With poise, respect, a little dignity,
Humility like this, a hand held out,
To reach for another, offer a ride,
This was grace you shared, through all of your days,
With simple hopes, only to touch one heart.
And rather than hold within your own way,
Lives were changed, lessons shared with the many,
Hearts were deeply touched, and blessings were shared,
For in this giving way you had, you touched,
Those upon the days of all that were blessed.
Petrina Lesko
May 2011
I often feel rather challenged to attempt my hand, or should I say my pen, when a new form is offered up within the lessons I am still learning. Today over at One Stop Poetry, Gay Cannon has offered for One Stop Poetry Form the familiar, yet new 'Blank Verse'. As she explains it in its basic form, it is iambic pentameter, no rhyme. Familiar as it has been used in many a famous write from the likes of Henry Howard, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, Robert Frost and many other of the greatest poets of all time. Thus I thought I would give it a try. I hope I have given a glimmer of its true nature in my piece.
Humility like this, a hand held out,
To reach for another, offer a ride,
This was grace you shared, through all of your days,
With simple hopes, only to touch one heart.
And rather than hold within your own way,
Lives were changed, lessons shared with the many,
Hearts were deeply touched, and blessings were shared,
For in this giving way you had, you touched,
Those upon the days of all that were blessed.
Petrina Lesko
May 2011
I often feel rather challenged to attempt my hand, or should I say my pen, when a new form is offered up within the lessons I am still learning. Today over at One Stop Poetry, Gay Cannon has offered for One Stop Poetry Form the familiar, yet new 'Blank Verse'. As she explains it in its basic form, it is iambic pentameter, no rhyme. Familiar as it has been used in many a famous write from the likes of Henry Howard, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, Robert Frost and many other of the greatest poets of all time. Thus I thought I would give it a try. I hope I have given a glimmer of its true nature in my piece.
7 comments:
fabulous poem. very beautiful words and sentiments.
a blessed heart for sure.
It's wonderful that you just keep going.
We all have so much to learn that's new, attempting it is the real achievement.
wonderful! :-)
So nice that you write different poetic forms. Your versatility is testimony to your talent.
Nice one. Even I attempted this form. But it is so difficult to get the short and long stresses right, especially for a non native English speaker who is more used to reading lots of good English but very little to listening proper English.
Hello Petrino
There is much beauty in the sentiments of this piece and as a piece of verse well written. It doesn't quite make it as "blank verse" but not for lack of trying. So well done you, to pick up the challenge.
Yes "The Fool" has hit on something I have discussed before. The difference in our accents determining the stress we use in our poems. I know (in my head) a good many British accents and try to tune my "pickup" when I read other people's poems. "Only", I think, must be said on-LEE in lots of places in Britain and elsewhere English is spoken. In America (and in the dictionary I use) the stress is clearly on the first syllable. But for this exercise, many have used it as an iamb and not the trochee it seems to me.
And as John and a few others have pointed out the substitution of an occasional trochee is perfectly acceptable in changing tone, texture, etc. as I quoted from Thrall Hibbard. So if it doesn't scan regularly for me that can easily be explained in this way.
For me "this was grace", "of your days", and a few other phrases seemed like anapests. This is also allowed; however, one has to realize that if you employ them, it changes your syllable count if you're sticking to pentameter because anapestic feet are three syllables long.
As an exercise, just to get the hang of the "stresses", I'd consult a dictionary as you go along writing in iambic (with possible additions of anapestic) just to make sure you get the hang of the fall of the stresses in the those places noted. After you do that (for just a couple or four lines) read it aloud stressing where the dictionary gives the stress and I think you will hear a different music from the one you heard as you wrote it. It's worth a try, I think.
Nevertheless this does nothing to detract from the piece you've written here which if I could hear you read it, might indeed produce the "sound" of blank verse. Thank you for participating and linking. Gay
(my comment didn't post sigh)
Anyways, I was saying how I did not know much about poetry but follow your work. You are extremely talented and your poems have such emotional value. Along with talent...you are a great person and you can just tell by your posts. You inspire me in my artwork.
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