Date: between 09/25/03 and 06/21/04
Setting: Life after college--during second post-college job
Form: Sonnet
I see straight through those words you mutter ‘bout
Those words you’ve strewn together with no thought
Inanely thrown in here and there throughout
In hopes that you shall find the fool you’ve sought
So ramble on you do without a doubt
To make coherent concepts you have fought
As though this diatribe might give you clout
Now did you really think you’d not be caught?
I’ve seen your kind a dozen times before
Your suave demeanor lacks effect on me
Don’t be pretentious to think me a fool
You cannot catch me with your little lore
Though you hope, you know it will never be
Because you see, when all is said, I rule.
Notes:
So we have fast forwarded quite a bit. Though in a way reversed (seeing how I found my way back to high school). This poem found me in my sixth year of teaching, during my second job which found me teaching high school math. One of my colleagues was working with students on a poetry unit. Now while I have always enjoyed poetry, I have never (or should say had never) really explored form--outside of the basics you got in school: haiku, diamante, and acrostic.
This here was my first (adult) exploration of form--free verse being my form of choice. I'm not sure sonnets where the best place for me to begin exploring form. One because it was my first exploration in stress meter (iambic pentameter). Two it had rhyming (which I've mentioned multiple times here I'm not that fond of). I actually ended up writing two sonnets back-to-back. I didn't toy with form again until after I started this blog; it wasn't until February 2011 that I gave the sonnet another try (though I put my own twist on it by making it a poem for two voices).
The only plus to writing in rhyme and stressed meter is that instead of needing to list out all the words I can think of that rhyme with a given word or look up the stressed syllable in a dictionary, I know have it all at my fingertips in the form of apps on my phone. Technology really is fascinating.
Artifact I: Not sure where the original write for this ended up, I have some pits and pieces of a line or two but I'm guessing the whole poem was probably typed. (front of paper)
Artifact II: A glimpse into the long lists of rhyming words. (back of paper)
