twelveoone
ground zero
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2004
- Posts
- 5,882
good answer, you're not on the hook. personal taste, all have our reasons for it. i don't like them, so what? i've must have read about 1,000 of them, liked maybe 5 really respected only about another 15, they have a high boredom factor for me and read too much like legal documents, and have a predictable pattern.Good question...
Sonnet writers jump in here, please... help get me off the hook! Share your reasons and thoughts.
let me show a little trick Millay works
Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all.
For there is that about you in this light –
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain –
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do.
in bold the line has greater concentration of polysyllabic words, starting and tapering off with the first and last bold, the other lines are mostly monosyllabic.
she has an interference pattern running against the basic iamb. one of the reasons you probably like it.
now this effect would be more noticeable the slower it is read.
at normal reading speed you hear a stream
Loving you less than life
a little less Than bitter-sweet / upon a broken wallOr brush-wood smoke in autumn
IconfessIcannotswearIloveyounotatall.
all other things being equal you notice the first and last words, take a look at the repeating consonant and vowel sounds, i,i,i hard c, hard c, oveyounot the o, tatall
just another way of looking at things
test it out, don't take my word, see if it works