My 21st century Prince Charming, a love sonnet

He is proud, arrogant, stubborn and tall.
My lord's armour is of leather, his visor of plastic,
When he speaks of me he is not lyrical but sarcastic;
And he will not be my saviour but my downfall.

My champion rides astride no stallion, but a motorbike!
His mysterious gaze would give me wings,
As he dares me to do the craziest things.
Yet why would he rather die than admit we're so alike?

We disagree on every fundamental issue,
At the end of each debate we shall start arguing anew.
Our battle is will to will and wit to wit.

For when he'll smile and whisper that he loves me,
His eyes kindling playfully and his face lit,
Why, that'll be the only matter on which we'll ever agree!

Hi Velvet.whispers...( you really have to tell us your name )

Velvet.whispers wrote:
My knight is proud, arrogant, stubborn and tall.
His armour is of leather, his visor of plastic.
When he speaks of me he is not lyrical, but sarcastic;
And he will not be my saviour, but my downfall.

I like this... Firstly: for your effort. Secondly: for the theme you captured. Thirdly: for the well pulled rhyme (ABBA)... This all seems little torn apart when reading it-some verses are too long, some of them are "too much for themselves." Also, you said this is a sonet... I counted the syllables and it seems you missed many verses. The rhythm wasn't much of a good stuff too...
'till your editing 'n fixing....

Hi there, Velvet Whisper! I'm June, and I'm going to review this for you.

I'm going to start by pointing out little things along the way, dear, and then, I'll bring you to an overall. Let's begin, dear.

My knight is proud, arrogant, stubborn and tall.

His armour is of leather, his visor of plastic.

When he speaks of me he is not lyrical but sarcastic;

And he will not be my saviour but my downfall.

• Your opening line is great, dear. You're introducing him to us by describing his characteristics to your audience, which is great. We're getting a better look at him this way.

However! In a sense, your first line is long, dear.

See, read this stanza aloud. See how the sentences feel around the same length, dear? You want to have a consistent effect throughout, and having a long beginning line is throwing us off because we cannot see the connectivity as well. If your first line is long, the rest should be long-- but in this case, I think that the first line can be shortened a bit to fit the rest of the poem, dear.


• Watch your punctuation here, dear, as well. You don't want to mess up the flow for the audience by bringing us to full stops using periods when we're unprepared for them!

Instead of a stallion, he rides a motorbike.

We disagree on every fundamental issue,

At the end of each debate we shall start arguing anew.

Yet he would rather die than admit we're so alike.

This stanza is a bit shifty in a sense.

See, him riding a motorbike is a concrete action. We can all see him do this, watch him. This is something that he can easily toss away from himself.

The next lines are about arguing/debating. They're somewhat unrelated to the line about the bike-- unless you think it's dangerous for him or something. They're somewhat unconnected, making it hard for us to keep a steady focus.

Our battle is will to will and wit to wit.

His mysterious gaze will give me wings

As he dares me to do the craziest things.

In the above stanzas, you had a consistent 4-lined ABAB rhyme scheme, but when you bring us to this, it's gone!

In a way, I feel that the importance of this stanza is sacrificed for rhyme. What battle are you guys fighting? Beginning a new stanza is the opening of a new turn, new ideas in a poem. Why bring us to this and continue about disagreements, dear?

There is nothing we could possibly do about it,

For when he'll smile and whisper that he loves me,

Why, that'll be the only matter on which we'll ever agree!

Gotta love that ending .



Let's see:


-*-*-

I like this because it's giving a great, modern twist to the whole Prince Charming thing.

However, I would have liked to see more about him. Like, throw a bit more twists on the stereotypes of prince charming. Is there something unattractive about him that can contrast him with the PCs of old?

Also! I know you mentioned that this is a sonnet, but I kind of stepped outside of sonnet guidelines in reviewing this.


Well done! I especially love the rhyme you used here. Nice work, dear! Keep it up!

June

haha no darko, i cannot give you my name, that would just ruin all the fun of it! If my screen name is mysterious, it shall remain so!
As for the poem I realise a few things aren't quite right and I'm working on them.
As for it being a sonnet, the renaissance gave birth to three sorts of sonnets, known as the Elizabethan one (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG or ABBA CDDC EFFE GG), the French one (ABBA CDDC FFE GEG) and the Italian or "marotic" one (ABBA CDDC FFE GGE). The french one doesn't require verse to be of equal length.
Anyway, I'm playing around with these classical structures to find a more modern one that still recalls the idea of a sonnet. As for the punctuation and deconstructive use of rhythm, it's purposeful!
It is my wish that the poem should be a mixture of a rather strict schematic metre that's completely deconstructed, just as values of courtly love seem today out of place and in pieces.

Velvet.whispers wrote:...The french one doesn't require verse to be of equal length...

Really, didn't know that.

Velvet.whispers wrote:And once again people, please learn how to spell
RHYTHM AND RIME
correctly, it's driving me MAD!!

Did I really spelled like that? Again?
*takes a gun*
*points towards the head*
....

Nope it wasn't you, it was June/ spring rain!

Nope, I didn't....

Haha you are so gullible, it is rhyme lol
xx

Sonnets should have a ten syllable beat each line, I thought there was to begin with, but then it ruined it by too many syllables, try deleting some stuff. like:


He is proud, arrogant, stubborn and tall.
My lord's gear is of leather, of plastic, It would be Ok to have the odd line over or under 10 syllables
When he speaks of me he does sarcastic;
And he will not be my saviour but my downfall.

My champion rides astride no stallion,
His mysterious gaze would give me wings,
As he dares me to do the craziest things.
Yet why would he rather die, than admit we're so alike?

This is just my opinion of how the change could be done, if you do something similar, instead of having a motorbike, don't put that, it makes the reader want to read more because it could be anything they imagine, this creates better suspense.
If you kept the second verse with the last line like that, it would work well, even if it isn't 10 syllables but it works well.

Dear iCarlyfan had you read what is posted above, you would know that this is what is known as a french sonnet, and that for this type of sonnet there is absolutely no necessary amount of syllables per verse.

Velvet.whispers wrote:Dear iCarlyfan had you read what is posted above, you would know that this is what is known as a french sonnet, and that for this type of sonnet there is absolutely no necessary amount of syllables per verse.

oh, ok, I didn't know because we have only done about sonnets at school in poetry, no other version of sonnet, I'm sorry I just didn't know, but anyway, it is good and I am sorry for that, thanks for telling me that I wouldn't have known, but now I know.