s a good start with exploring the form and poetry in general.

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Pardon me…I just noticed a minor error in the OP. The cyclone Hudhud (with windspeeds exceeding 250 kmph) hit the city of Vizag on 12th October 2014 and not in 2012. Regret the mistake in my 1st post.

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Does great poetry do that a lot? I’m sure you can find some examples, of mixed merit, but a lot of great poetry? As a jobbing poet I’m happy to claim I’ve written some pretty good pieces (and some great lines :p), but I and 100% of poets of my acquaintance shudder in horror at every inversion, eg:

“terrible was the storm”

YP, inversions aside it’s not a horrible poem, but I’d say it’s not finished yet. For a first attempt from a non-native speaker it’s really rather impressive. I appreciate form and rhyme, though I don’t always use them. The value of constraints such as the sonnet form is that you have to focus very clearly on what you want to say (free verse poets easily wander off-topic and often ramble right past what should have been the end - which is just one of the reasons it’s difficult to present poetry as a live entertainment…with a song, the drummer will let you know when the band has finished:D)

But the constraints of a form are a poor excuse for mangling the language just to get your rhyme and rhythm right.

Oh, forgive me, usually I start by identifying the bits I do like - there’s always something.

“Wanting a little waning; then clearing, sharing, caring.”

That uses the sounds of the words well, as does:

" wailing, moaning, bawling, tearing."

But those words describing Hudhud run straight into:

“Cowering, whimpering,” which don’t, and we learn a little late (to my mind) that they describe you - “wondering whom should I inform”. Which is a very weak line after all those evocative verbs. Setting up a rhyme scheme can really box a poet in. Consider something with ‘transform’?

You have a fondness for cliched phrases, too, but that’s understandble and excusable in a novice non-native voice. Keep writing, as any writer would advise you.

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Hi Jack of Words, thank you for taking time out to read my poem and also for giving your feedback.
Pardon my ignorance…could you please explain a bit more about “inversions”. I am putting in this request just to educate myself.

  1. Regarding my use of the words “cowering, whimpering…whom should I inform”, my intention was to convey the state of mind and the feelings of the people rendered homeless/street people. Maybe I should have chosen different words to convey what I really wished to.

  2. As suggested, I will try to stop using “cliched phrases” but I guess my lack of grounding in literature/poetry makes my writing appear somewhat “stilted or stunted”. Hopefully with more reading, educating myself and hard work, I should be able to turn in better pieces in the future .:slight_smile:

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Great attitude! Good luck.