Rhyme and freeverse

[lorijones]

[center]I miss you still,
all’s hurt and weep shrouding the orb and stars,
while nourishment’s a pot of poisoned love
that in my desperation I consume
cold on the ash of angers fiery words.

I sift and rake love’s cinders so to find
some fragments to construct a fragile chain
to fasten me to you and you to love,
treat tender, lead me into warmth from chill,
I love you still[/center]


I miss you still
all’s hurt and weep as I the past distill,
while nourishment’s a pot of poisoned love
that I consume and never can tire of
cold on the ash of angers fiery words.

That ash I sift and rake for I am spurred
to make from fragments there a fragile chain
that fastens us once more in loves domain.
Treat tender dear, come into warmth from chill,
I love you still.

[ray miller]

I like them both, though I prefer the first one, it flows more naturally, for one thing.

I miss you still,
all’s hurt and weep shrouding the orb and stars, - I think that shrouds would be better than shrouding, rhythmically
while nourishment’s a pot of poisoned love
that in my desperation I consume
cold on the ash of angers fiery words. - anger's

I sift and rake love’s cinders so to find - just to find?
some fragments to construct a fragile chain
to fasten me to you and you to love, - I like the f- words
treat tender, lead me into warmth from chill,
I love you still

[lorijones]

Thank you for such thorough comments. Letting me know your preferred format was why I put the two versions on so thanks. I think there's a common misconception that to rhyme will always limit expression and obviously it reduces choice of word but for me that is the challenge of poetry. My personal opinion is that poetry has become so dominated by the need to sound "clever" rather than spiritual. Too many English Degrees and Doctorates which may be fine for them but has every aspiring amateur poet trying to mimic something that has all the warmth of quantum physics. I know this is so unfashionable but for me "good" rhyming poetry is still the most challenging.

[1lankest]

It is lovely writing and the rhythm and rhyme is impressive.

Indeed I don't think it's the rhyme that limits this, rather the somewhat unoriginal language. I think you're wrong to admonish aspiring poets for trying to sound clever - most poets are trying to create something fresh and new and in doing so express something particular and unique about their own experience. Often this comes across as pretentious or contrived; this is a risk one takes in striving for originality.

In your poem I'm afraid I don't feel like I'm accessing the narrator's actual experience of love and loss. Because you use so many abstract nouns (hurt, love, anger, desperation) I can only gain an abstract, general notion of your experience.

If you were to try to 'show' these feeling in concrete terms - a memory perhaps, a conversation, a description of a desolate landscape - then I would immediately be engaged in your actual world of lived experience. As it is, I feel like I'm reading Keats - lovely and musical - but somehow unreal to me.

Sorry if this is harsh - I did enjoy your poems. You are clearly a skilled writer.


Luke

[lorijones]

Thank you for reading and commenting.