I would appreciate your feedback

[Orrex]

I'm no poet. True, my prose is so dazzlingly wonderful that James Joyce himself rose from the grave to praise my genius, but the move from prose to poetry is beyond me. Outside of my sig-line and Repub-mocking limericks, I haven't written a line of verse in over fifteen years.

But I recently stumbled upon a sonnet I wrote some time in summer of '92. It wasn't "for" anything per se, other than a vague wish to try for a sort of rolling thematic structure, the success of which I invite you to judge.

One thing to disclaim: I'm aware that I've sort of enslaved myself to the meter in this one, but at the time it seemed to work.

So let me have it! A prof once told me outright and in front of the class that my work was "stilted and anachronistic," and he privately suggested that I reconsider my course of study--and that was when I was young and impressionable! Anything said to me now in an anonymous forum won't carry quite the same sting, so I'd love to hear your brutally honest opinion of the following:

He is not free if, free, he bears that chain
That held and holds his life, withholding breath.
For, living, he may die and yet remain
As bound in shackle as unbound by death.
He is not dead if, buried, he yet dreams
Of life and of that body in his grave.
For, living, he may sleep and therefore seem
A withered corpse none easily could save.
He is not saved whose savior saves him not,
And torments end in torments still to come.
For, living, he may live as yet to rot
In fostering the man that he's become.
Within him sleeps a living soul betrayed;
Is he not evil who is evil made?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Orrex!

Well, let me say.........

That I like this, though I'm not sure just why!

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here......

But I do like the meter!

Keep on posting..........:hug:

[Orrex]

2. Well...

Despite my OP, I did have a sort of half-assed "real" reason for writing it, but you'd laugh and rightly call me a geek if I posted it! :)

But I'm glad that it appeals to you on some level.

I can see how it might imply something dark about one's perspective, but I can say honestly that it was just a thematic exploration, rather than an articulation of my own worldview.