Which way?

[Hannibal]

I'm lost without a word to touch your skin,
Your eyes, to burn visions into my head,
Your flesh, to bare it's soul to me,
You are my direction,
In a sea of discontent.


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As miserable as life may be I hold it pretty precious...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I wil write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always, I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
Word And Voice
Motocross Fanatics
General Philosophy

[Generalkaos]

When you write these up, do you capitalize every line? If you do, I wonder why. Anyway, this is a good piece. It has flare. The only misstep in my opinion is the line, "Your flesh to bare its soul to me" It just seems like you're not expressing exactly what you're getting at, and the line is sort of muddy and slapdash.

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Fetch me my blue fright wig, that I may be handsome when I unleash my wrath.

[Hannibal]

Good point, I wondered about that very line myself, but I figured I'd keep it in, just because...

I do capatalize every line... i dont' really know what, just for looks really...
Not to emphasise anything... I guess it just looks.. hmm.. "cleaner"?

I dont know...
Does it make things seem weird?

------------------
As miserable as life may be I hold it pretty precious...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I wil write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always, I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
Word And Voice
Motocross Fanatics
General Philosophy

[Generalkaos]

It doesn't look weird, per se--it does look archaic, though. People rarely do that anymore. It just seems like it's not done for a specific reason, to add anything to the piece, and you might get more out of playing with the caps to bring sense forward. Hey, have you tried working in free verse? It might really help you create more disciplined rhythms without sacrificing meaning or sense to rhyme. (For anyone who's interested, free verse is iambic pentameter without rhyme.)

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Fetch me my blue fright wig, that I may be handsome when I unleash my wrath.

[thrutheeyesofme]

I had always wondered that too, Hannibal, about your capitalisation but i figures I hadn't seen enough of your work to make a general comment. Many British/Irish poets still work like this but it is your decision as to how you want your piece to 'sit' (am i making any sense?)
general; blank verse is unrhyming iambic pentameter - free verse is poetry with no regular sense of rhyme of meter; Free verse often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.


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[Generalkaos]

Wow. I'm retarded. You're right, of course.

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Fetch me my blue fright wig, that I may be handsome when I unleash my wrath.

[Hannibal]

Speaking of retarded..
I don't have any clue what "iambic pentamiter" yada yada...
i don't know that stuff...
i leave that to yous guys

------------------
As miserable as life may be I hold it pretty precious...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I wil write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always, I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
Word And Voice
Motocross Fanatics
General Philosophy

[Generalkaos]

Here's a pretty solid explanation with examples:

An Iamb is a type of Foot. A Foot is the basic unit of Accentual-Syllabic meter. Meter basically means structuring a line of poetry in regular and equal units of rhythm. Accentual-Syllabic meter uses both the number of syllables and the location of stressed syllables within a Foot to structure a line. An Iamb is a two-syllable Foot with the stress placed on the 2nd syllable, as in "New York." Notice how the second syllable is stressed more than the first? You can find how words are accented in any dictionary, but it really shouldn't be necessary to go to such trouble; just say them out loud and listen. Often context determines which word or syllable is stressed in a foot, and you need to be aware of how your context might alter the stress in a particular foot. For example, in the sentence "I like your car," car would normally be stressed more than your. However, in "What do you mean your car?" the stress would be placed on your.

A Pentameter is a line of poetry constructed of 5 Feet, or units of rhythm. An Iambic Pentameter then is a line consisting of 5 Iambs, or two syllable Feet with the stress falling on the 2nd syllable of each foot. Or you might say it is a 10-syllable line with the stresses beginning on the 2nd syllable and falling on every other syllable thereafter. Here's an example, the first line of a sonnet by Edmund Spenser:

"One day I wrote her name upon the strand,"

Read this line aloud, and hopefully the rhythm will be apparent to you. That's Iambic Pentameter.

It's really fun to play with, too, and you seem the type to get a real bang out of it.


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Fetch me my blue fright wig, that I may be handsome when I unleash my wrath.

[thrutheeyesofme]

lol hannibal i think general's right; you seem like you could really get into that! general i dont think the Dictionary of English Literature could explain iambic pentameter much better than that.. bravo!

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[Hannibal]

Thanks General... your right.. I do thing rhyming and such like that is fun. I guess i've always kinda done it, but never really knew what it was. Thanks for the explanation, I understand now


------------------
As miserable as life may be I hold it pretty precious...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I wil write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always, I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
Word And Voice
Motocross Fanatics
General Philosophy