If you have not yet read the poem referenced, please do so before continuing.
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"Darkness Revisited - revision" is my third revision of this work initially written on 17 October 2019, revised on 5 December 2019, and again on 2 January 2020 (the version previously published on PoetrySoup.) It is my most complex work.
As is my wont, I wrote in free verse without punctuation. Had I written in prose poetry, it would have been a single sentence and looked like:
Some thinking, dark clothing, dark face, dark place, may be, but more a seeing, a sensing, of life's realities, superficialities, aware to find deep meaning and singing the sight of light.
The structure of the poem is a quatrain consisting of two rhyming couplets followed by a non-rhyming intermediate couplet, repeated twice, and ends with a quatrain, again two rhyming couplets. The intermediary couplet forms a bridge from the preceding quatrain to that following. Due to the syllabification and lineation I use, the rhyming syllable (ing) of the first line of each quatrain is on the second line, which also forms an internal rhyme within the line. Therefore, the rhyming pattern of each quatrain is
AABB
and the syllabification of the poem in its entirety is:
2 4 2 2 2 2 2 4 6 6 2 2 2 4 2 2
where the second couplet in the second quatrain is longer (six syllables rather than two) than in the first and third quatrains. A second, possible, syllabication might be:
3 3 2 2 2 2 3 3 6 6 2 2 3 3 2 2
wherein the rhyming would be more obvious. However, I prefer the syllabication and lineation as written, since it gives greater emphasis to the ending of the first line (thinking, seeing, meaning) of each quatrain.
A reader may ask, why is "thinking" broken into "thin" and "king"? The reason is simple. The full text (in my mind) is:
Some thin [ (k) narrow-minded thoughts ]
king [ of themselves as above others ] dark...
As the reader proceeds to the intermediary couplet, perhaps the question arises, why is "maybe" written as "may be"? Once again, (in my mind) the full text is:
[ those thoughts ] may be [ true ]
but [ there is ] more...
I generally write poetry (possibly prose also) in a very curt style and leave out many clarifying words. Of course, that makes my work more challenging to understand, less lucid. But my goal is to raise questions in the reader's mind.
Thank you for reading. ~beto