A Silly Old Soul Like Mine

[technicolorcardigan]

[Hi, this is my first post so please forgive me if I don't have this right just yet This is my first draft of a poem I wrote for and about the person I love. I typically am very strict with rhyming patterns and syllables, which I pretty much threw away for this, so I'm afraid it sounds rather choppy? I'm starting to think it reads more like song lyrics. I am pretty pleased with most of my word choice, but would love critiques involving structure/flow.]



A Silly Old Soul Like Mine

i gazed upon a flickering star
singing a silent song
would it disrupt his solitude, were i to sing along?

it's hard not to think about why,
but my silly old soul and i,
we throw pebbles in ponds and we wave magic wands
and we wish for this star to fall by

you would swear that it came from the pages-
it seems like a story but it is a fact,
when two lovestruck children don't know how to act
they walk round in circles for ages-

then all at once everything changes
it's sudden- the world rearranges
and quickly all i do would be brighter, were there you

i knew i'd never rest,
but i never could have guessed
my dandelion wishes would come true

[ssilvs]

well, you’re definitely right about this sounding more like song lyrics than the lines of a poem (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) i admire your courage in trying to throw away the traditional rhyme scheme you’re used to, but you seem to have fallen into the common trap while doing so—you’ve created a poem with a number of rhyme schemes in it and it, admittedly, does sound a little choppy. either clean up the scheme so it’s coherent or cut it out entirely and then you’ll have one pretty solid poem 

[Nora]

The second verse is actually a limerick:

it's hard not to think about why,
but my silly old soul and i,
we throw pebbles in ponds
and we wave magic wands
and we wish for this star to fall by

It's my favorite part of this poem!

[technicolorcardigan]

I hadn't noticed, love that! Thanks!

[Nora]

and I also noticed some delightful word play:

silly old soul
pebbles in ponds
we wave magic wands

[technicolorcardigan]

I'm contemplating adding:

And quickly all I do would be brighter were there you
And quickly all loads bared would be lighter, were they shared

[crch]

This is very fun!  I could see myself there being silly too.

Keep writing

[IzzBuzz]

I really like the poem
It’s sweet and lighthearted, and reminds me of a fairy tale.
I second the other commenter here about needing to keep a rhyme scheme uniform throughout the poem.
Also, if you’re going to have rhymes at the end of lines in your poem, you generally need to have each line follow the same meter in order for it to roll off the tongue when you recite the poem. Also, you want to avoid changing the order of words in order to make a rhyme—for example, “were there you”. It’s grammatically correct, but it’s not generally how we phrase things, so it sounds forced in order to rhyme with “would come true”.
Overall I really enjoyed the poem though!

[Mark T]

You are messing with the syntactical relationship in your lines in order to force rhymes.
It's not necessary - all it does is distract from the content. Poetic elements should be subtle and balanced to create an overall effect. With modern poetry you can weave these elements in as they occur naturally without having to adhere to a strict format. One has great freedom of expression that is not available with form poetry. Go and have a look at the requirements of writing a sonnet in iambic pentameter and you will be grateful for the concept of free verse.

[Royal Thorn 78]

Mark is right.  Unless (until) you develop a full poet's toolbox, formal verse is best left to the reading and not the writing.  Don't attempt rhyme until you have mastered cadence, especially end-rhyme.  Blank verse can be incredible (See Roethke), but don't attempt meter until you have developed some facility with metaphor and symbolic speech generally.  When you write free verse, you have no safety net, no security of meter and rhyme schemes.  Your challenge is to find the internal rhythm and cadence to your poem - the music in the phrases and couplings of the phrases rather than in lines and end-lines.  You will need to learn simile, metaphor, allegory, etc., in order to fill out your poems with narrative of interest.

And with free verse, you are freed to explore the wider connections and sonic echoes, without the constraints of formal poetry.  But you assume the greater challenge and responsibility.  As a benchmark -- consider the 200 poem mark as a time to consider formal poetry, if only as writing exercises to start with.

--Roy