My Obsession

Spoiler

So I'm obsessed with Alice in Wonderland, and for a Creative Writing assignment, I decided to write a poem on it, in the form of an Italian Sonnet.

He hates you, run as fast as your legs can.
Nothing will matter once you’re gone; do it.
Earth’s ugly like a swan, perched like a fan.
Fall down that hole, happiness will emit.
Meet a man as mad as his useless hats,
Drink tea with a hare, and a bright dormouse.
A smiling thing you’d never believe; cats!
Eat a cake, grow in that small little house.
 
What wonderful things that mischief will find!
A magical place, things turned upside-down.
And don’t forget about the red queen’s mind,
Or on the ground, your head will soon be found.
 
They say to survive, you’ll have to be mad.
That’s a chance to take that will make me glad.

Hey, Captain.classy.

Now, I'm no sonnet-expert or anything, but I have learned a thing or two about rhyming and metered poetry in my attempts at it, and I'm going to pass these things on to you.

First of all, it's REALLY hard to do well. We think 'Oh, it's easy to find words that rhyme with other words!', but in reality, we have to realize that these poems can't seem FORCED or the reader will know. They'll know if you had to invert the sentence structure in the last line of the second stanza to rhyme with the normal sentence structure in the second line of the second stanza (this is in your poem. xD).

Second of all, it's REALLY hard to do well! We think as long as we count syllables and they fit in, that's all good, but we have to pay attention to the meter as well. For example:

Nothing will matter once you’re gone; do it.
Earth’s ugly like a swan, perched like a fan.
Fall down that hole, happiness will emit.

We think that 'it' rhymes with 'emit', but because of meter, these things don't really work. If you take the phrase 'do it', and say it out loud, you stress the first syllable, but if you say 'emit' out loud, you stress the second, so they don't really match up, and they definitely don't work. The rhyme also seems off; you'd have to have a word that has the 'oo' sound before 'it' to make it seem right.

Third of all, a general note is that it's more interesting to write descriptions than plot summaries. What you have here is a summary of the story, but wouldn't it be cooler if you could pick a specific scene or character and describe them in detail in your poem? Comparing colors to objects or characters to feelings or something like that?

I would try to keep these things in mind. A rhyming poem should never come out seeming forced. If the words don't come naturally and if you have to warp sentences to fit them into the theme, it's not good! Also, try a different subject matter to see what you can do with descriptions of more specific things! Explore your own ability.

Let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with all your writing!

-Hannah-

I totally loved this captain!!!! It was awesome, and I am obsessed with Alice in wonderland too, but this wasn't one of those cheesy cliche fan-fic poem, it actually had meaning to it, and was very well written. Great job!

Thanks Hannah! I have trouble with poetry, and your review helped.