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‘Kay, I’ve got a little problem here. As you know if you clicked on the topic. And if you didn’t, you aren’t even here… *gasp* I’m talking to someone who’s not even here!
Anyway.
I have this really long, rough poem that I started writing like… a year ago? It was the first real poem I ever tried… anyway, I’ve been wanting to finish it, but— yep, you guessed it. This is where I have the problem.
Apparently I changed cadence somewhere in between the first verse and the third, and I can’t figure out how it happened. Has this ever happened to you guys? Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this?
I can post it if it would help— but I haven’t even begun to polish it or anything *cringe* so it’s awful. I just need to know what I did wrong.Help??????!
@kate-flournoy
I’ll be ever so helpful here. If you changed cadence between the first verse and the third verse, you probably did it in the second verse.*cough cough* Yes, let’s see. Down to business…
Post the thing. Yep, I kinda need it.
I deal well with ideas, but I do better when I have examples to go along.
Signed,
An imaginary friend
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Dear Imaginary Friend—
You asked for it.
Son of a Warrior
Love is sacrifice. Only with the gift of everything it is will it ever come into the fullness of everything it was meant to be.
The weary warrior in the night, riding true and fast and far,
with love of land and love of king to guide him, and a star,
looks to me and says to me ‘Tonight I ride for war!
But tomorrow-eve I shall return, where shadows lurk no more.
In darkness lie and know despair, and know that war is anguish;
and darkness, and despair, and pride, will grip you as you languish.
But though tonight I ride for war, with heartbeat fierce and wild,
tomorrow-eve I ride for home, and wife, and land, and child.
Where hope is strong and life is sweet, and war is but a word,
and memories and children’s feet replace the spear and sword.
The children’s feet! Upon the turf they running come to meet me,
with joyful shout and twinkling eye my children kiss and greet me.
They know not what their father did, what horrors he endured,
so they could laugh and love and live with peace and joy assured.
The bow and shield, the pike and spear, the helmet and the armor,
I donned today that tomorrow-year my son might be a farmer;
to work the land and love the land as I would do, and more,
if king and land and sword and blood had not called me forth to war.’Tomorrow-eve arrived and passed, and the weary warrior knew it,
but dared not shirk the warrior’s task, nor weep, nor swear, nor rue it.
The war he thought would end so soon dragged on for months and years,
but he never once forsook the field; forsook the toil or tears.
His head grew bent, his land lay waste, his king and friends forsook him,
the cruel winds of age and fate together racked and shook him.
But the child’s love and the child’s voice staid him and gave him rest,
and remembering still he fought with a will, that the child might live and be blessed.
No more wars, no more blood; the sword and the spear in the fire;
the land and the king and the people alive, and the country raised out of the mire.
The cities restored, the wheat in the fields, the fires of home kept burning;
for these things it was that the warrior fought; for these things his heart was yearning.But the war dragged on and the years flew by, and the warrior’s life was waning,
and the grey of the skies woke despair in his eyes; and the low clouds harshly raining.
His sword was bent and his shield was gone; shattered and chipped and broken,
and the life he had lived, and the shadows he saw, terror and grief had awoken.
For what was life? And what was love? And why was war so anguished?
If life and love could not conquer war, then life and love had languished,
for the strength of them both had carried him through, and the pain had seemed far less
than the child’s life and the child’s love, and the boy he had striven to bless.
And the warrior’s day came, as it always must, that life from him was taken,
and he lay on the trampled, bloodstained turf, wounded and hurt and shaken.
And the din of the battle and clash of the swords fell harshly upon his ears,
but he did not move and he did not speak, as the deaf beggar no one hears.
The king in whose service the warrior had fought caught sight of him lying there,
but with careless eyes and a thought full of lies he passed him by in the mere.
For the battle was thick and the armies wild, and the king had not time for the faithful.
But another was there, with the rain in his hair, who knew what it was to be grateful.The shattered shield and battered sword were tossed aside and forsaken,
while anxious young eyes and quick flying feet over the field were taken.
And the blood-covered hands and the nimble young fingers did away with the warrior’s shield,
and the sword and the spear and the breastplate of iron were cast away from the field.
The warrior was cradled in strong, tender arms while the battle raged all about,
and raising his eyes to the raining grey skies he saw, and he knew, beyond doubt.
The man in whose arms his wounded head lay was young, and joyous, and strong,
and the light in his eyes and the light of his face shone free of the wicked or wrong.
The younger man smiled, and clasping his hand, bent down and spoke to him low.
‘You fought for my sake and the love of my life— now leave it, and let yourself go.
