I find it an exercise in style
To contemplate you for a while
To map out inexorably
The way your hair falls perfectly
The way there’s so much subtlety
In corners of your smile
I think of every curl and fold
Of all the shadows soft and bold
I cast an artist’s measured eye
So that I cannot wonder why
It seems so purposeless to try
To sketch a one so cold
I find it an exercise in style
To rhyme you and your crooked smile
To stretch out my creative limb
To try a new thing on a whim
To through my murky feelings swim
And let my words beguile
I write on aspects of your face
Of things said that I would erase
In ways that make me cock my head
And struggle for a proper thread
Of words that only end up dead
When I run out of space
I find it an exercise in style
To drama in my head a while
To be playwright and actor too
To smile as I think of you
And change a conversation’s hue
Play on Miss Fortune’s smile
It polishes my acting skill
Allows me to do what I will
And allows decisions in advance
So I can keep this song and dance
Act like your gaze is not a lance
Whose in-heart punctures thrill
Dress rehearsal week = no time for new stuff. I did, however, have time to edit one of my few attempts at poetry. I like rhyme and meter. I am sorry if you don't.
4 comments:
I'm usually not one to like rhyme but this one intrigues me. It's not your usual romance type stuff, yet I think I like it mostly because it's exactly not that.
Maybe its just the creativeness of the piece and its central themes that make me like it so.
This is nicely crafted. I always admire the time and effort it takes to make rhyming, scanning poetry. I find it so tedious, yet I also think it's essential because once you've tried, it's easier to grasp how poetry works when you read it. Well done, anyhow.
Like Davina I like this because there's your usual Romance, but it's also very clever, and the bubbly tone is quite refreshing - although granted there are a few lines bordering on the cheesy... but I'm also cold hearted. I like how this poem is metafictional - it's a poem about writing poetry about someone, not a poem about someone, which is makes it awesome and ingenious.
I felt like I had read this before, or heard this before...?
I could hear your voice though.
I like
"The way there’s so much subtlety
In corners of your smile"
and
"I cast an artist’s measured eye
So that I cannot wonder why
It seems so purposeless to try
To sketch a one so cold"
and also
I write on aspects of your face
Of things said that I would erase
In ways that make me cock my head
And struggle for a proper thread
Of words that only end up dead
When I run out of space
an excellent sense of a story behind the obvious im writing about writing about you, becaue there are these great hints that ones imagination can grab and explore and run away with. Dann has this saying that things like this allow you to climb into a text, or get into a text or...I can't remember just how he phrases it...but something with that sentiment/general idea.
D&CSMC about the romance. Mostly Charles. Some lines, won't lie, were a little borderline cliche, BUT it was a very refreshing bubbly tone. Something new to HRC, that's for sure :P Love the metafictional. Excellent twist on subject matter. I approve.
The rhyme scheme is really interesting. I like how it's an aabbba because it gives you that sense of ending back up where you started, like an infatuation. You look at someone from all angles and end up in precisely the same state of mind you started in, usually, because you can't break out of it. So I thought that that was particularly effective.
I think because it had such effective rhyme and meter, the lack of punctuation wasn't even noticeable. In fact, I didn't notice until I went back and checked again. The only place it seemed a little like it needed something was at the end of "When I run out of space". It sounded like such a final thing to say that I was surprised there wasn't a period to conclude the stanza.
I also loved that you used the three stanzas to observe this "you" from three different artistic medium perspectives. It made the first line make sense ("I find it an exercise in style"), so it wasn't just one of those random first lines that end up having nothing to do with the poem but were just awesome because they started the piece off. The speaker actually is exercising their styles, which was fantastic and leads back to Charles' comment about the metafictional. I would even like a few more stanzas - one with music, one with sculpting maybe :)
I found that the last stanza was a little on the weak side, however. It seemed that the constraints you had set for yourself were finally wearing you down and you had to bend the content to the form more than you had in the first two. So if you were to edit this, I would pay most attention to the third stanza. Especially since it's about acting, I feel like so much could be said that wasn't. Though maybe that's because I just read the part in The Picture of Dorian Gray where Sibyl is telling Dorian how separate acting and love are...
Anyway - really impressed with the rhyming! I hate rhymes, but I love them here. Well done, Jessica Stilwell, well done!
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