Below is a commentary written for three sonnets I wrote, “A Homeless Soul“, “The Ballerina Shoe in the Shop Window“, and “The Special Children of Auschwitz“.
I chose to write three poems in the sonnet form. Each poem has a theme, for example the first poem is about the plight of a homeless animal. The second one is about the loneliness in old age and the third is about a shameful period in the last century. I used most of the tools in the poetry box to give the poems a shape. For example, the rhyme patterns, rhythm, alliteration, a turn and imagery.
My first poem, a sonnet entitled “A Homeless Soul” is about an abandoned stray cat. I knew her when she came out for meal time so I began the process of creating my first poem as a result of my feeling for the cat. W. Wordsworth wrote that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” (Owen. Johnson 1988 p.85). I then began to write the first draft in a free writing prose, and then I wrote it in a sonnet form, fourteen lines in the octane and six lines in the sestet. I soon found out that writing poetry is not a sprint, rather a marathon. “Writing a poem is a process, not a single action” (Textbook p167).
I decided to write the poem as personae in order to give the point of view of the abandoned cat. I used the iambic pentameter to give the rhythmic pattern for the lines of my poem. My first problem was that I noticed that the iambic pentameter form made it difficult to find the right words to fit in the lines of the poem. I changed a few words in the lines in order to make it sound like ten syllables and five beats. Di Dum Di Dum Di Dum ect. I then focussed on the rhyme patterns in the sestet. I used the alphabet, AB AB AB AB in the octave and CDE CDE in the sestet. I also included a couple of internal rhymes, “man oh man” in the 7th lines in the octave and the 5th line in the sestet.
After several drafts, I began to add imagery i.e. “leapt, I jumped”. In the second CD Track 5 of “Writing Poetry,”, D. Frances said “…Images involves all the five senses…” I also used the power of imagery to give a meaning to the theme of the poem ‘The Plight of the Abandoned Animal’.
The second sonnet “The Ballerina Shoe in the Shop Window” is in the petrarchan form, three quatrains and one couple, using the alphabet it sounds ABBA, ABBA, ABBA and AA. I used a few similes and metaphors to create the imagery. “Like a solitary palm tree on a dale… She was butterfly on a field of thyme”. As Norman Maccaig notes, “imagery helps us to build the message of the poem”. The similes and metaphors in the second sonnet conveyed the message of the poem, especially the mood. I also included a witty couplet to end the sonnet.
The third sonnet is a free verse. “The Special Children of Auschwitz” does not rhyme or have rhythm but a few metaphors have been used in order to create a serious tone to the poem, ‘From the blindness of the world’, ‘shower of death’ and ‘the devils’ wicked kiln’. Those metaphors helped to describe the condition that the children were in whilst in the concentration camps. As the poem was about a serious subject I have added a satisfactory ending to the poem.
In conclusion, I have managed to convey the messages of all the sonnets through the technical ranges.
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