Today we will consider a sonnet with some qualities that I consider strange - and one of the few that can simultaneously swing me back to the immediate moment when it was written and make me laugh, without being written about anything particularly humorous in and of itself (unless you are one of those who find the emotions portrayed in this poem amusing; I have been there as well). Without further ado, the sonnet:
Electric shocks that ripple through my soul
Down to my stomach, which I almost lose
And paint the floor, and cover my nice shoes
With dinner, and my former sushi roll,
And maybe breakfast too. Was that your goal?
Or did it do the same to you, that wooz
Y feeling in the nether bits? You cruise
On by me with no backward glance. The whole
Of me is shaking. Yet I breathe, relax
And think it doesn't matter. And I'm right.
I'm done with you, I've played it to the max
So I am done with wilting in your sight.
I'm ready now, until you pass again
We'll see if I am really ready then.
What Went Wrong:
The first sentence, um, isn't grammatical. It would be without the "that," or with another verb to make an independent clause after the dependent clause. But as it is, the sonnet starts with a dependent clause all on its own. Which is not allowed. There is no reason for the shoes particularly to be "nice," other than that a syllable was required there; "nether bits" is particularly awkwardly phrased (although an argument could be made that it is intentionally awkward, and/or an attempt to conjure up both the aforementioned stomach and the other nether bits at the same time); "played it to the max" has both a technically undefined antecedent for "it" and a feeling of being there solely to rhyme "relax;" for some reason, "with dinner, and my former sushi roll" seems like a weak line - I think it's the fact that it could basically be elided, plus the oddness of the specificity included in the "former sushi roll." All these are problems, and I think together they work in common to make the poem - and indirectly, the speaker - seem a little out of sorts, which is not inappropriate to the subject of the poem, but does seem overdone; one should not be able to claim that all errors in a poem are simply to make it seem awkward. That's weak sauce as criticism and as writing.
Not Too Shabby:
However, the overall effect of discomfort is, I think, effective. Why? Because it's carried out throughout the poem, not just in what seem like the weak points. The rhymes (the scheme is ABBAABBACDCDEE) are just unexpected enough to conjure up that same discomfort, but other than the slight stretch for "to the max," they are solid; lose/shoes/wooz-/cruise and soul/roll/goal/whole do very nicely at avoiding both predictability and repetition while keeping the rhymes going, and wooz/y is particularly apt, given the discomfort of the whole poem, the meaning of woozy, and the helter-skelter effect of running the word over two lines. That is an effect I do not suggest using frequently, but I feel like it works here; one might almost say that the first line vomits the end of the word onto the second, which is perfectly in line with the emotion being presented. I really like the turn in this poem as well, or rather the two turns, one at "Yet I breathe," and the other in the couplet. Between them they keep the poem a little on edge, and they avoid predictability, even while leading to a slightly predictable end point, which is a neat juggling act. I also like a lot of the word choice in this poem, not just in the rhyme words but throughout; and I like the variation in sentence and clause lengths, from the long first sentence to the short staccato of "Was that your goal?" and "And I'm right." Overall, I feel this poem teeters on the verge of not working, but rescues itself from that brink repeatedly, reenacting the narrator's own struggle in a way that ultimately presents an excellent encapsulation of the emotions of the moment being portrayed.
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