The torch and the brand too long you have carried; too long you have fought here for me.
Now go and be blessed, and permit yourself rest, and be happy, and joyous, and free.
All that you wished me to keep I forsook— the farm, and the home, and the land,
and I came here for you, to fight by your side, and to lend you my young, stronger hand.
Your battle is finished— now I must fight, and gladly I take up the sword,
for you fought for me, and you died for me; you were my shield and ward.
And when you are gone, and my strength is waning, I will think back to this day and recall
all that you did, and all that you said, and all that you gave to me— all.
When I lie in the turf as you lie here now, and look back on all I could give,
I will wonder and hope that my life and my deeds with yours may be counted, and live.
For to live, you must die, if you wish it in full, and to love you must bear things alone,
for love is not love if it cannot face death, and know that its life here is done.
To love is to joy in the anguish of giving; to revel in heartbreak and tears,
if you know that your love and the life you are living are saving your children from fears.
For the children we fight, as our fathers fought, and for their children our children will stand,
so that they can stand up, and be bold and be strong, and live in a free, blessed land.
Dear Father, weep not that you leave, weep not that your task is not done.
For the only task that you ever had was to guard me and guide me, your son.
And then step aside, with joy and with pride, and watch the love that you gave
stand up, and stand tall, with the best of them all, and be strong and be stern and be brave.
For I am your love, and I am your son, and I will never forget
what you did for me, fought for me, lost for me still, and the anguish and heartache you met.The block-quote setting probably messed it up a lot, because the lines are really, really long, but let’s hope it wasn’t too bad.
Wow! I am really glad I asked for this. This is going among my favorite poems. Why did you call it awful? Now of course, there are sections where the meter needs a little attention, but not much. I’m pretty sure (though, as you know, I only judge meter by ear) that you started off in one meter, switched to another, and then (I think, but I didn’t really examine it) switched back. But that’s ok! You can do that.
My first poem wan’t this good.
You might fix some meter issues, but they are minor one liner things. And really? Should a poem of this length have perfect meter? I think a little divergence makes it seem more real. Still, like I said, the meter could use some minor improvement. There were also two questions I was left wondering about after finishing this. First, who is the warrior talking to in the first stanza? Second, you said that the king deserted the warrior, but then it sounds like the warrior was still fighting for him. *Question mark, question mark*
Alright, the poet’s done speaking. In comes the psychologist. (Bet you didn’t see that one coming ?) Yes, you see, it’s this one phrase that’s freaking me out. (No, actually I’m not really freaking out, just surprised)
and to love you must bear things alone,
Now let me guess, you wrote that? Ok, so this isn’t going to be some big incriminating speech. Not at all. I’m just wondering why you think that. “For to live, you must die” Yes. “for love is not love if it cannot face death, and know that its life here is done.” Yes yes. Beautiful! Wonderful! But “to love you must bear things alone.”???????????????
So you like Ecclesiastics. Two are better than one and all that. But maybe I’m the one that’s wrong. Let me know your view.
Now here’s where the psychologist steps in. (feel free to correct me since this is the first time I have ever played the psychologist and criticism of psychologists is is one of my pastimes so I can sympathize). I’m guessing this little phrase got in there because that is the type of person you are. One who bares things alone, who cares greatly about others to the point of overburdening themselves and consequently being too burdened to really be functional anymore, thus hurting others by being overly kind. Idealistic, firmly set on the gaol of good, not super pragmatic. Also non-communicative about about what I just described.
So basically, if I guessed right (or even if I didn’t) just know that you probably have the tendency to care so much about others that you actually lessen your help to them. That’s not a very fun thing to have to figure out when you’re 80, so I thought that even if I am wrong, I should at least risk mentioning the possibility.
So maybe this is totally off, but anyway, it was fun to guess.
Oh, and keep writing poetry. Yep yep yep yep.
Signing off.
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Egh, forgot the tag thingy.
@kate-flournoy🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢
Wow! I really did think it was terrible— just awful. I guess I’m not an objective judge. 😛 Thanks so much, Daeus— for everything.
Oh yes, the contradiction about the king deserting and all that… 😛 Actually the poem went through a backstory change in the middle of writing it, and I hadn’t yet got around to fixing it. 😛
And you know, this is really creepy… but you were actually spot on. I didn’t think about that line, but now that you pointed it out I see that’s exactly what I was saying, and that is exactly the kind of person I am. Wow… yes, that’s what I was saying. I guess the more correct way to phrase it would be ‘To love you must be willing to bear things alone’ even though that doesn’t fit the meter… when I love people, I don’t like to squash them under all my problems so I keep quiet and just bear it all by myself, and sometimes there are burdens you shouldn’t ask someone to share with you no matter how much you love them. Burdens maybe they couldn’t cope with, or couldn’t understand, or that maybe would wound them in some way.
