Shakespearean Sonnet #4 (Recovery)

Hello, darling! (I told you you'd be seeing a lot of me.) I haven't read the other reviews, so pardon if I repeat what they've said.

I went into this poem directly off #2 and #3 , and I have to say that it's a little disappointing compared to those two. While they were a little shaky with meter and rhyme, this one seems to have amped the shaky up - not quite to eleven, but somewhere up there. A lot of your turns of phrase seem really forced, just to fit the rhyme and the meter, and this might have benefitted from not being forced into a sonnet form and just being left a piece with more freedom than these constraints.

This is especially obvious in a couple of places - your "bill/ill" rhyme in the first stanza, and "feast/least" and "return/yearn" in the third stanza, are all feeling terribly forced, to begin with. A lot of those phrases the rhymes are attached to also feel very awkward, and some of the meter feels off.

I almost had myself a heart attack
When I heard you were stuck in bed and ill.

This one especially stands out as awkward, considering it's the end of the first stanza - the first stanza is where you need to set up the story, the imagery, the themes that will carry throughout the rest of the quatrains, and where you set what should be wrapped up in the couplet. These two lines, however well they may try to set the scene, just don't do it for me. I think it's the combination of the phrases "I almost had myself" - which I've mainly heard from people over the age of 40 - and "stuck in bed", which is primarily a more youthful, juvenile phrase.

Overall, I think this one comes off a lot weaker than 2 or 3 and could benefit from some major editing for forced rhyme and syntax, and possibly a scrapping of the sonnet form altogether, but that's up to you.

You have yet another sonnet! Whew! On a roll with sonnets, huh?

All right, "let's get down to business" ... to defeat the typos. (I really mangled that Mulan quote, didn't I?) I don't see any obvious grammatical typos. Your spelling is good. The only punctuation confusion I have is with your fifth and sixth lines.

I'm sure the proper word here is "relieved".
You could say I was always "worried sick".

Is it a British convention that you are using with your quotation marks? To put the quotation marks inside the period? (I am American, so I'm not sure if this is correct or incorrect in British English.) In American English, the correct punctuation would be to place the second quotation mark outside of the period. But I don't know where you're from.

The line "You could say I was always 'worried sick'" is a also problematic for other reasons. In the context of your poem, "always" doesn't seem to be the right word. Going by the rest of your poem, it appears that the speaker's friend was only sick for a relatively short period of time. Saying "always worried sick" sounds like the friend was terminally ill or had a chronic disease or was in constant danger of sickness.

Here's another bit of nitpicking for the same line: the meter. The iambic pentameter in this line sounds somewhat forced. If one reads the line without expecting iambic pentameter or stressing syllables that normally aren't stressed, as if one was just saying that phrase in normal conversation, the line doesn't seem to be completely iambic pentameter. In iambic pentameter, the line should read, "you COULD say [/b]I[/b] was [/b]AL[/b]ways [/b]WORR[/b]ied [/b]SICK[/b]." Reading the line regularly, I find, "you could say [/b]I[/b] was [/b]AL[/b]ways [/b]WORR[/b]ied [/b]SICK[/b]." The metrical problem is only in the first few syllables.

Another bit of quibbling I'd like to do with the same line. I don't think the quotation marks around "worried sick" are really necessary. I think, as readers, we understand that "worried sick" is just an expression.... Or, if you'd still like to emphasize that the "sick" is only metaphorical, just place quotation marks around "sick," not "worried" as well.

Since only seeing you was what I'd yearn.

This is an awkward line. It's rather wobbly on its feet. I'd recommend revising this line a lot or replacing it altogether.

The only other nitpicking I have is a question of formatting. Did you know you can type ctl+enter to make the lines single-spaced? Most sonnets that I have read (by Shakespeare or Keats or somebody like that) are continuous form poems, without stanza breaks. The periods between the quatrains and couplet are really not necessary. If you just don't like the way the sonnet looks when it's double-spaced, I'd recommend using ctl+enter to format lines in the poetry you write.

Overall, interesting subject. I think your friend (if this is to a friend in real life) would be highly pleased to receive this sonnet as a present from you.

~ jessiethought ~