A Sonnet for Serenity

[mneme]

A Sonnet for Serenity

First quatrain and last couplet by Joshua Kronengold, second quatrain and following couplet by

Comments

[jcbemis]

that's so cool!

[mneme]

Thanks!

[leiacat]

Very nicely done.

[mneme]

Thanks!

[agrumer]

Take me then out to the endless night,
And tell those who may seek for my return
That never shall my visage mark their sight;
I care not that the land and seas may burn.

[mneme]

Very nice!

I'd probably cut the first "may", since it starts with a shortened iamb anyway, so it makes it more parallel. (and the may was external to the iambs anyway, breaking the rhythm).

[agrumer]

I think what I really need is a comma (or em dash) after “Take me then”, to indicate a pause, without which the reader might be tempted to place emphasis on “out”.

[mneme]

Hmm. It's not an issue to me, at least. Take is stressed (which implies a shortened leading foot anyway), so the unstressed syllables in the first line, reading naturally, are 'me', 'out', 'the', and '-less'. To stress 'out', you pretty much have to entirely invert the iambic stress, which will be awkward, to say the least.

The second line was where I had issues. If you read it naturally, you stress 'tell', but 'those' doesn't work well for me as a short syllable, because of the (literally) long 'o'. So either you end up with a very high-school reading of it, with an enforced short 'those', or it gets a bit awkward ("And tell-those who-may-seek for-my return" is my best effort, which is 5 feet, but by having one with three toes). Drop the 'may' and it becomes easy (same as my other reading, but without the three-toed foot).

[madfilkentist]

'Tis true, blank verse doth everything improve.
Is Shakespeare's Star Wars something you have read?

[mneme]

I think it's only blank without a rhyme. But I have three, a quatrain followed by A-A.

I've yet to come across the book you named, but it sounds charming.