Jennifer DePaolo's birthday is tomorrow.

Heeey, I would like to contradict my previous whiny rhetorical questions about poetic forms in light of this "Lonely Hearts" poem, which rightly has a pattern to it. The repetition of "Can someone make my simple wish come true?" emphasizes the universality of the problem of loneliness. "Do you live in North London? Is it you?" has a similar logic in being repeated. All of the lonely hearts want somebody to love. They're looking for quite different things, but their general purpose is the same.

I don't know exactly why they're all looking for somebody in North London, really, though. I suppose if it's in the "Personals" ads in a newspaper, they would all be from roughly the same area, and thus we must conclude that they are all from London. Famous poets sure do like London a lot. What's up with that?



PS--I think that author lady cheated on the spelling of her name. She's takin' the easy way out.

Edwards are creepy sometimes. Somebody should warn my grandpa.

So I believe the speaker (Q2) of "Edward" is called Edward, and I believe he may have killed his father, who apparently also in some way resembles a roan steed and a hawk, for that's what he says before he finally stops euphemising. If indeed he is euphemising. (<--That is not a real word.) He seems to be speaking to his mother (Q3) and explaining that he's made some bad choices and will be abandoning everyone to flee to safety. She seems disappointed in him. I must admit to finding the meter and overall pattern of this poem rather irritating and confusing. The irritation was a result of the confusion, most likely. I couldn't hear its rhythm in my mind, which bothers me immensely. I guess I typically don't understand the purpose of poetic forms. Who decided they were necessary or even desirable? Whyyyy do it?

"Sweet disorder" is an oxymoron.

I liked this poem, which is neither here nor there, but it's true. I've always found perfection off-putting/intimidating. I like to hear that other people also "delight in disorder."

There were some soft rhymes with which I had some minor qualms.... "There" does not really rhyme well with "stomacher," unless I am mistaken, although I had never even heard the second word before. The diction was pretty sophisticated... more like stereotypical poetry-words than I feel like we've been hearing so far. "Kindles" and "wantonness".... Those are the types of words that Pamela Phillips Oland, author of The Art of Writing Great Lyrics, would call poetry words. If you wouldn't say them in regular conversation, then they're not song lyrics; they're poetry verses.

Do not go gentle into that good night; I dare you to move.

"Villanelle" sounds like... a female villain. Bellatrix Lestrange.

Anyway, that's the pattern at work here--villanelle form. It's five three-line stanzas followed by a sixth four-line stanza, and the last line alternates and repeats, but the last stanza has both of them.

Also, there's some assonance in the second line of the poem, I think, which stuck out to me for some reason. "Old age should burn and rave at close of day." Oh... also, villanelles seem to have rhyming second lines in each stanza, and the first and last lines in the stanzas also rhyme. That's elaborate.

The poem itself is, I think, the speaker imploring a person not to die. "That good night" is a euphemism, then, for death, and "dying of the light" would be the same. The last stanza implies that the speaker is asking his father not to die, which is probably important.

That's quite a bit of figurative language (Q11), really.