minstrel: Re: Unrequited Love (Sonnets)

[Mike Baker]

Wilhelm:
     I am not so familiar with all the varied forms of sonnet as to be 
completely qualified in judging the adherence of a given work when I see it. 
 Based upon what knowledge I *do* have, I thoroughly enjoyed the pair of 
sonnets you have offered us here.  From a critical standpoint, I fear that I 
have little to offer.  The only comment that comes immediately to my hands 
would be that the reference to "gods" might have been stronger with a single 
Classical referrence (Apollo? Phaeton? Dawn?), although it has been enough 
years since my HS composition classes to remember if your usage or my 
proposal was that which would have been preferred earlier or later 
(Renaissance/Elizabethan vs. Romantic).

An observation about sonnets and the singing thereof:  I have seldom 
encountered a tune that works well for the true sonnet and the modern ear, 
although I have experimented with several.  I personally have had the best 
luck in setting sonnets to music when they follow the Shakespearean or a 
related form, and that by treating the whole as a four-stanza quatrain-based 
ballad, gaining the extra lines by  repeating the final couplet or deriving 
something to mesh a repetition from the first stanza.
(In one case ABBA CDDC EDDE GGAA.)

  Hey, I admitted up front -- or at least recently -- that I am more an 
instinctive than a scholarly poet.  It spills over into my critiques as 
well: sloppy, and I work to overcome it.

Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard)  s.k.a. Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri 
al-Amra
     currently residing in Barony of the Steppes, Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mike C. Baker                      mbaker at rapp.com
Any opinions expressed are obviously my own unless explicitly stated 
otherwise! 
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