Published May 27, 2010
It's another sestina I wrote for my writing class.
___________________________________________________
I pray to the nightfall to take my hand as I descend,
And the sky fills
with rain.
Enwreathed in mist, shadows
are creeping out to kill. The forests are deep
as my blood seeps out through my vein.
Do your tears bleed in vain
as the rain descends
through the song of the deep
winds? The shrouds of darkness fill
me, and my own shadows
are disappearing. The crying rain
will not soothe me. Rain,
during the wintry eve, chills my veins.
Fallen ghosts leave behind shadows
to keep me company. For my immortal soul, evil descends
to claim me for their very own. No daylight will fill
me, only the night, for it is deeply
filled with mysteriousness and fear. I'm led to a deep
blue lake, in which I cower from the storm of rain
under the crystal cerulean water. I am filled
with utter loneliness. My veins
freeze over, numbly. The evil has left. Now nothing descends
upon me in the deserted lake. No shadows
are cast, because this empty void of nothing has no shadow.
Am I to be consumed, left alone in this deep
lake? Its beauty mesmerized me, only to have me descend
into a nonexistent stupor. Now not even the rain
can wake me up. I try in vain
to see my path, but it is filled
completely over, and I can't see it. But suddenly the rain is filled
with sweetness and compassion. Shadows
dance inside my closed eyelids. My veins
begin again to pump my motivation through. I rise from the once deep
lake. It is now only a puddle. How could this happen, where now is the rain?
My descent
has ended. No longer does the rain descend, the air is filled
with soft mist that stains me deep. Now return my shadows,
proving after all I am alive. Deep in this darkness I am forevermore, with bloodshot veins.
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The form is right actually. In my class the first thing we learned about sestinas is that the form to the words can be changed as long as the root of the word is still in it. And I did mess up on the last line, that's the only part where the pattern gets changed, but I didn't feel like fixing it. Also, the length to each line doesn't have to be the same. If it did, then you would never be able to use enjambment very good.
Hello there. The first thing I noticed was that this isn't quite a sestina. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that the words repeated at the end of each line had to be the same word. I suppose you could get away with the vein/vain switch since they sound identical, but deep/deeply and fill/filled are quite different, and you keep dropping and adding s's all over the place. Also, in the tercet, you didn't follow the 6-2/1-4/5-3 pattern. Unless you were using a different pattern? In which case, I'm wondering why the rest of the poem seems to follow a traditional sestina pattern and not the tercet.
Another thing about the form is that generally the lines are of a consistent length within the poem. This makes the pattern of repetition slightly more noticeable and the presence of a pattern apparent. Right now, your line lengths are vary so much, I wouldn't have realized that this was a sestina if you hadn't mentioned it.
As far as the subject of the poem goes, it bored me. It was cliche, and there was no new take on it, or even any unique imagery to make it interesting to read about. Boring.
I suggest that, in the future, when you're writing in a structured form that you follow the form more closely and take the time to give the line lengths a pattern. Structured poetry relies on patterns to work, and right now, this poem has no clear pattern. Also, when writing poetry in the future, try approaching the subject in a way you've never seen it done before but that makes perfect sense to you, then write so that anyone who reads your poem will be able to see the subject in that way. At the very least, it'll make your poem interesting to read.
Wow! This was incredibly good. I would say that your punctuation is inconsistent, but I'm fairly sure it's supposed to be that way. I'll just oraise you, then. This is a beautiful poem! Some parts didn't make sense, but the entire thing was dark and sad. I couldn't stop reading it. This is lovely, I can't really think of any nitpicks to give you. Just keep doind what you're doing!
-Dreamy115