Just a simple girl and nothing else;
Living life, no factual motive shown.
Books that uniformly fit in shelves,
Paint the dullness; paint it like a clown.
JUST a SIMple GIRL and NOthing ELSE;
LIving LIFE, no FACTual MOtive SHOWN.
BOOKS that UniFORMly FIT in SHELVES,
PAINT the DULLness; PAINT it LIKE a CLOWN.
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was waiting for ringmaster to post too, but they have been having Internet problems so I decided not to wait any longer.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I am so impressed by how well you are mastering rhythm and meter, and this task is no exception. I is almost perfect trochaic meter, and you should be really proud of yourself!
Some might say your rhyme is a little 'soft' (in other words, it is not a 'strong' rhyme and relies instead on half-rhyme), but I actually think it works really well. My only caveat there would be that I hope this is what you intended and that you did it for a reason: if you deliberately wanted to use half-rhyme rather than something stronger, then that's fine; if you did so because you couldn't find a way to use stronger rhyme and still avoid the 'rhyme trap', then I would suggest you needed to give yourself more time to work on it. You know which is the case. :)
Line 2 is your least effective, metrically. "Living life" works brilliantly, but the line works less well thereafter. Firstly, I think you are stretching things a little to use "factual" as two (rather than three) syllables. And secondly, I am not completely sure what the phrase even means - "no factual motive shown". Do you think this could benefit from being reworked?
thank you englishguru,
Deletei purposely used half-rhymes to give a message of an unstably shaped life; the original last line was
"softly lit by candles being blown."
so if i were to rewrite lines 2 and 4 so they fit and make sense, would something like this work better?:
Just a simple girl and nothing else;
Profile built by masks of snake oil clowns.
Books that uniformly fit in shelves;
Exclusive of mine; not square, but round.
In which case, the soft rhymes are fine; great, in fact!
ReplyDeleteAs for your redraft, I love your new line 2. Brilliant.
However, I also loved your old line 4. So I'm probably irritating you a bit now! :)
Trouble is, not only is your new Line 4 weaker, it also adopts a far more complex meter than was required:
exCLUsive of MINE; not SQUARE, but ROUND
Keep trying: you're almost there...