Sarah,
I'm not sure that there is a sort of thing that people favour. Everyone is
eccentric in their own way. Reminds me of the Monty Python quip: "We're all
individuals." Reply: "I'm not". At any rate it would be difficult for your
work to be too off-beat for me.
To come to your poem, I am uneasy about the sound effects in the last two
lines of the first stanza. "Love" is a great sounding word for the beginning
of L3. It chimes with "round" in L1 and also with "groove", in a different
way, at the end of the preceding line. However IMO it doesn't fit well at
the end of L4. That sound has already been used up by the time I get to the
end of that stanza. It's true that it manages a half rhyme with groove, but
coming after the full rhymes at the ends of 1 and 3 it is a bit weak. So for
those two reasons it's not quite right to my ear. It might be better if
there were a decisive full rhyme at the end of L4. e.g. something like, "and
love must prove", although I realise this differs from the intended sense
and other options are better.
Further down in S3: "feeding ecstasy with pain" makes an excessive claim on
my emotion. Perhaps it's telling me too much what I must feel as reader.
However it is a significant topic and on the whole you put it across well,
with the detachment necessary for analysis of the process.
Keep up the good work.
BW
Colin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sarah Willans" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 9:53 PM
Subject: New sub - Our Song
> Now James and Frank can get their own back! I'm aware that this isn't the
> sort of thing that most people who post here favour, and I'm not totally
> convinced about it myself, but I would be grateful for any opinions.
> Thanks - Sarah
>
>
> Our Song
>
> Round and round and round it goes,
> needle in an endless groove.
> Love recedes as anger grows,
> anger ebbs, makes way for love.
>
> All we were before the song
> changed, forever, as it rose -
> wavering, then clear and strong.
> Round and round and round it goes.
>
> Now we play, and play again,
> the tune that taught us how to love,
> feeding ecstasy with pain -
> needle in an endless groove.
>
> Rhythms rise, intensify,
> peaking, falling. Tempo slows
> to silence as the music dies.
> Love recedes as anger grows.
>
> But the music swells again.
> Dancing, move and countermove,
> we mark the beat, forget the pain;
> anger ebbs, makes way for love.
>
> Vows that no-one ever knows,
> declarations never proved.
> Round and round and round it goes,
> needle in an endless groove.
>
>
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