grammatical dilemma
Usually, I pride myself on being a grammarian. Still, I am a product of the environment in which I was raised.
My family on my father's side hails historically from South Carolina. Over the years, I'd conformed much of the erroneous language I'd incorporated in my youth to standard English, but recently I have run into an issue and it is now pressing itself upon me. (If this question is not appropriate for this community, please delete the post with my apology.)
I am writing a sonnet (a sequence of sonnets, actually) with a nonce rhyme scheme of aabbccddeeff. In the first stanza, I have the following lines:
She hung, a scythe of skin, until he drug
her to the sand, this makeshift holy rug.
Thinking about this today, I was not sure if the line should read "he drug" or "he had drug", which will give you an indication of the depths of my ignorance. I decided to try to find clarification online, wherein I read that "[t]he use of 'drug' as a past-tense of 'drag' is frowned on by grammar experts" and that one "would be wise [...] to refrain from ever using 'drug' for 'dragged.'"
I accept this as a strict grammarian; however, as a poet, I am in a quandary. The poem does employ slant (imperfect) rhyme, but even with such leniency I feel that "dragged" does not truly phonetically mirror "rug".
Would you suggest that I keep to standard grammar, or should I rather claim poetic license?
(This entry is cross-posted.)
My family on my father's side hails historically from South Carolina. Over the years, I'd conformed much of the erroneous language I'd incorporated in my youth to standard English, but recently I have run into an issue and it is now pressing itself upon me. (If this question is not appropriate for this community, please delete the post with my apology.)
I am writing a sonnet (a sequence of sonnets, actually) with a nonce rhyme scheme of aabbccddeeff. In the first stanza, I have the following lines:
She hung, a scythe of skin, until he drug
her to the sand, this makeshift holy rug.
Thinking about this today, I was not sure if the line should read "he drug" or "he had drug", which will give you an indication of the depths of my ignorance. I decided to try to find clarification online, wherein I read that "[t]he use of 'drug' as a past-tense of 'drag' is frowned on by grammar experts" and that one "would be wise [...] to refrain from ever using 'drug' for 'dragged.'"
I accept this as a strict grammarian; however, as a poet, I am in a quandary. The poem does employ slant (imperfect) rhyme, but even with such leniency I feel that "dragged" does not truly phonetically mirror "rug".
Would you suggest that I keep to standard grammar, or should I rather claim poetic license?
(This entry is cross-posted.)