So my common sense agrees with you that two are better than one, but my nature says the other way around. 😛 I’ll have to teach my nature to listen to common sense. 😉*stares at screen, thinks for moment* I’ve never been acquainted with a psychologist.
Tag thingy not forgotten @kate-flournoy
Common sense is some pretty awesome stuff. If you have any for sale, I’ll take it.
‘To love you must be willing to bear things alone’
That’s what I’m talking about. Same poetry, more realism.
Sweet stuff.
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Unfortunately I think I need all the common sense I can get my hands on, @Daeus. 😛
And I will keep writing poetry.
Wow, I’m… I just… I’m still floored you liked it so much.
Wow; I’m not even going to try to correct it…poetry isn’t my area of expertise, as you know. 😉 But just..wow. I loved it!
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Cool. Yeah, I mean, I think liked it is a little week. By the way, you can get off the floor now. After all, it would be much more interesting if you were ceilinged than floored. *Tries to imagine that*
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I think I just came up with a fantastic idea. It’s one of those, “do this exactly and everything will work wonderfully” type things. Of course, sometimes those don’t work out, but sometimes they do, so here I go.
This is what you should do:
Take this poem, and when you feel it is as good as you can get it, paint a picture to go along with it. Then digitize the picture. Now, using a fitting font, place the poem over the painting. Good, so now you have an image file of an amazing poem with an accompanying complementary painting seamlessly combined. That is a nice little product. What to do with it? Well, first you need a website. This may sound crazy, but every author should have a website. If it sounds crazy, well, you can expect me to argue in it’s cause until you can’t wait to get a website. So then, you have this website. You also have lot’s of people you can advertise to if you want. This will mainly be through an email list but if you have/could get a lot of non-subscriber visiting your site, that would also count. You may say, “But I don’t have either!!!” If that is the case, then you simply get them (it can certainly be done), and then when you have got that done, you can go on to the next step.
So, back to that image/poem thingy. Now that you have that website, you can upload the image as a product for sale on your site. This could be as a screensaver or it could be as a printable image (such as you might have printed out as a store and framed and put on the wall). If they seem to do well, you could even have some printed and framed, then ship them to Amazon fulfillment services, and sell them pre-made for a super-extra profit. Why would you do this? It is simple. Let us say you have an email list of 1,000 (very reasonable). Now, you advertise this product to your fans. We will guess that you will be able to get 3% of them to buy it. That is thirty. Now, let us say you can earn $5 from each sale. You now have an extra $150. That may seem rather pithy for the work, but here is the thing. You could invest that money back into getting new fans. At $1 cost to reach out to enough people to develop a single fan, you now have 1,150 subscribers in all. Now, let us say of these new 150 subscribers, 50 will buy your next book. $3 is about right for profit off a full length novel. Now then, you have earned an extra $150 again. Reinvest this, and you gain yet another 150 subscribers. That makes 1,300. See where this is going? Now, the numbers seem a little unconvincing when we are only dealing with 1,000 subscribers, but what if you had 10,000? (you could probably get that many in a year if you knew what you were doing) Just selling this new product could earn you 1,500 new subscribers. Most indies would be thrilled to have that many subscribers in all, let alone 11,500. You see, the more you can earn off a subscriber, the more subscribers you can earn. This means more people will read your book (which is what every good author wants). The way to earn more off subscribers is to sell more products – at least, products that they would want. And yes, anyone who like your writing would want this. Selling extra products is often difficult for fiction authors, but you have a wonderful product just waiting to happen.
Man, I ramble. You know, that is the nice thing about the internet. You can talk forever and not loose your voice.
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Wow. How. Do. You. Keep. All. Those. Numbers. Straight.
But this is going in my ideas file for sure. I honestly didn’t think about it as a product… but you’re right, I could use it that way.
And just the word ‘painting’ in connection with this poem has set my mind on fire. ‘A painting’ may not suffice— I’ve got ten ideas already. 😛And I’ll let you know when I finish this poem, ‘kay? Then you can look it over for me and see if it needs any corrections…
Sweet. I like setting people’s minds on fire, it’s just with the price of napalm recently, I haven’t had much success.
Ok, that was really bad.
Definitely send me the finished version.
And that math stuff – math is ten times easier when the units are the type you like to see. *Shouts out to mathematicians* “Did you hear that???!!!”
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