This is a sonnet I go back and forth on, regarding how good I think it is; and therefore I thought it would be a good topic for an analysis. When I originally wrote it, the gender of the subject kept switching back and forth, although I think it has now settled on a "he." For now; who knows what tomorrow might bring. But here it is in any case:
He'll never leave her. You should realize that
Before it hurts you. Don't be stupid, let
Me advise you. Watch from where I sat
And see his head rest on her shoulder. Yet
That's not the worst - his hand is on her knee
And hers on his. He's resting in her love
Because he is secure in it. You see?
I know they may not be the model of
A perfect couple, but they're happy, and
They will not split apart. Accept it. You
Might be important to him, but you stand
Between them, and that simply will not do.
He'll say goodbye someday - and you will grieve.
Prevent that now - I'm telling you, just leave.
What Went Wrong:
So one of the reasons I sometimes think I don't like this sonnet is the way it constantly runs into itself and sticks emphases in odd places. The lonely "Yet" and the lonely "let" in lines four and two respectively feel weak; the same might be said of the "you" ending line ten or the "and" ending line nine; even the internal emphases can feel off, as in line nine as a whole. It feels almost like a prose monologue slightly shifted in order to make it fit the sonnet form. The enjambment is probably too heavy, and the internal pauses ("Accept it" in the middle of a line, the dashes and the interjections) are overmarked. Yet for something that sounds like a prose monologue, the sentences are awfully poor: "Watch from where I sat/and see his head rest on her shoulder," "He's resting in her love/Because he is secure in it," and "I know they may not be the model of/A perfect couple, but they're happy, and/They will not split apart" all seem extremely stilted when written out. The bad side of this poem is that it gets caught up in the urgency and desperation of the emotion it is trying to convey and ends up tripping heavily over the formal aspects of the sonnet.
Not Too Shabby:
The flip side of that perspective is that the emotion is strong; the enjambment in particular shows the urgency - almost no line is willing to let the reader pause. The couplet is strong, although perhaps the dashes should be a comma in the one case and a period in the second. The short, punctuated feeling of many of the sentences reinforces the urgency shown by the enjambment and sets up that final couplet for maximum force; as does the enjambment which gives way to two of the few end-stopped lines in lines twelve and thirteen (line seven is end-stopped, but only with the two-word phrase "You see?" rather than as the end of a larger buildup). The incessant repetition of the third person pronouns at the start seems effective to me, as it draws "her" and "his" (and their other forms obviously) closer and closer through rhetoric alone even as the narrative draws them closer as well; it gives way to a "they"/"you" contrast in the second half of the poem, which seems equally effective, and the separation of the "he" and "you" in line thirteen is made the more poignant by those patterns. Finally, the rhymes seem almost accidental at times, at least to me, which I find to be powerful; this effect is bolstered by the enjambment which place the rhyme words not at the (obviously premeditated) ends of sentences, but in the chaotic middle where they seem more effortless. This is the counterbalance to the occasional stretch for a rhyme: even the stretches look like they occurred as the result of muddled thinking by the narrator rather than a reach by the author because of the hurried internal reality of the poem.
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