A man, a plan, a sonnet... Or something.
I like this one, especially the sound of it, and I enjoy its cryptic qualities. Though Roger's right about the syntax not being quite right in the middle couplets. And he's also right that the first four lines and last four lines could stand alone, and maybe not lose much.
I feel a little let down by the way "happened" and "such" are unrhymed...or okay, maybe slant rhymed with the other lines. And on examination, I'm starting to find it unsatisfying the way lines 9-10 are stuck onto the preceding 8 lines, leaving lines 11-14 as an odd sort of concluding segment--neither sestet nor couplet. So it mimics a sonnet structure, but then it falls awkwardly in between the two best known versions.
Well, and on still further examination, "know" is an eye rhyme. Which didn't bother me--in fact I found it refreshing at that point. So maybe the earlier deviances don't matter.... Or maybe it's odd to be worrying about rhyme, when half the lines are actual repetitions.
Or maybe (I think this is my conclusion) there's an odd mix here of the very precise and somewhat loose engineering. And I think, in something this cryptic and sly-seeming, I'd like more precision.
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