Poetic Forms Winner: Climbing Rhyme
Hi everyone, if you’ve not heard of Climbing Rhyme before, please read Wednesday’s post to find out more about it.
There was a lot of interest this week and it was well deserved as the Climbing Rhyme proved to be a fun and challenging form. The three participants (or four if you include myself) each took a very different approach. Niteowl displayed simplicity at its best with a sweet and engaging poem about lovers across the ocean. Aley followed this with a complexity of language, a poem which hugged the themes of identity and literature.
After multiple attempts, I settled on the subject of moving house, while Cailey explored an emotional breakdown with an excellent use of fragmentation in her structure to reflect the subject.
The poem I’ve decided to feature today is Aley’s – let’s take a closer look:
Lost Magic
Aley
I salivated upon my
bell, so high from
expectations, I nearly lost
my head.”Exhaust all
the tossed ideas!” he
said, “to be the
best, see it through.”
well, it’s you who
wants to reinvent words:
names for heard of
silly birds. I like
“Seagulls,” thanks. “Pike” isn’t
a strike against fish
either. They swish their
fins, wish to live
under any affective name
we give them. Sometimes,
reinventions are crimes against
nature’s dimes; the death
of yesterday’s MacBeth before
the breath asphyxiates silent playgoers.
One of the great things about this poem is the flow and how natural the insets of dialogue are; while we don’t have any visuals on the two speakers, we can hear their voices and it plays out almost like an overheard conversation. The use of first person contrasts with this experience but makes the poem engaging.
The rhymes have been chosen carefully and in most places are so subtle you hardly know they are there, especially the combination of my, high and I in the first section. The poem perhaps falters at crimes and dimes but quickly picks up again and ends on the very solid rhyme pattern of death, MacBeth and breath, the plosive nature of these three bringing it to a solid close. Well done Aley!
I’ve really enjoyed all of the entries this week and I can’t wait to see how everyone responds to the next challenge on Wednesday. It’s going to be a little different to what we’ve tried so far, but a whole lot of fun!
** Image owned by Enokson at Flickr.
